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The youngest of the Kardashian-Jenner clan is expanding her empire with the launch of a new clothing line.

BAREFOOT AND WRAPPED in a robe in a hushed Paris hotel suite, 26-year-old entrepreneur and reality star Kylie Jenner is seated at her altar: a vanity. Her longtime hair and makeup artists—who are also her confidantes—hover around her like discreet, black-garbed hummingbirds, making imperceptible tweaks to her long dark hair and flawless skin. They chime in occasionally, telling me where they ate dinner the night before (pan-Asian restaurant Diep), and where Jenner would like to travel next (Iceland). It’s several hours before she has to be at the Acne fashion show, but for Jenner, getting ready is half, if not the whole, point. While we talk, she peers at her own reflection in the mirror.

Observing a member of the Kardashian-Jenner clan “do glam” is like watching Lindsey Vonn ski or Yo-Yo Ma play the cello. As it did for momager and snatched, the stratospherically famous family popularized glam as both a verb and a noun on its reality shows, first on E!, now Hulu, over 24 total seasons. For matriarch Kris Jenner, her three daughters with the late Robert Kardashian, Kourtney, Kim and Khloé, and her two daughters with ex Caitlin Jenner, Kendall and Kylie (there’s also Robert’s son, Rob), glam means getting your hair and makeup done. But it’s bigger than that: Do glam, be glam, and you’re ready to conquer the world. No one has profited more from the concept of glam than Kylie Jenner, the youngest of the siblings and the creator of a cosmetics empire that has been valued at over $1 billion.

For a makeup mogul, Jenner looks surprisingly bewitching without makeup. And she tells me that look is not as rare as one would think. “I love bare skin and no makeup,” she says. “People think the opposite of me sometimes.”

That misconception might be due to both Jenner’s public persona—vampy, fashion-forward, all lips and hair and curves—as well as her business portfolio. She launched Kylie Lip Kits, later renamed Kylie Cosmetics, in 2015, based around the idea of matching liquid lipstick-and-pencil duos that she couldn’t find on the market. Lip pencil and, she later admitted, lip filler, were ways she augmented her naturally thin lips. She sold a 51 percent stake for $600 million to beauty conglomerate Coty in 2019.

Jenner’s business bona fides and net worth were called into question after she appeared on a Forbes cover in 2018 that said she was “set to be the youngest-ever self-made billionaire.” Critics balked: self-made? The following year, the magazine published an article saying she had reached that milestone, then revoked the title the year after.

Jenner, for her part, says that she has not “inherited a dime” but understands why people responded so strongly. “I had such leverage to start with, coming from this famous family and having such a head start,” she says.

Within a dynasty that has built an enormous fortune based on influence, its youngest member might be the most influential of them all. Jenner is digitally native and naturally experimental—her roughly 400 million Instagram followers outnumber the population of the United States. But TikTok, where she has over 54 million followers, is where she really sizzles, sharing videos of her children, Stormi, 5, and Aire, 1, her morning routine in her palatial bathroom, marches on the treadmill in Alo sets, hangouts in her Lamborghini.

Jenner’s rapt audience has shown that it will buy her $35 lip kits, her $27 concealer, her $34 Kylie Baby hair-care set and her $125 Kylie Skin skin-care set. “The earned media value on the audience she’s built and the media coverage that she receives is actually priceless,” says Mae Karwowski, the founder and CEO of New York influencer marketing firm Obviously.

“The Kardashians are touching every industry,” says Karwowski.

Indeed, the family businesses sprawl from Kendall’s tequila brand, 818; to Kim’s shapewear brand, Skims, skin-care line, Skkn by Kim and investment firm, Skky Partners; to Kris’s household-products line, Safely; to Khloé’s inclusive clothing line, Good American. Jenner has a mass-market clothing line with her sister, Kendall & Kylie, that is produced under a license and is sold everywhere from Walmart to PacSun. “Their audience comes and follows and spends money and mints them another really successful business,” Karwowski adds.

So for Jenner, why stop there? This fall, she launches Khy, a fashion line in partnership with co-founders Kris Jenner and Popular Culture’s Emma and Jens Grede, a married couple who are also involved in the multibillion-dollar juggernauts Skims and Good American. Khy—a play on a nickname of Jenner’s—will feature different guest designers and concepts throughout the year. The brand aims to produce investment pieces at an affordable price point. “The whole line is really inspired by my personal wardrobe, and the different moods that I’m in,” Jenner says.

The first drop offers black faux-leather pieces and nylon-and-elastane “base layers,” created in collaboration with the design duo Nan Li and Emilia Pfohl of Namilia, an edgy Berlin brand with a borderline-pornographic sense of humor. Namilia’s offerings include a “micro dick spike bag” and a “porn star” bra top.

Nothing in Khy’s first release costs over $200. The faux-leather pieces, including a voluminous trench and skintight dresses, feel very Mad Max meets 1980s Thierry Mugler. It’s the wardrobe of a biker babe during the apocalypse—who happens to have internet access and a Pilates-toned body.

Emma Grede, an East London native who has appeared as a guest judge on Shark Tank, has been involved in the details leading up to the launch, even pricing items herself. She and her husband could be seen as the Kardashian-Jenners’ strategic secret weapons; they see the work as collaborative. She lives five minutes away from Jenner, and the two meet in person constantly about the line.

The Khy office is on a “campus” in Los Angeles with other Popular Culture brands, including Good American, Skims and Frame, the denim line Jens co-founded. Khy has about 25 employees, including an in-house design team that works alongside the brand’s guest designers. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the Kardashian-Jenners and the Gredes are trying to build an accessible, social media–fueled fashion conglomerate—a Los Angeles LVMH.

AT THE CENTER of Khy is Jenner herself, who is a study in contradictions. She’s a preternaturally poised mother of two who loves lip-syncing and doing girlish dances on TikTok. She’s a global force in business who is also the ultimate mommy’s girl; she once told James Corden that in addition to being in the delivery room with Stormi, Kris “fully took my baby out of the vagina.” She has an outsize, sexy and sometimes brazen social media presence but is soft-spoken and reserved in person.

In an episode from the current season of The Kardashians, Kim and Kylie, two ultra-successful businesswomen, are filmed playing a patty-cake game like little girls. Cut to Kim’s testimonial about her sister: “She’s definitely obviously matured so much, having babies and growing up, but I haven’t seen the silly Kylie in a while. She’s back to Tumblr Kylie.”

When Jenner was in her teens, she was a devotee of the image-sharing site Tumblr. Like any young woman, she was figuring out who she was, posting photos of cute pets, close-ups of shapely buttocks and lots of Rihanna looks. Her fans came to know her as King Kylie in her Tumblr days, a moniker she still uses. She describes the first Khy drop as very “King Kylie—who I am at my core.”

Fashion and self-expression have always been Jenner’s comfort zone. “Creatively I have such a strong vision of what I want to look like and what I want to do and what I want to wear. There’s really no one telling me what to do,” she says. Jenner works with sister-stylists Alexandra and Mackenzie Grandquist, but she is highly involved, noting that she mood-boards and scours vintage sites for her looks.

Her mother says Jenner “has actually been the creative director of her life and her wardrobe since she was able to walk.” The momager explains how Kylie’s room when she was little would look like a tornado had blown through in the mornings, with “boa feathers and somebody else’s high heels, one of her sister’s this or that.” On weekends she would entertain her older siblings and parents by perching on the edge of the pool table, singing Shakira songs in wild getups.

“We love fashion as a family, and we love all the different brands,” says Kris, remembering that she liked putting her children in matching Burberry outfits or Adidas tracksuits when they were young. One Christmas, little Kylie and Kendall received tiny Prada bags. Kylie, just a toddler, carried hers everywhere.

Today, that interest in luxury brands isn’t just a passion for Jenner. It’s also burnishing her reputation as a discerning fashion plate with an ability to stoke publicity—and sales—for brands that is rivaled perhaps only by her sister Kim’s.

The European shows are also an opportunity for the family to observe the inner workings of extremely established fashion houses. Kris, who attended the Balenciaga, Victoria Beckham, Valentino and Loewe shows this fall, says that during fashion week she had a chance to pick the brains of creatives and executives like Jonathan Anderson of Loewe as well as Sidney Toledano, the chairman and CEO of LVMH Fashion Group.

Jenner’s couture era ramped up in January of this year, when she attended the Schiaparelli couture show wearing one of the fresh-off-the-runway gigantesque lion’s-head pieces from Daniel Roseberry’s collection for the brand. The relatively niche, surrealist house went viral (spurred on further by the allegation that the animal heads glorified big-game hunting).

Jenner’s interest in luxury brands isn’t just a passion. It’s also burnishing her reputation as a discerning fashion plate with an ability to stoke publicity—and sales—for brands. Gucci dress, $4,800, Gucci.com, Skims bra, $34, and briefs, $18, Skims.com, Falke socks, $27, Falke.com, Church’s shoes, $1,120, Church-Footwear.com, and her own bracelet.

Jenner became an even more visible fashion-week presence this fall, appearing at shows in Milan and Paris from Prada to Schiaparelli. In 2023, she’s appeared in ads for Acne Studios, Jean Paul Gaultier and Dolce & Gabbana Eyewear—as well as, of course, Kylie Cosmetics.

She took her first Prada show this September very seriously, “deep-diving” into the brand’s runway history. She became fascinated by Miuccia Prada’s 1992 show, with its Brigitte Bardot–goes-minimalist vibe. Jenner made a whole board of “just the glam…. They had these smoky eyes and all these updos.” Inspired, she found a nude-colored minidress studded with uncanny fake flowers from the collection on a vintage site and wore it in Milan.

For this year’s Met Gala, Jenner asked Haider Ackermann, a somewhat under-the-radar, true fashion-person’s designer, to create her look. She had attended the French-Colombian designer’s couture show for Jean Paul Gaultier in January in Paris, developing an interest in his work. “Kylie’s obviously very aware of what she likes,” says Ackermann. “She’s very aware of her body and how she sees things, which is very intriguing.

“Our aesthetics are quite different,” admits Ackermann. “But to find something in between, it was just a way to honor our friendship to do this together. She is determined. She knows what she wants. She’s very confident in the choices. But so am I.”

The resulting look was a striking off-the-shoulder blue and red gown that landed her on many “best of the night” lists. Ackermann remembers catching her eye in the mirror and feeling touched by the moment.

Ackermann connects Jenner’s fishbowl existence to her obsession with beauty and fashion. “She grew up in the attention of the public eye from the age of 9,” he says. “And she’s always been very attracted to clothes, makeup, to everything that would make her world and imagination grow and be blown away. She’s always been seduced by it.”

Of course, there’s another young Haider Ackermann acolyte in the public eye: the 27-year-old actor Timothée Chalamet, who wore a red Ackermann halter top last year that changed the course of red-carpet menswear to something looser and more feminine. While Jenner is not ready to comment on their relationship, the pair has been photographed recently at a New York dinner for Ackermann’s collaboration with skin-care brand Augustinus Bader, making out at a Beyoncé concert as well as enjoying Honey Deuces and chicken fingers at the U.S. Open.

Jenner is a big fan of sci-fi and fantasy. In their teens, she and Kendall worked with ghostwriters on a young-adult sci-fi series about twin sisters. While she cringes slightly at the memory, she still loves genre narratives like Game of Thrones. She’s seen House of the Dragon a mind-boggling five times already. And Dune, the Denis Villeneuve sci-fi saga starring Zendaya and Chalamet? Jenner smiles. “I do love that movie.”

JENNER KNOWS her good angles (left side to camera), her perfect lighting (bright, head-on) and which fabrics and silhouettes look best on her. But while she’s savvy about how she’s portrayed, in her personal life, sometimes she falters. When her son was born in 2022, he was named Wolf Jacques. She changed it to Aire the following year.

“That was the hardest thing that I’ve ever done in my life,” she says. “I’m still like, ‘Did I make the right decision?’ ” She remembers, “The postpartum hit, and the hormones, and I couldn’t even make a decision or think straight. And it just destroyed me. I could not name him. And I was like, ‘I feel like a failure. I don’t have a name for my son.’ So it took me a while. And then the longer I waited, the harder it was to name him.”

When asked how co-parenting with her ex, the rapper Travis Scott, is going, she responds, “It’s going…. I think we’re doing the best job that we can do.”

Being a mother, especially to a daughter, has transformed Jenner’s ideas around beauty standards. “My daughter has totally taught me a lot more about myself, and seeing myself in her has changed everything. I’ve had so much growth and am just embracing natural beauty,” she says. “I’m teaching her about mistakes that I made and making sure she knows she’s just perfect exactly how she is.”

Those mistakes, she says, include “surgery when I was younger. I’ve never touched my face, but just even getting my breasts done when I was 19 and getting pregnant soon after, not obviously planning to be pregnant at 19. And I was never insecure about myself. I actually was always super confident and loved my body. I was just having fun. I was influenced by amazing boobs and was like, that’s what I wanted to do, and had fun with it.”

Now, she realizes, “I probably just should have waited until I maybe had kids or let my body just develop.” She says that, for her, motherhood is about “teaching our kids to do better than us, be better versions of who we were.”

When Jenner is in Milan and Paris for fashion week, she ricochets between her cosseted glam bubble, cozy dinners out with her sister Kendall and extremely public moments when she attends events and fashion shows. Her fans can be intense, screaming her name and capturing her every move with camera phones. Bodyguards are nonnegotiable.

Kris says she’s reminded of the risk to her daughters when they try to do something simple like take a walk and are mobbed by fans. “I worry about the girls safety-wise,” she says. “It can be very overwhelming.”

Jenner does get scared sometimes by all the attention, but ultimately, she says, “I never get too stressed about these things because…fashion is supposed to be fun.” She reserves her anxiety for her kids’ health, she says, not the trappings of her glamorous job. After all, it’s not so serious: “We’re playing dress-up.”

She says she’s able to step away from the social media presence that propels her personal brand. She’s gone through periods, especially during her pregnancies, where she’s posted less. She’ll go away for the weekend and delete all her apps for a while.

“As I grow older, I protect a lot more,” she says. “I think when I was younger, oh, my God, I used to post everything. That’s where I gained these hard-core fans, too, that are like family now and have grown with me. And I think just over time I guess the internet just got a little scarier maybe. And then I had children really young, which changed everything really.”

After the whirl of Milan and Paris fashion weeks, with the multihour glam sessions and the screaming fans rushing toward her on the street, Jenner will retreat to the home she shares with Stormi and Aire. Her seven Italian greyhounds, who have their own “nanny,” live out back in a miniature version of her house that she built just for them.

As she prepares for the launch of Khy, Jenner is also working on another, smaller-scale project. When October began, she texted Kris that she was excited to decorate her house for Halloween. Her mother beamed widely as she read the text.

“That’s the secret sauce,” says mother of daughter. “Just always knowing when it’s time to go home.”

Banks have begun preparations to try to unload at least some of the $13 billion of debt they underwrote, at a steep discount

The banks that financed Elon Musk’s $44 billion purchase of Twitter are still struggling a year later to contain the damage to their balance sheets.

Seven banks including Morgan Stanley MS -0.20%decrease; red down pointing triangle, Bank of America BAC -0.39%decrease; red down pointing triangle and Barclays BCS -6.98%decrease; red down pointing triangle lent Musk around $13 billion to buy Twitter a year ago this coming Friday. Under normal circumstances, they would have unloaded the debt to Wall Street investment firms soon thereafter. But investor appetite for Twitter, which Musk has since renamed X, has cooled since the billionaire took over, forcing the banks to hold the debt on their own balance sheets at a discounted value.

The banks currently expect to take a hit of at least 15%, or roughly $2 billion, when they sell the debt, people familiar with the matter said. That would mean hundreds of millions in losses for those holding the largest pieces, which include Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Barclays and MUFG. BNP Paribas, Société Générale and Mizuho were also involved.

After holding the debt for a year—an eternity in the corporate-finance world—the banks, which had hoped they could sell it by Labor Day, have recently begun preparations to try to unload at least some of it, the people said.

First they must secure a rating from the likes of Moody’s and S&P, a quality seal investors such as mutual funds and loan managers typically require. If X receives a low credit rating, it would be hard for the banks to sell the debt to a broad investor base without taking an even bigger loss than what they are already anticipating.

Bankers close to the deal say that Musk’s capricious management and a weakening advertising market could point to a junk-bond rating, a designation reserved for companies at higher risk of defaulting. Musk himself said last year that X was near the brink of bankruptcy after he took over.

Twitter pre-Musk was rated junk, despite carrying significantly less debt than it does now. Given that X is no longer publicly traded, it doesn’t disclose its financials, though Musk has said the platform’s advertising revenues have plummeted since he bought it.

The company has slashed thousands of jobs and other costs under his ownership, partly to help support the hefty interest payments it must pay on the debt, and Chief Executive Linda Yaccarino has said she expects X will turn a profit next year.

Musk’s debt package included $6.5 billion in term loans, $6 billion split equally between secured and unsecured bonds and a $500 million revolving line of credit.

X’s unsold debt ranks among the largest and longest-held “hung” deals. Banks were in similar pickles in periods such as 2007-08, when investors lost confidence in the financial system during the financial crisis. They eventually managed to sell billions of debt backing major takeover deals as markets calmed down but were forced to swallow big losses.

The X deal should have been a fee bonanza for the banks, who stood to earn tens of millions of dollars on the debt. Instead, their inability to resell it has been an albatross on their lending businesses and prompted questions from their own investors.

Banks limit how much risk they take on at any given time, so holding X’s debt has taken up loan-book capacity that their deal makers would prefer to allocate elsewhere.

Big hung deals don’t sit well with regulators, who have been making more diligent checks on banks’ financial footing following the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and others earlier this year. The longer the banks hold X’s debt, the greater the scrutiny is likely to be from regulators, who penalize lenders for having direct credit exposure to junk-rated companies.

Rising interest rates weigh on the sector, including iShares clean-energy ETF

Clean-energy stocks have fallen out of favor, with pressures created by rising interest rates outweighing supportive government policies.

The iShares Global Clean Energy ETF reached its lowest level since July 2020 this week. The exchange-traded fund invests in renewable-energy companies and utilities in line with a benchmark compiled by S&P Dow Jones Indices, including First Solar FSLR 3.03%increase; green up pointing triangle and Plug Power PLUG 7.14%increase; green up pointing triangle. It has plunged 32% this year.

Some stocks have fallen even harder. U.S.-listed Enphase Energy has shed 64% in 2023, while competitor SolarEdge Technologies has sunk more than 70%. Excluding stocks that have been ejected from the S&P 500, SolarEdge ranks as the index’s worst performer this year.

Supply-chain problems and waning demand have added to the challenges created by higher borrowing costs. The result: a stock-market selloff despite commitments by the U.S. and other large economies to foster sustainable power generation.

“The policy backdrop is very supportive. But there are headwinds. Clean tech is a very interest-rate-sensitive sector,” said Simon Webber, a global equities portfolio manager at Schroders.

He said the industry’s long-term prospects were still good. “I think this is a low point in the cycle,” Webber added.

The Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 allocates close to $400 billion to clean-energy development through direct funding and tax credits. This program has attracted more than $120 billion in project proposals, according to ING.

Meanwhile, the European Union is also endeavoring to build up its ability to generate homegrown energy and reduce its dependence on natural-gas imports—the EU learned a tough lesson from disrupted Russian supplies following the Ukraine invasion. The bloc’s lawmakers passed a bill last month that boosted its renewable-energy target for 2030.

The clean-energy sector broadly falls into two categories: companies that make or deploy capital-intensive infrastructure, such as wind turbines or solar panels, and those that are developing new technology. Both groups come under pressure from higher rates.

The Federal Reserve has lifted its key interest rate to a 22-year high. In turn, market-based interest rates such as government bond yields—which help set borrowing costs across the economy—have surged. The 10-year Treasury yield hit 5% Monday.

Renewables projects typically need a lot of upfront funding to buy equipment such as solar panels and wind turbines, which is then repaid over time by electricity sales. As much as 80% of such projects are financed by debt, according to a 2020 U.S. government report. Pricier loans eat into projects’ expected returns, making it less attractive to embark on new developments.

Rising rates also hurt riskier investments such as nascent clean-energy technologies. Current interest rates are used by bankers and investors in calculating what future cash flows should be worth today. For more speculative investments, whose value is based largely on far-off future cash flows, higher rates result in a lower valuation.

While tech stocks have felt this pressure for a while, excitement over artificial intelligence has shielded some companies, said Shaniel Ramjee, a multiasset fund manager at Pictet Asset Management. “There isn’t much overlap between AI and clean tech, though,” he added.

Other problems are further spooking investors.

Munich-based Siemens Energy scrapped its profit outlook in June after its wind unit said turbine components were failing more often, while executives at Danish wind-turbine manufacturer Vestas Wind Systems have warned of persistent supply-chain disruptions that will last through the rest of this year.

Some makers of home solar equipment are struggling with softening demand and say that installers have built up high backlogs of inventories, resulting in lower orders.

Many buyers of solar panels for houses finance them using loans, making these purchasers also sensitive to higher interest rates.

SolarEdge, which makes inverters for converting current generated by solar panels, slashed its revenue forecasts last week. The move sparked a record 27% collapse in its shares and prompted a string of price-target cuts and ratings downgrades from analysts at banks such as Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank.

Some fund managers expect the turbulence to be short-lived, and see this as a good time to buy.

“Nothing has changed in the long-term picture. So this might be an interesting opportunity, now that valuations have really come down,” said Caroline Simmons, chief investment officer at UBS Global Wealth Management in the U.K.

In the shorter term, however, she has a different strategy. This year, Simmons said, the portfolios she manages have loaded up on oil stocks to benefit from rising crude prices.

Akio Toyoda’s comments come amid cooling U.S. demand and a price war with China

TOKYO—Toyota TM 0.18%increase; green up pointing triangle Motor Chairman Akio Toyoda, asked about electric-vehicle challenges including a recent lull in U.S. demand, said the industry was coming to recognize that there isn’t a single answer to reducing carbon emissions.

“People are finally seeing reality,” Toyoda said Wednesday, speaking in his capacity as the head of the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association.

Toyoda, who stepped down this year as Toyota chief executive after nearly 14 years on the job, has long said the auto industry should hedge its bets by continuing to invest in hybrid gasoline-electric cars and other options beyond just electric vehicles.

As EV sales momentum lags behind in the U.S., he may be enjoying an “I told you so” moment.

“There are many ways to climb the mountain that is achieving carbon neutrality,” Toyoda told a small group of reporters at the Japan Mobility Show, formerly the Tokyo Motor Show, which is opening this week for the first time in four years.

Japanese automakers, most prominently Toyota, have been more vocal than their Western peers about the challenges EVs face in the near term, including high costs, resource crunches and limited charging infrastructure.

In China, the world’s largest car market by vehicle sales, Western and Japanese companies face a host of local challengers and an EV price war.

While the early stages of the EV revolution shake out, Toyota and others have been leaning on hybrid vehicles as a bridging technology and studying the operations of front-runners including Tesla and China’s BYD. Toyota’s current CEO, Koji Sato, has said the carmaker will accelerate development of parts and manufacturing methods optimized for EVs.

At the Tokyo event, Japanese automakers showcased an array of concept EVs, many of which aren’t due in showrooms until the latter half of the decade.

Toyota displayed two EV concept cars due for release after 2026, as well as an electric pickup truck and a version of its Land Cruiser expected to launch within the next few years. Honda Motor’s joint venture with Sony showed off a prototype of its Afeela EV due to be delivered in 2026.

The handful of foreign automakers at the show—including BYD, Mercedes-Benz and BMW—all showed electric models that consumers can buy today, at least in some countries.

With their slower rollouts, Japanese brands await judgment on whether they failed to catch the wave in time or correctly read the general population’s readiness to make the EV shift.

One favorable sign for Toyota: Its head of sales in North America said recently the market for hybrids is “smoking hot” and the company is trying to make as many of the vehicles as possible. Last month, Toyota had a little more than a week’s worth of Prius hybrids in stock, compared with more than two months’ supply of its electric SUV, the bZ4X.

“I have continued to say what I see as reality,” said Toyoda. Someone needs to convey to the industry what will make car buyers most happy, he said, and “if regulations are created based on ideals, it is regular users who are the ones who suffer.”

EV sales rose 49% globally in the first half of this year, down from the previous year’s 63% growth, according to market-research firm Canalys. Of all EVs, 55% were sold in China, where foreign automakers are increasingly being wedged out by local manufacturers.

In the U.S., some dealers say the first wave of buyers willing to try an EV has passed and remaining buyers are deterred by high sticker prices and the limited range of many EV models.

GM said last week it was delaying the opening of an electric pickup truck factory in Michigan, citing “evolving EV demand.” A few days before that, The Wall Street Journal reported that Ford Motor was considering cutting a work shift at the plant where it builds its electric F-150 Lightning pickup as demand for the truck falters.

Toyoda said the concept vehicles at the Japan show were the product of Japanese automakers taking time to work with battery makers and think about what is possible in EVs. He said the Japanese industry’s strength in the EV era will come from practical car making “over a long period of time and from experiences of failure.”

German luxury-car maker says country’s auto industry will ‘fight’ a tariff war

German carmakers will “fight” any potential tariff war between Brussels and Beijing, according to the chief financial officer of Porsche, one of the handful of European brands that does not manufacture cars in China.

Tensions have been rising between Beijing and Brussels after the EU last month announced an anti-subsidy probe into Chinese electric vehicles, warning that Europe was about to be “flooded” by artificially cheap cars.

“As a strong German automotive community, we want to fight and will fight against [any new tariffs],” said Porsche’s chief financial officer Lutz Meschke on Tuesday. He said the EU’s move was “not very helpful” for the bloc overall, but especially not for Germany, which relies heavily on exports to China.

German carmakers make a large chunk of sales and profits in the country, with Chinese sales accounting for a third of BMW’s total car sales last year, and almost 40 per cent for Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen.

The EU’s decision to launch an investigation was widely seen as a win for France, as carmakers such as Stellantis and Renault have a far smaller presence in China than German rivals.

Premium brands such as Porsche are relatively rare exporters of cars to China. Most foreign carmakers, including parent company Volkswagen’s eponymous brand, have shifted to producing the majority of vehicles sold in China locally.

Porsche, which makes roughly a third of its sales in China, said the number of delivered cars in the country was down 12 per cent in the first nine months of the year, compared to the same period in 2022, as recovery in the world’s largest market for cars lagged.

Meschke said executives had visited the country last week to discuss strategies with dealers, explaining that a renewed focus on “pricing rather than volumes” had been well received by vendors of the luxury car.

The company’s blueprint for China included associating it with the “transition to electrification” with investments in exclusive charging hubs and community centres for Porsche owners in big cities.

Porsche on Tuesday said revenues rose 13 per cent to €30.1bn in the first nine months of the year, while group operating profit grew 9 per cent to €5.5bn. The Stuttgart-based company is preparing to launch four new models next year, including an electric Macan.

So far, Apple has pitched its upcoming Vision Pro mixed-reality headset as a tool for working and enjoying various forms of entertainment. But inside the company, employees have also discussed another, more specialized use of the product as a way to diagnose and treat mental health issues, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter.

Such features would tap the device’s array of cameras and sensors to measure a person’s facial expressions, using them to detect depression, anxiety, stress or post-traumatic stress disorder, the people said. The Vision Pro could display images and sounds that might improve the wearer’s emotions, one of the people said. Various rules restrict companies from marketing medical functions in their devices without an OK from regulators. Over time, Apple has received clearance from regulators for health features in the Apple Watch—such as the ability to detect an irregular heart rhythm—which has broadened its appeal beyond a mere fashion accessory.

• Apple has explored whether Vision Pro could help treat mental health issues

• Outward-facing cameras could detect changes in movement

• Eye-tracking cameras could measure emotions, screen for heart conditions

Among the ideas employees have discussed for the Vision Pro is using its eye-tracking features and external cameras to measure a person’s affect, a psychological term referring to how a person expresses feelings or emotions, the people with knowledge of the matter said. A “flat affect” or emotionless expression can be a sign that a person has schizophrenia, autism, depression, brain damage or even PTSD, for example. Members of Apple’s Vision Products Group, including its leader, Mike Rockwell, have devoted extensive time to discussing the healthcare possibilities of the headset and have hired health experts to explore such features for the device, one of the people said.

Therapeutic functions could be especially important in the case of Vision Pro, a product that will initially cost $3,500—14 times the price tag of the cheapest Apple Watch.

The idea of using headsets to treat mental health disorders isn’t a new one. For years, researchers have studied the use of virtual reality headsets to diagnose and treat phobias and PTSD in patients—for example, by exposing military veterans to combat simulations.

Joe Jerome, a visiting professor at the University of Tampa who previously worked on augmented reality and VR policy at Meta Platforms, said the new sensors available on the latest headsets has made it easier to explore health and wellness uses for the devices.

“Without question, health and wellness use cases are really important to consumers of a whole bunch of different demographics,” Jerome said. “Could this boost sales? Sure, but a cheaper headset does it better.”

Multiple people who have worked on Vision Pro over the years said teams inside Apple have extensively discussed or explored health, wellness and fitness features as recently as this year. It couldn’t be learned whether Apple will include mental health features in the initial Vision Pro, which it has said will go on sale next year, or in future models. When the company announced the headset in June, it didn’t demonstrate health, wellness and fitness uses for the product, with the exception of a meditation experience.

An Apple spokesperson declined to comment.

Apple has shown a broader interest in exploring functions in the Apple Watch and iPhone to improve mental health. Earlier this year, it released new versions of its Health and Mindfulness apps that allow users to log their feelings and receive insights on their state of mind. Some of those features came about after Apple partnered with the University of California, Los Angeles, on a three-year study beginning in 2020 that involved thousands of participants using their Apple devices to track their physical activity, heart rate, sleep and other daily routines.

In 2019, Apple CEO Tim Cook told CNBC that the company’s “greatest contribution to mankind” would be related to health. Former Apple employees who worked in its health group said healthcare is one of the few industries with the size and scale to significantly move the needle on Apple’s revenues, assuming the company’s products could eventually play a substantial role in delivering healthcare services or related functions like billing for those services.

The Information previously reported that Apple had built demonstrations of fitness and wellness apps that guided users in the practice of tai chi and yoga while using the headset’s cameras to measure body movements and breathing. Former Apple employees who worked on the Vision Pro said the company explored using the Vision Pro to enhance the experience of using a rowing or cycling machine.

Any features that Apple claims can diagnose or treat physical or mental health issues would need to undergo clinical studies and have the clearance or approval of health regulators, they said. For instance, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has cleared the company’s claims that the Apple Watch can detect atrial fibrillation or irregular heart rhythms, which can be a precursor to blood clots, strokes or heart failure.

Apple employees are concerned about the legal liability of making health-related claims, which could limit the scope of these features. For example, when wearers use the electrocardiogram app on the Apple Watch, the app tells them the product can’t check for heart attacks. When they activate the blood-oxygen app, it notes that the measurements aren’t intended for medical use.

Researchers have also begun examining whether wearable consumer devices could end up contributing to health anxiety for the people who wear them and encourage unnecessary visits to doctors’ offices. In 2020, researchers at the Mayo Clinic published a paper about a study of 264 patients who had sought medical treatment after receiving alerts from their Apple Watches about abnormal pulses. Only 11.4% of them received “clinically actionable cardiovascular diagnoses.”

Pupil Dilation

Not everyone inside Apple is optimistic about the prospects of using Vision Pro to treat mental health issues. Some people involved in Apple’s health efforts were skeptical about whether the devices could be as effective as other treatments, such as medicine, and cautioned that such features might never materialize.

Still, those doubts haven’t stopped Apple from brainstorming health-related uses for the headset.

Its employees have also discussed using the Vision Pro to sense weight fluctuations in a person’s body and to evaluate a person’s movements over time; the latter information could be used to screen for ailments such as Parkinson’s disease, the people said. In the near term, those functions are unlikely to appear on the headset. Apple cut full body tracking from the Vision Pro several years ago because engineers couldn’t make it reliable enough (The Information previously reported that Apple told developers full-body tracking wouldn’t be available when the Vision Pro ships next year.).

Another idea the team has discussed is using the headset’s eye-tracking cameras to detect pupil dilation, which could provide a clue to a person’s mood, one person who worked on the device said. The device’s infrared cameras could also detect swelling in the blood vessels of the eyes, a possible early sign of heart failure, another person said.

Inside Apple, mental health is among four pillars of the company’s overall health ambitions, along with nutrition, exercise and sleep, according to former Apple employees involved in its health efforts.

For years, Apple health employees have discussed ways to use the iPhone’s front-facing camera and sensors to track and improve people’s moods, though such features have yet to materialize. If they do emerge in the future, Apple would likely record and analyze users’ data on their devices instead of uploading that information to the cloud, to adhere to its own privacy standards, former employees said.

Other Apple health employees have explored how a user’s app usage and the words they type can be analyzed to detect early signs of some forms of dementia such as Alzheimer’s disease. In 2021, for example, Apple announced a partnership with neuroscience company Biogen to examine how the Apple Watch and iPhone could monitor cognitive performance and help detect a decline in cognitive health.

Last month, Biogen told MobiHealthNews it was pulling out of the study due to a change in its research and development priorities. At the time, Biogen noted that the initial results of sensor data gleaned from Apple devices showed that they could “reliably measure cognition and behavior in real-world unsupervised settings.”