The new Ferrari Luce, the brainchild of iPhone designer Sir Jony Ive, is unlike anything the Italian carmaker has ever created - so is the backlash it is facing. Its launch was such a big deal that Italian President Sergio Mattarella and Pope Leo were invited to view the luxury brand's first electric vehicle (EV). But internet critics, investors and even politicians have hit out at the Luce - which is Italian for light. The firm's shares fell 8% the day after the unveiling, as a host of memes mocked the $640,000 (£475,625) car, which is also its first five-seater. It comes as the global motor industry faces a number of major challenges, including fierce competition from Chinese carmakers.

BYD debuts China's most advanced EV chip in smart-driving push BYD on Thursday unveiled what it calls China's first automotive-grade 4-nanometer chip for self-driving cars. BYD, the world's largest electric vehicle maker, unveiled a series of technology advances, including what it calls China's first automotive-grade 4-nanometer chip for self-driving cars. The semiconductor breakthrough approaches the lead of Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies, which currently makes chips with a geometry of 7 nm but has pledged to debut 1.4 nm chips by 2031. It's designed to allow BYD's computer-assisted driving to stand out from a crowded Chinese EV market that includes rivals such as Xpeng and Xiaomi. Facing eight months in a row of falling sales and intense competition for more advanced charging and intelligent driving technologies, BYD is looking to spark more demand for its vehicles.

LinkerBot makes dexterous robotic hands for as little as $600. It wants to become the standard for humanoids and automated factories--and eventually replace human labor altogether. If you could buy a humanoid robot for less than a smartphone, would you? Would you buy several robots to handle cooking, cleaning, babysitting, and even your job? This is the pitch being made by Zhou Yong, the 40-year-old founder and chief technology officer of LinkerBot, one of China's leading manufacturers of dexterous humanoid hands.

Japan is one of many locations in Asia where Chinese companies access American AI chips -- by renting hardware that's owned by foreign firms and installed in overseas data centers. Taiwan prosecutors suspect that three individuals successfully smuggled at least one shipment of Nvidia artificial intelligence chips to China after first exporting them to Japan, people familiar with the matter said. The trio was detained last week by Taiwan's Keelung District Prosecutors Office for allegedly falsifying documents related to exports of Super Micro Computer servers containing advanced Nvidia chips, which the U.S. has barred from sale to China without a license from Washington. The move marked the island democracy's first public crackdown on AI chip diversion after years of pressure from the U.S. to take a more active role in curtailing China's tech access. When Taiwan authorities apprehended the three defendants -- who've now been officially detained -- they also seized about 50 servers for which they accuse the trio of preparing fraudulent export documents. But at least one shipment had already gone through Taiwan customs, according to the people familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity to speak about an ongoing criminal investigation.

In the race against China for AI supremacy, the United States dominates when it comes to access to the most cutting-edge semiconductors. But when it comes to powering the huge data centres that run on AI chips, China holds the clear advantage. A typical data centre can consume as much electricity as 100,000 households, while next-generation "hyperscale" facilities can gobble up as much power as two million homes, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). China's access to an abundant supply of cheap electricity places it in the ideal position to meet such colossal energy demands. China already generates more than twice as much electricity as the US, a lead that is expected to widen amid an aggressive state-led investment in the country's energy grid.

Are robots nearing their ChatGPT moment? Last month at Beijing's half marathon, a robot named Lightning beat the human world record by nearly seven minutes. It's the latest in a string of AI-powered milestones that have got people wondering whether robots are about to enter our everyday lives, just as chatbots have. And the country leading the charge is China, where the government has pledged to invest more than £100bn in robotics over the next 20 years. To find out how robots are already entering the workforce, and what needs to happen to get them cleaning our homes and weeding our gardens, Ian Sample hears from the Guardian's senior China correspondent, Amy Hawkins, and from Nathan Lepora, professor of robotics and AI at Bristol University, who researches how robots can achieve human-like dexterity

The world's carmakers are struggling to compete with China Global carmakers are facing a reckoning as US, European and Japanese brands lose ground to Chinese rivals setting the pace not only in electric vehicles, but also in batteries, design and software. The BBC visited factory floors in Beijing and Hefei on the sidelines of Auto China 2026 - the world's largest car show - and found striking levels of automation and software development speed, leaving foreign brands that once dominated the Chinese market struggling to keep up. We have no chance against this, Honda chief executive Toshihiro Mibe told Japanese media after visiting a highly automated factory in Shanghai. Ford chief executive Jim Farley has also warned that Western carmakers, are in a fight for our lives as Chinese rivals expand globally. After decades spent investing in joint ventures with Chinese partners to build vehicles, foreign carmakers are now changing the nature of those partnerships to stay competitive.

The Chinese company is adapting to the demise of Moore's Law, which guides chip production. It could complicate US chip dominance. Tingbo He, president of Huawei's chip-design subsidiary HiSilicon, says her company's engineers have developed a novel way to optimize semiconductors--and she believes it will close the performance gap between Chinese and Western chips over the next few years. Huawei's method, in short, focuses on speeding up computations across chips, circuits, and entire computing systems, rather than squeezing ever-more components onto a single piece of silicon. "We found a new path," He said at the IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems in Shanghai last weekend.

Rescuers in Laos have found five villagers alive inside a flooded cave after they were trapped for a week following heavy rain and landslides. Two people are still missing, rescue teams said. Footage shared by the rescuers showed cave divers crawling through narrow, muddy passageways. The seven people were part of a group of villagers who had gone into the cave in search of gold deposits and wildlife, but could not get out as the cave's entrance was blocked. Could a football match soften North Korea-South Korea relations?

Plus: NASA unveiled plans for three uncrewed missions to the Moon this year. Here at we understand exactly how relentless the pace of news from the world of artificial intelligence feels New models and capabilities crop up as fast as we can cover them, and the ripple effects they send through tech and wider society are never far behind. Our unique strength lies in cutting through the day-to-day noise to help you understand what's really happening, and what lies around the corner. That's why we created our list of 10 Things That Matter in AI Right Now, unveiled at our flagship AI event EmTech AI a few weeks back ( check the list out if you haven't already!) And it's why we publish so many stories dedicated to explaining how AI works, and what's coming next . We also regularly run live subscriber-only Roundtables events--you can still catch up on last week's session, where we explored how AI might enter the physical realm via world models.