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BOJ Governor Sticks to Stance on More Rate Hikes Despite U.S. Uncertainty

The central bank said it would closely monitor economic measures by President-elect Donald Trump

NAGOYA, Japan—The Bank of Japan’s governor affirmed that the door remains open to more rate hikes, saying they could come before clarity emerges on U.S. economic policy, even as he carefully avoided giving any clear hints on the timing of the central bank’s next move.

“There are countless uncertain and changing factors, including the U.S. economy. Rather than waiting for clarity on all of them, we will make appropriate policy decisions, looking at data and other information available by each policy meeting,” Kazuo Ueda said at a news conference Monday after speaking to business leaders in Nagoya, central Japan.

While the BOJ head said the bank would closely monitor economic measures by President-elect Donald Trump, he refrained from offering his views on their potential impact on the global economy.

Since Trump was elected as the next U.S. leader earlier this month, speculation over his policy, such as additional tariffs on foreign-made goods, has shaken the financial markets.

The dollar has strengthened on expectations that higher tariffs could accelerate inflation by increasing prices of goods imported into the U.S, sending the yen to its weakest point in nearly four months.

Given the yen’s sharp weakening, some economists expect the BOJ to raise interest rates as soon as at its next policy-setting meeting on Dec. 18-19. A weak yen raises inflationary pressures as Japan depends largely on imports of food and energy.

A local business leader attending the meeting with the BOJ governor on Monday asked the central bank to consider the stability of the currency market when making policy decisions because the yen’s depreciation has had negative effects on companies by raising the cost of importing raw materials and energy.

Stabilizing foreign-exchange rates is not a direct mandate of the Japanese central bank. But Ueda said the bank would closely examine how the yen’s weakness will affect the bank’s price outlook.

Higher costs for Japanese firms could be especially concerning if they are unable to pass those costs on to consumers. Many companies in the country have so far been reluctant to sharply raise prices but there are some signs that this is starting to change.

In his morning speech, Ueda reaffirmed the bank’s stance of continuing to raise interest rates as long as the economy improves as expected.

“The actual timing of the adjustments will continue to depend on developments in economic activity and prices as well as financial conditions going forward,” Ueda said.

“Gradually adjusting the degree of accommodation in line with improvement in economic activity and prices will support long-term economic growth and contribute to achieving the price stability target in a sustainable and stable manner,” he added.

The governor said that whether overseas economies grow moderately and whether wages in Japan continue to rise hold the key to the bank’s economic outlook.

Although Ueda didn’t give a strong hint that a December rate increase is coming, he emphasized the need for gradual monetary tightening.

Given that real interest rates remain very low, he sees a risk that underlying inflation rate could at some point exceed the central bank’s 2% target.

“If that happens, we may have to raise interest rates at a faster-than-expected pace. We will appropriately adjust the degree of monetary easing to avoid such a situation,” Ueda said.

ECB split over report showing big EU banks’ capital requirements lower than US rivals

Officials say US rules would increase minimum capital levels by double-digit percentage for biggest EU banks

The European Central Bank is debating whether to publish sensitive research showing capital requirements for big EU lenders would rise by a double-digit percentage if they had the same rules as large Wall Street rivals.

Some senior policymakers at the ECB are pushing for it to publish the report, or at least some of its findings, to counter heavy lobbying by the banking sector to water down rules implementing the Basel agreement on global capital requirements in the sector.

The pressure from EU banks is likely to increase if the US dilutes or even abandons plans to impose the Basel rules on its banks amid an expected wave of deregulation following Donald Trump’s victory in this month’s presidential election.

The so-called Basel III package is an ambitious overhaul of bank regulation agreed by supervisors around the world in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis to limit how much lenders can use their own models to make their balance sheets appear stronger than they would otherwise be.

The ECB report, which was completed last year but has never been published, examined what would happen to EU bank capital requirements if they were subjected to current US prudential rules. 

Officials in Frankfurt found that for the biggest EU banks, the application of US rules would increase their minimum capital levels by a double-digit percentage, according to two people briefed on the report.

The biggest lenders in the EU and the US have to meet extra capital requirements based on their systemic importance, and the impact their collapse would potentially have for global finance.

The minimum capital levels for the biggest US banks include a buffer reflecting the Federal Reserve’s annual stress test results and a further surcharge based on their systemic importance, on top of the basic “pillar one” requirements of 4.5 per cent of a lender’s assets, weighted for risk.

Some officials are reluctant to publish the ECB’s findings because they stem from several assumptions that are likely to be challenged by the banking industry. Officials believe those challenges could create counterproductive disputes between the lenders and the central bank’s supervisors.

Others say the report is partly based on confidential data, making publication difficult.

The ECB declined to comment.

The report was compiled to challenge the EU banking industry’s push to show that it already had higher capital levels than its US counterparts, as part of the sector’s lobbying efforts to water down the new rules, which it claims put it at an even bigger disadvantage to American rivals.

The European Banking Federation teamed up with consultants Oliver Wyman to produce a study last year that said the common equity tier one — a routinely used capital benchmark — at larger EU banks over the past three years was on average 3.1 percentage points higher than US rivals. 

One reason EU banks have higher capital ratios is a greater use of their own models, which can be used to downplay the riskiness of their assets. A lower level of these so-called “risk-weighted assets” boosts their relative capital levels.

US banks are restricted in their use of such accounting moves. European banks also hold bigger “management buffers” above their minimum capital requirements than US peers.

The EU law to implement Basel was finalised this year and will be phased in over the next eight years. The European Banking Authority has estimated it will increase minimum capital requirements for large and internationally active EU banks by 8.6 per cent and raise them for the biggest few banks classed as systemically important by 12.2 per cent.

Brussels lawmakers made several concessions to the industry and member states that included watering down capital requirements for small business and mortgage lending, and for banks’ insurance subsidiaries. 

Earlier this year, the Fed cut a proposed increase to capital requirements for the country’s largest banks by more than half to 9 per cent after a massive backlash from the industry and politicians against the so-called “Basel Endgame” rules. 

However, regulators failed to agree on this proposal and now many bank executives are expecting a Trump administration to usher in a largely new regulatory team in Washington who will substantially weaken Basel Endgame or cancel it altogether.

Claudia Buch, chair of supervision at the ECB, told an event in Amsterdam this month that Europe should stick to the plans for implementing the Basel rules whatever the US does. She added that big Wall Street banks already have “significantly higher capital requirements” than their European counterparts.

If China’s statistics can’t be scrutinised, doubts about the economy will only grow

One misleading figure may need to be followed by others, setting the scene for a cycle of misinformation

China’s official statistics, particularly its annual GDP figures, have long been the subject of scrutiny. In 2007, Li Keqiang, later the premier, remarked that they were unreliable and that he relied on three alternative indicators to evaluate economic performance: railway cargo volume, electricity consumption and bank lending. These metrics came to be known as the “Keqiang Index”. 

Many observers suspect that GDP figures in the past few years have been inflated. Local officials tend to view meeting regional targets as necessary not only to keep their jobs but also to secure promotions. This atmosphere of distrust intensified in August 2021 when China’s internet tsar prohibited any social media publications that could “distort” macroeconomic data. Such restrictions have silenced comments from leading economists in China, and several banks and research institutions have become reluctant to publish forecasts which fall below official figures. In some cases, economists have been told to refrain from critiquing official data.

The government’s attempts to suppress negative commentary may stem from concern over the long-term effect of stringent economic controls imposed during the Covid-19 years, which saw investor and consumer confidence decline to what was then an all-time low. This has had a perverse effect: in private conversations, jokes about GDP figures are more widespread than ever.

Publicly available, reliable, up-to-date data allows investors to monitor developments and manage their expectations. If fundamental statistics such as GDP, consumption index and unemployment rates lose their credibility, investors will be forced to prepare for the worst-case scenario. In 2023, China’s National Bureau of Statistics stopped publishing youth unemployment data after figures reached a record high for several consecutive months. The government later resumed the release but excluded students from the count, claiming that this offered a more accurate representation. 

In December 2023, China’s Ministry of State Security warned key commentators on social media to stop criticising the economy and spreading what it alleges to be disinformation. Last month, Zhu Hengpeng, a leading economist at a top government think-tank, reportedly disappeared after making disparaging remarks about the economy in a private WeChat group.

These troubling developments have intensified scepticism about China’s economic reality, creating what could be described as a Tacitus Trap. Named after the Roman historian, this theory posits that when public trust in government erodes, citizens will assume that all information released by government — regardless of its truth — may be false. Some netizens even joke that China owes its recent economic success to the National Bureau of Statistics, the Central Propaganda Department and the Internet Information Office.

This new status quo is neither sustainable nor conducive to long-term growth, as information distortions create a feedback loop which undermines development. One misleading figure may need to be followed by others to preserve the narrative, setting the scene for a self-perpetuating cycle of misinformation.

China has experienced remarkable growth since its accession to the WTO in 2001. Transparency, the rule of law, and objective economic analysis have all been instrumental in enabling the business community to make informed decisions. Given the current size of its economy, a GDP growth rate which falls short of the 5 per cent target should no longer be considered taboo. While some adjustments to economic figures are understandable, excessive exaggeration should not be supported. Open and critical analysis by experts should not only be permitted but encouraged in order to support sustainable economic development.

UK aerospace and engineering group in early talks over commercial opportunities for planned technology

Rolls-Royce is in early-stage talks with potential commercial customers for its planned micro nuclear reactor, a technology it hopes will also provide power for space missions. 

Jake Thompson, director of novel nuclear and special projects at Rolls-Royce, said the company was exploring opportunities to deploy the reactor “across data centres, mining and remote communities”. 

Better known for its civil aircraft engines and for building the reactors that have propelled Royal Navy submarines for the past six decades, Rolls-Royce wants to capitalise on its nuclear expertise.

With global interest in small reactors growing quickly, the company believes there is a business case for micro reactors for both terrestrial and space applications. 

“Energy demands are set to increase rapidly — essentially the world will need everything that we can bring to bear,” said Thompson, who has been a nuclear engineer at the company for 18 years.

Compared with small modular reactors (SMRs) which are seeing demand from technology groups such as Google to deliver low-carbon electricity for data centres, micro nuclear reactors use different technologies and have a much smaller power output. Their compact size also makes them transportable.

For Rolls-Royce, the business is separate from the unit which is looking to build a fleet of SMRs, including in the UK. 

Rolls-Royce began work on the technology for a micro reactor three and a half years ago, joining forces with the UK Space Agency in 2021 to study how nuclear power could be used as part of space exploration.

The focus at Rolls-Royce, said Thompson, has been on how to make a reactor that is “really small, small enough so you could load it on to a rocket and send it into space”. 

Nuclear power is seen as an “essential enabler” in space exploration, said Thompson. “People want to do more things, have more things in space. All of that requires more energy. On the dark side of the moon, you can’t generate that energy through solar power.”

The space agency has invested £9.46mn in grant funding to date towards the demonstration of a lunar modular nuclear reactor, matched by funding from Rolls-Royce. 

The company said it will have a deployable reactor by the “early 2030s”. A big prize would be a contract with Nasa, whose Artemis programme aims to establish a human presence on the lunar surface by 2031.

“We believe once governments and the Artemis missions have re-established human presence on the moon, commercial services will follow that,” said Thompson, adding that “every operation on the moon will require power”. 

Nuclear power in space is not a new idea. The US spent considerable effort in the 1960s on an experimental reactor, Snap-10A, which was sent into orbit. It stopped working after 43 days but remains in polar orbit. Radioactive batteries have also powered numerous vehicles, including the Voyager spacecraft. 

The bet today by governments and companies is that advances in technology can offer something more powerful. Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, announced earlier this year it would build a lunar reactor with the China National Space Administration by 2035 to power a joint base on the moon. 

Rolls-Royce, as part of a separate initiative with the UK Space Agency, is also working with BWX Technologies of the US to look at different nuclear applications in space.

Other companies vying for a role in the burgeoning market include Lockheed Martin and Westinghouse. Both companies were selected by Nasa two years ago to develop design concepts for a reactor for use on the moon. 

At Rolls-Royce’s site in Bristol, the programme’s 100-strong team has been working on the concept development phase of the reactor, as well as on the manufacturing and testing of prototype components. 

Unlike conventional pressurised water reactors that are often used in large nuclear power plants and which Rolls-Royce plans to deploy for its SMR initiative, the micro reactor is a “high-temperature gas-cooled reactor”. In this design, gas instead of water is used as a coolant, allowing for much higher temperatures. 

The hot gas is then used to drive turbines that generate electricity. The company recently successfully tested an electrically-heated version of the process to demonstrate the hot gas driving a turbine to generate electricity. There is “not another facility in the world doing that kind of testing right now,” said Thompson. 

The reactor uses highly enriched uranium fuel. Made up of very small spheres of uranium, these are coated in protective layers of carbon and graphite to create “really strong and high-temperature resistant individual fuel particles,” said Thompson. 

One reactor core is expected to last about 10 years. On Earth, Rolls-Royce could re-fuel the reactor but is unlikely to do so in space. Thompson said it would work closely with the UK government on safe storage and disposal routes. 

The two variants will differ in size and power output. The terrestrial variant, with a power output of between 5MW-20MW, is expected to fit into a shipping container that could be deployed to remote industrial locations or military installations where access to fossil fuels or reliable renewable power is limited. 

The space reactor needs to be lightweight and just as durable. Nasa’s requirement is for a reactor to weigh 6,000kg or less. The concept is about the size of a family car and would produce “hundreds of kilowatts,” said Thompson. 

The company is mindful of the potential dangers. Thompson said the reactor would be designed so that it would only turn on when it gets to the lunar surface. During transit on the rocket the nuclear fuel inside would be inert.

Stephen Thomas, emeritus professor of energy policy at the University of Greenwich, points out that while there is a “lot of ambitious talk about new nuclear designs . . . most of the applications have been talked about for 50 years, [from] ships to aircraft and now space stations”.

Commercial applications for remote sites, added Thompson, were “very limited . . . and whether micro reactors are the best way to meet the demands are very far from clear for me”.

Nick Cunningham, analyst at Agency Partners, is similarly not convinced of the use of micro reactors for isolated communities, but believes there are opportunities in space, albeit a “bit of a niche market”. 

There are “two good uses for reactors — submarines and spacecraft,” he said. “They cannot be replaced for submarines . . . and they are really good for deep space probes and perhaps lunar stations if they are not in direct sunlight.”

Mike Lynch and Christopher Morvillo spent 12 years together fighting a legal battle over two continents. Their victory celebration ended in tragedy.

For Mike Lynch, June 6 was a day more than a decade in the making.

Standing in a courtroom in San Francisco, the British software mogul had just been found not guilty of defrauding Hewlett-Packard in the sale of his software company, Autonomy. It was a case that, for more than a year, had kept him shuffling around a townhouse wearing an ankle bracelet in a city 5,300 miles from home.

Nearby, Christopher J. Morvillo, the veteran corporate lawyer who helped lead Mr. Lynch’s legal team, also felt a huge wave of relief.

The two men had been joined at the hip for years to rebut HP’s accusations in the United States and Britain. One legal expert compared the proceedings in San Francisco to Enron’s in complexity, given the thousands of documents and accounting maneuvers at issue. An acquittal had seemed unlikely a year ago.

After leaving the courtroom, Mr. Lynch cut off his ankle bracelet. Mr. Morvillo turned to LinkedIn, writing his first-ever post to thank his colleagues and express his relief.

“And they all lived happily ever after ….” he wrote.

That happy ending didn’t last long.

Less than three months later, Mr. Lynch and Mr. Morvillo, both 59, died aboard the tech magnate’s family yacht, the Bayesian, when it foundered off the coast of Sicily. Five others died as well: Mr. Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter, Hannah; Mr. Morvillo’s wife, Neda; Jonathan Bloomer, a prominent British insurance executive; Mr. Bloomer’s wife, Judy; and Recaldo Thomas, the ship’s cook.

And in a bizarre coincidence, Stephen Chamberlain, a financial executive at Autonomy who was Mr. Lynch’s co-defendant in San Francisco, was fatally struck in a hit-and-run in England days before.

Why the ship sank remains under investigation by Italian and British authorities. Numerous interviews with friends and associates, as well as public records, revealed what the men went through during their 12-year legal fight, and what they had planned after it ended.

An Adviser to the Prime Minister

Until recently, most Americans would probably not have recognized Mr. Lynch as a tech mogul. But in Britain, he had once been seen as a homegrown Bill Gates.

In 1996, Mr. Lynch founded Autonomy, a software company that analyzed messy reams of data like emails and online video for patterns that could help clients unearth hidden insights. By 2011, Autonomy had become one of Britain’s biggest international tech companies, establishing its base in Cambridge, England, as a start-up hub.

That raised Mr. Lynch’s profile as well, earning him royal honors; an adviser role to the prime minister at the time, David Cameron; and a seat on the board of the BBC.

His success was cemented when he sold Autonomy to HP for $11.1 billion in 2011, earning him hundreds of millions. But amid a revolt by HP shareholders and analysts about the size and wisdom of the deal, the tech giant took an $8.8 billion write-down the next year, a move that led some to declare the deal among the worst in corporate history, and accused Mr. Lynch of illegally hiding the true shape of Autonomy by inflating its sales.

It was then that Mr. Morvillo took notice of Autonomy’s problems.

The conflict seemed like a promising opportunity for the white-collar defense lawyer in the New York office of Clifford Chance, a huge international firm. Mr. Morvillo sent a note to a partner in Britain just before Thanksgiving in 2012. Was there an opening to represent either HP or Autonomy?

Fifteen minutes later, his colleague wrote back: When could he fly to London?

Mr. Morvillo flew over a few days later for what he thought was going to be a week’s work. He ended up spending years commuting between New York and London.

“It’s covered one-third of my career,” Mr. Morvillo said on the legal podcast “For the Defense With David Oscar Markus” in an episode that was published a week before the Bayesian sank. “It has been a constant presence in my life for the last 12 years.”

Mr. Lynch and Mr. Morvillo were a study in contrasts. The British executive was cool but intense, and known for a hard-charging leadership style that federal prosecutors later tried to make hay of. But the American lawyer was known for being a calm presence, largely eschewing over-the-top displays.

“He had a judgment and a steadiness that you need when you’re in a 12-year marathon,” Gary Lincenberg, who represented Mr. Chamberlain, said of Mr. Morvillo.

As the scope of HP’s allegations — that Autonomy executives had manipulated earnings, overstating revenue by backdating contracts and disguising low-margin hardware sales as higher-margin software ones — took shape, Mr. Lynch, Mr. Morvillo and an army of lawyers assembled a defense: Mr. Lynch had done nothing wrong, and HP was to blame for Autonomy’s woes.

A mathematician by training, Mr. Lynch often asked his legal team what the odds were for success. The next several years provided a disheartening picture.

In 2016, American prosecutors accused Sushovan Hussain, Autonomy’s chief financial officer, of fraud. Mr. Lynch and Mr. Chamberlain were hit with similar charges in 2018. The former Autonomy chief also faced civil fraud claims in London by a successor company to HP.

Mr. Hussain was convicted and sentenced to nearly six years in prison. The judge overseeing Mr. Lynch’s British trial found him liable.

The same day that Mr. Lynch lost his civil battle, the British government approved his extradition to the United States to stand trial on criminal charges.

Mr. Morvillo kept on the move, jetting to San Francisco to observe the Hussain trial and to London for Mr. Lynch’s civil trial. By one colleague’s estimate, he had made up to 100 flights over the years.

Once Mr. Lynch arrived in San Francisco in May 2023, he faced another surprise. The presiding judge ordered that he be placed under house arrest given his potential flight risk, as well as round-the-clock security on his dime. (The British entrepreneur later jokingly referred to the guards as his roommates.)

But Mr. Lynch stayed busy. His mornings were spent checking on his venture capital firm and on researchers in Cambridge, whose work on artificial intelligence and hearing loss he was funding. Then he turned to his legal defense, peppering Mr. Morvillo with questions.

For Mr. Morvillo, that meant a move to San Francisco, where he called a downtown hotel home for four months, away from his wife, Neda; his dog; and two grown children.

“Neda and Chris lived their lives as devoted, loving parents who always put their daughters and families first,” the Morvillo family said in a statement. “Their passing is a tremendous loss for our family and for the countless people who knew and loved them both.

The Defense Takes a Risk

Heading into court, his legal team worried that Mr. Lynch was likely to serve life in prison.

The trial was long and dry, with 42 witnesses who were asked about what could sometimes be thousands of pages of documents. Jurors fell asleep. Every Thursday night, the Lynch legal team regrouped at dinner, over bottles of Sea Smoke Cellars pinot wine, Mr. Morvillo’s preference.

Mr. Lynch and his lawyers increasingly believed that jurors might find the Autonomy chief hard-driving — but in a way similar to other visionary tech giants like Elon Musk or Bill Gates.

The team decided to take a risk: Mr. Lynch would take the stand as the last witness. Questioning him for the defense was Mr. Morvillo, who by now had a feel for how to direct his client in testimony. They spoke affably in front of the jury, including by comparing the discovery of Autonomy’s troubles to taking a microscope to a spotless kitchen.

“I think his testimony was pivotal at the end of the day and probably is what won the day for us,” Mr. Morvillo told the “For the Record” podcast.

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Waiting for the verdict was excruciating. In the courtroom on June 6, Mr. Lynch kissed his wife, Angela Bacares, on the forehead before sitting down next to his lawyers. Mr. Morvillo told him to take things one day at a time.

Minutes later, the jury began to deliver the first of 15 “not guilty” verdicts.

That night, Mr. Lynch hosted a party for his legal team and his co-defendant, Mr. Chamberlain, at The Third Floor restaurant at the Jay Hotel in downtown San Francisco. In an emotional toast, Mr. Morvillo said that working the trial had been one of the legal team’s life missions.

In his LinkedIn post, Mr. Morvillo thanked his wife and daughters for their support, adding, “I am so glad to be home.”

Mr. Lynch flew back to Britain with big dreams. He wanted to refocus on investing and advocating Britain’s technology industry.

Another priority was figuring out how to revamp an extradition treaty that he believed had unfairly sent him to the United States in chains. The day of his acquittal, he texted David Davis, a prominent British lawmaker who had protested the extradition.

Back home — over what Mr. Davis described as a “moderately alcoholic lunch” at Wiltons, a high-end restaurant in West London — the two men discussed Mr. Lynch’s increased compassion for the wrongfully convicted, spurred by his own legal battles.

Mr. Lynch still had other legal business. He was waiting to hear how much he had to pay in damages in the British civil fraud case brought by Hewlett Packard Enterprise, a successor to HP, which said he owed up to $4 billion. (Hewlett Packard Enterprise said last month that it was still pursuing damages against Mr. Lynch’s estate.)

But first and foremost, Mr. Lynch wanted to do … nothing.

He returned to Loudham Hall, his sprawling 16th-century estate in Suffolk, England, where he raised Red Poll cattle and other livestock, and held a garden party for friends to celebrate.

A Final Voyage

And then there was the Bayesian, the 184-foot superyacht that his family owned. Mr. Lynch had looked forward to cruising on the vessel — named after a theorem for statistical analysis — as a way to unplug and celebrate. Within weeks of acquittal, he asked his legal team to accompany him for several planned voyages.

Mr. Morvillo and his wife joined Mr. Lynch on the yacht in Italy — with plans to fly to Greece afterward to meet their daughters, the Morvillo family said in a statement.

Afterward, the statement added, Mr. Morvillo intended to continue working “because he recognized that he had reached a new level in his career and knew, deservedly so, he would be highly sought after.”

During the voyage, the yacht sliced through the waters off the Italian coastline, from Amalfi to the Eolian Sea, before ending up off Sicily. By Aug. 17, the trip was near its end: Mr. Lynch was preparing to return to London, where he was set to have a second lunch with Mr. Davis, the British lawmaker.

But bad news broke on Aug. 18: Mr. Chamberlain had been fatally hit by a car back home in England. Devastated, Mr. Morvillo messaged the Lynch team, telling one colleague to kiss his wife and children.

The next day, the Bayesian sank, and both Mr. Lynch and Mr. Morvillo were dead.

JiYue, a Chinese EV brand focused on delivering all-electric “robocars” to the masses, has unveiled its latest model, and it’s quite a deviation from its previous EVs—but in the best way. Earlier today, JiYue launched the ROBO X supercar, designed for high-speed racing. By high speed, we mean 0-100 km/h acceleration in under 1.9 seconds. My mouth is watering.

JiYue has only existed since 2021, when parent tech company Baidu announced it was expanding from software development into physical EV production, joining forces with multinational automotive manufacturer Geely.

The new “robotic EV” marque initially launched as JIDU with $300 million in startup capital before garnering an additional $400 million in Series A funding, led by Baidu, in January 2022.

In August 2023, Geely took on a larger role in JIDU alongside a greater financial stake as the brand reimagined itself as JiYue, inheriting the JIDU logo and its flagship model, the 01 ROBOCAR.

In December 2023, Baidu and Geely unveiled a second model called the JiYue 07. It was born from JIDU’s ROBO-02 concept, which debuted in 2023 and was designed to compete against the Tesla Model 3 in China.

The 07 finally launched in China earlier this year with 545 miles of range. With an all-electric SUV and sedan on the market, JiYue has unveiled an exciting new entry in the form of a performance supercar called the ROBO X. Check it out:

JiYue’s new ROBO X EV is available for pre-order now

JiYue showcased its new ROBO X hypercar in front of the crowd at the 2024 Guangzhou Auto Show earlier today. Similar to previous models but with a unique spin, JiYue described the ROBO X as an AI smart-driving supercar that, for the first time, blends artificial intelligence and autonomous driving into a high-performance, race-ready EV.

When we say “high performance,” we mean a quad motor liquid-cooled drive system that can propel the ROBO X from 0 to 100 km/h (0 to 62 mph) in under 1.9 seconds. JiYue called the new ROBO X a “performance beast” with “the perfect balance of excellent aerodynamic performance and high downforce.” JiYue CEO Joe Xia was even bolder in his statements about the ROBO X:

For the next 20 years, the design of supercars will bear the shadow of Robo X. This is the best design in the history of Chinese automobiles today, and it is a landmark presence.

Fighter-style airflow ducts bolster the EV’s aerodynamics, efficiency, and overall posture. Per JiYue, the two-seater ROBO X is expected to deliver a maximum range of over 650 km (404 miles).

The new supercar features falcon-wing doors, a carbon fiber integrated frame, and a professional racing HALO safety system offering 360° of support. The interior features an AI smart cockpit with SIMO real-time feedback to give drivers an immersive racing experience.

Furthermore, JiYue said the vehicle will utilize parent company Baidu’s Apollo self-driving technology, which could make it the first electric supercar to apply pure-vision ADAS technology that enables track-level autonomous driving.

Following today’s unveiling of the ROBO X, JiYue has officially opened up pre-orders in China for RMB 49,999 ($6,915). That said, reservation holders will need to be patient as JiYue shared that it doesn’t expect to begin mass production of the ROBO X until 2027.

What do you think? Will people be talking about the ROBO X for the next 20 years?