The lunar new year doesn’t occur for another 26 days, but BYD is already in a festive mood.

Despite China’s overall economy coming down with a bad cold last year, its EV companies are still raring to go — and even upstaging the world’s most valuable auto company. Tesla reported its first annual sales drop in over 10 years on Thursday, while its biggest Chinese competitor BYD posted annual sales that comfortably beat expectations.

Stuck in First Gear 

Tesla kicked off 2024 warning that sales growth would not be as gaudy as in years gone by. CEO Elon Musk said in January last year that the company was “between two major growth waves,” and specifically warned that slower growth was to be expected as the company wrestled with the industry-wide problem of lukewarm consumer demand. He didn’t say anything about negative growth, however. Tesla sold 1.79 million vehicles last year, a whisker below the 1.81 million it sold in 2023. 

BYD, meanwhile, beat its own expectations, having set a target of 3.6 million in EV and hybrid sales but hitting 4.3 million. Of course, it’s not an entirely fair comparison, as selling hybrids is a lot easier than selling EVs, and they appear to be a major engine in BYD’s growth machine.

Felipe Muñoz, senior analyst at automotive market research firm JATO, told The Daily Upside that while BYD grew its EV sales 12%, its plug-in hybrid sales climbed 73%. Still, the numbers under the hood are worrying for Tesla, even more so given that if BYD experiences a slowdown in EV sales, hybrids can keep things moving:

• BYD sold 1.76 million EVs in 2024, so about 30,000 off Tesla’s number. In the past, BYD has managed to nudge past Tesla in sales volume on a quarterly basis, but hasn’t been able to keep enough momentum to consistently outpace it.
• In the most recent quarter, this happened again, with BYD selling 595,413 EVs compared with Tesla’s 495,570. 

Muñoz said a big drag on Tesla’s growth is its aging lineup, but therein lies a glimmer of hope for 2025 as Tesla is expected to release an updated version of its popular Model Y. “This year with the updated Model Y, the company should grow again,” Muñoz said.

This is the (Nor)way: In many countries, the demand problem plaguing EV-makers now is that the early-adopter market is saturated and the cars themselves are not yet cheap enough to be considered mass-market models. One country that seems to have surmounted the problem is Norway, where 89% of new vehicles sold last year were fully electric, Reuters reported. On Norway’s roads, EVs now account for 28% of all cars driven. One Norwegian EV driver told Reuters that sometimes she misses being able to fill her car with gasoline in a tight five minutes. Nostalgia about pumping your own gas feels very 2025.

Big business hates uncertainty. Its leaders had better get used to it. 

With military conflict continuing — or breaking out — across the globe, and the world’s superpowers in a protracted stare-down, it’s not easy being a global business. Nor is it cheap, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis published Thursday.

Conflict Management

There’s conflict in Ukraine. There’s fighting in the Middle East. Then there is alarming political strife in usually stable nations like France and South Korea. And we haven’t even mentioned the faceoff between China and the US, which is expected to intensify as the tariff-inclined Trump 2.0 administration assumes office. All of which is creating a minefield for international business. 

The knock-on effects are plenty. Take for instance the global shipping industry, which is remaking itself amid trade tensions with China and a string of attacks last year in the Red Sea. According to a Financial Times analysis published Wednesday, the industry is rapidly shifting away from massive container ships toward smaller vessels as it prepares for a feared contraction of global trade. Meanwhile, continued threats to critical infrastructure like subsea cables vital to the world’s internet have opened up a new, highly disruptive, front in global conflict. And, on Wednesday, Europe’s supply of cheap Russian gas officially ran dry, after Ukraine decided to turn off the taps.

Add it all up and you have whatever is the opposite of a frictionless economy:

• According to a report released late last year from consulting firm Verisk Maplecroft, the cost of doing global business has now reached a 10-year high amid geopolitical instability and deglobalization.
• And according to a survey of business leaders conducted by Ernst & Young, around 75% of CEOs say they have significant visibility into potential geopolitical risks and have developed strategies to manage them, with 30% saying they have full visibility.

Ticking Clock: Of course, it’s not just major global firms feeling the heat. The looming TikTok ban in the US, for example, threatens to derail small businesses in the US that have leaned heavily on the platform to grow their reach. At least, so says TikTok itself, which estimates small businesses using the platform for promotional purposes would lose $1 billion in revenue a month if the short-form video app does indeed go dark in the US. 

It’s as if Siri is cupping its ears and telling us: I can’t hear you. 

Apple — admitting no wrongdoing — has agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit that alleged its digital assistant recorded users’ private conversations, which plaintiffs claimed were then shared with advertisers and other third parties. The price tag: $95 million.

Legal Payday

According to the suit, filed in 2019, plaintiffs claimed they were served with advertisements for Nike Air Jordan sneakers, Pit Viper sunglasses, and the Olive Garden restaurant after discussing them within earshot of their Apple device. Another claimed the mention of a “brand name surgical treatment” at a private doctor’s appointment led to receiving targeted ads for the treatment.

The suspected cause was Siri being erroneously activated by sounds or speaking, the lawsuit claimed. From 2014, the voice assistant was supposed to be awoken by the trigger phrase “Hey Siri” or simply “Siri” (last year, Apple added the option of creating custom trigger phrases and words) — and the class period runs from September 2014 to December 31, 2024. But, as with any class action, the winners of the settlement may not exactly be the winners:

• Plaintiffs, who could number in the millions given there are an estimated 84 million Siri users in the US, according to market research firm Emarketer, could be entitled to up to a mere $20 per Apple device. But their lawyers may seek $28.5 million in fees and $1.1 million for expenses from the settlement fund (two of the three firms involved also happen to be representing users in a similar class action against Google over its voice assistant).
• Apple, meanwhile, gets to brush off a pesky nuisance that amounts to a rounding error on its financial reports while admitting no wrongdoing. The $95 million settlement is a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of Apple’s $93.7 billion in net income in its latest fiscal year — or, in other words, it makes that much in profit every nine hours or so.

The settlement was filed in a Bay Area federal court on Tuesday and still requires a formal approval from a district judge.

Hear No Apple, See No Apple: The Siri suit is poised to go silent at the same time that Apple may be halting production of its Vision Pro headset, which it previously scaled back due to demand, according to the ever-reliable Apple-focused website MacRumors. Call us crazy, but the hefty $3,499 price tag might have something to do with consumers looking the other way.