Made in Sunderland, batteries made in the UK too. EV tech developed jointly with Renault.

No surprise here. Why is this even news? Every product that uses memory is raising their prices. This "story" is merely Apple mollifying their customers.

Might check out this film: The Eagle Obsession.

(only in pre-release screening now, but there's a youtube preview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... )

It is a problem. You make up a meaning that has a definition that's bizarrely twisted to make your opinions written into the definition. As I said:

Looks like a correct number; why do you think it's a lie?

https://fortune.com/2026/05/11...

Except this isn't a delay from April to June. This is a delay of well over a year, and maybe nearly two years.

That's a bad problem: people like you make up their own definitions of the words, then make glib assertions based on the assumption that everybody else means the same thing, and as a result people talk right past each other.

Not just you. A lot of people--mostly Gen-X and younger-- these days think the word 'socialism' means "the government doing things that benefit the people instead of corporations". That's not what it means.

Yes, that's another bad problem: people like you making their own definitions of words so that their opinions are correct by definition.

I would say that "doing some robbery, taking the ill gotten gains, and using those gains to bribe voters with inducements and largely debt-based goodies to get the incumbents reelected" is the definition of crony capitalism.

I have no fantasy of a worker utopia. I think that socialism had fatal flaws and doesn't work. But if we fail to use words that are understood with the same meaning, we can't even discuss the flaws. (Unrestricted capitalism also has flaws, which turn out to be well known to any actual economists (and is why real economic systems have restrictions). Believing that there are two and only two choices, and no other possible choices, is another bad problem.)

Except, of course, for the front part, which was weirdly aerodynamic

Easy to do when you have no fuel tanks.

I have no idea how you calculated mass. But about a third of the vehicle (not including the detachable part) seems to be the landing pads, which doesn't seem very optimum.

Yes, the lack of fuel tanks is a real problem. Also, how do they fly? They only have engines in back, but they skim over the surface of the moon like they are levitating. What holds them up? When they blast off to go into deep space, do they rotate 90 degrees to point the main engines downward?

The headline says "sold at a loss", but the summary doesn't:

"the profit margin for China's auto industry plunged to 4.4 percent and dropped further to a historic low of 3.2 percent in early 2026."

Profit dropping is not the same as "sold at a loss."

I had kits for both an Eagle and a Hawk (which is somewhat surprising in retrospect given it only appeared in one or two episodes, IIRC). The Eagle model was a much more complex kit with far more parts than the Hawk, which was also somewhat smaller despite them both supposedly being to the same scale. Tbh, I always thought the Hawk was the cooler looking ship due to its more aggressive lines, which is probably why it was blessed with a model kit, but you can't argue with the sheer practicality & flexibility of the modular Eagle design. And its ability to survive so many crashes - usually at the hands of Alan Carter - of course!

There was also a range of diecast toys and plastic action figures for the series, I think.

Most of the R&D in China is done with private money. The government does contribute, but it's more long term guarantees than it is cash.

In a democracy, policy can change ever 4-5 years. Look at the US, it's been alternating between pushing renewables to banning them to pushing them to banning them again, over the last 4 administrations. If you were a company developing renewable technology, would you have faith that your investment in R&D wouldn't be banned by the time it reaches market? Doesn't even have to be a ban, just an administration that is hostile to your business, and an electorate that would rather roll coal than see a wind turbine 20km off-shore.

The Chinese government said that EVs were the future and it would ensure that future came quickly and stuck around. It made sure the infrastructure was installed, and promoted them to consumers as a way to reduce pollution. Loans for development were made available. And it stuck to that for the long term, not just the next 4-5 years.

Democracy can do that too, but not in a two party system. Look at European democracies where coalition governments are the norm, where the system is designed to prevent any one party gaining complete power. Planning is longer term, and there is more certainty in future policy direction.

From Europe we look at Americans that way too. Long hours, ridiculously little holiday entitlement (I just booked flights for my six week break over the new year, and I've still got time off to spare), and a billionaire-Epstien ruling class who live in luxury. Only they also get pollution, mass deportations, bankrupted by healthcare costs, school shootings, and so on.

China is far from perfect, but it also doesn't compare that badly.

Probably working on an army of murderbots to protect him from the guillotine.

The usual way of fixing it is to designate those products as critically important and put in a mandate for making them available. Take water, for example. Data centres need it, humans need it, farms need it. If it was just sold to the highest bidder we would be in trouble.

I'm hoping that Chinese manufacturers step up to increase supply, because they will be less concerned about demand drying up. They have both a rapidly expanding domestic market, and the longer term goal to out-compete rivals on price. CXMT is unfortunately allocating a lot of production to AI as well, but they aren't the only ones. Hopefully NAND flash production also ramps up very quickly.

Many of the big Western car manufacturers sold EVs at a loss initially too. I had an original Nissan Leaf that was heavily discounted and came with a 0% loan.