A compact electric quadricycle is designed to tackle the challenges of city living while offering accessible and eco-friendly transportation. Electric vehicles often grab headlines for innovation, but they rarely get credit for affordability. That's where Chinese automaker BYD is flipping the script. The company introduced the Atto 1 at the Gaikindo Indonesia International Auto Show, and it's turning heads for all the right reasons. Priced at around 12,000, this fully electric hatchback offers modern features, urban-ready performance, and a price tag that could finally bring EVs to the masses.

Chinese electric-vehicle makers led by BYD beat Tesla in the competition to produce affordable electric vehicles. Now, many of those same fierce competitors are pulling into the passing lane in the global race to produce self-driving cars. BYD shook up China's smart-EV industry earlier this year by offering its "God's Eye" driver-assistance package for free, undercutting the technology Tesla sells for nearly 9,000 in China. "With God's Eye, Tesla's strategy starts to fall apart," said Shenzhen-based BYD investor Taylor Ogan, an American who has owned several Teslas and driven BYD cars with God's Eye, which he called more capable than Tesla's "Full Self-Driving" (FSD). Other Chinese auto and tech companies are offering affordable EVs with FSD-like technology for a relative pittance.

DBOT can value any public traded company on the basis of Damodaran's analysis, and generates a report to support its position in an attempt to mimic its analytic parent. Until recently, such capabilities of analytic twins for financial valuation were not feasible. However, with advances in large language models (LLMs) and generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), it has become possible to conduct valuations that marry numbers and reasoning to generate credible valuations that can be used for long-term investing. The implications for automation and support of various parts of the valuation exercise are profound. In this paper, we provide a method for creating a digital analytic twin, DBOT, which is designed to mimic the investment analysis of individual companies by Damodaran. Since DBOT can value every company in an index such as the S&P500, it also provide an analysis in a macro sense, for example, by valuing the S&P500 market index relative to the valuation of its individual components. From the perspective of generative AI, DBOT presents a multitude of challenges. First and foremost, LLMs must be able to reason over financial texts, charts, tables, and spreadsheets. Furthermore, DBOT requires the AI system to follow Damodaran's

Not only has China's largest EV maker BYD unveiled good, better, and best tiers for its advanced driver-assistance system (ADAS), it announced last week that the tech--marketed somewhat immodestly as "God's Eye"--will now be fitted as standard to 21 of BYD's 30 cars split across four brands. Even the 9,500 Seagull hatchback, the cheapest of BYD's EVs, will ship with the base level of God's Eye at no extra cost, while the 233,500 Yangwang U9 electric supercar will get the top-tier iteration. However, BYD's ADAS system could be as misleadingly named as Tesla's Full Self-Driving (FSD). Including ADAS for free will no doubt rile BYD's smaller rivals in China's innovative but cutthroat auto market. Comparatively low-tech Toyota, VW, and Nissan may weaken further, and Tesla--which has yet to gain permission for FSD in China--could also struggle.

This week has been one of Tesla's worst. The company has cut 10 percent of its workforce, from sales advisers to engineers--the biggest round of layoffs in the company's history. Two top executives--vice president of public policy and business development, Rohan Patel; and senior vice president of powertrain and energy, Drew Baglino--also announced they were leaving. This comes against a difficult financial backdrop: Demand is dropping for electric cars in the US and Europe, just as competition in China intensifies and workers revolt in Europe. Investors are worried: In the past six months, Tesla's stock has dropped 35 percent.

The upheavals of recent years have posed huge challenges for established companies, but for others rapid change can mean big opportunities. Entrepreneurs are breaking ground in important new areas, from artificial intelligence to biotechnology and super-smart energy meters. Here, we look at six companies making the most of the moment. Keep an eye on Cambridge-based energy specialist Green Energy Options this year. The company, known as Geo, was founded in 2006 as a conventional smart-meter business and has quietly grown, delivering more than 8.5m devices to date. The energy crisis could see business pick up further, as households examine their usage more closely to cut costs.

BEIJING, Dec 27 (Reuters) - China's BYD (002594.SZ) and autonomous driving startup Momenta have established a 100 million yuan ($15.7 million) joint venture to deploy autonomous driving capabilities across certain BYD car model lines, according to a Momenta statement and a person familiar with the matter. The new venture, called DiPi Intelligent Mobility Co and located in Shenzhen, combines BYD's capabilities as an automaker with Momenta's experience in intelligent driving, said the statement on Monday. BYD has invested 60 million yuan in the venture while Beijing-based Momenta is investing 40 million yuan, the person said. The person said the initial scope of work will include deploying "Level 2 plus" autonomous driving capability across some vehicle model lines. Level 2 semi-autonomous cars have technology that can take care of nearly all aspects of driving, from steering to acceleration and braking, but the driver needs to be ready to intervene if needed.

Samsung Electronics is on the verge of making a substantial investment in BYD, a Chinese manufacturer of electric cars and batteries. The Samsung investment comes as its chief rivals are investing in car tech and the market for car battery technology continues to grow. The investment was first reported by the Korea Economic Daily, which said Samsung will pay 3 billion yuan ( 450 million) for a 4 percent share of BYD. BYD later confirmed the two are in talks but did not confirm the investment size. "Going forward, the parties will jointly seize opportunities in the rapid development of the global electric vehicles industry and promote sustainable development of the parties' electric vehicles related businesses," BYD said in a regulatory filing.