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 cars that debuted at the Beijing Auto Show demonstrate that the Chinese market is now at the forefront of electrification and intelligence. These are the 19 most intriguing models we saw. The newest concept car from Lynk & Co was revealed at the 2026 Beijing Auto Show. While major motor shows in Europe and the United States are being forced to downsize or change their format, those in China continue to expand. With 1,451 vehicles on display, including 181 world premieres, the 2026 Beijing International Automotive Exhibition 2026 (also known as Auto China 2026) has become the largest auto show in history--and that's in terms of both exhibition space and the number of vehicles on display. This fact itself reflects a shift in the center of gravity of the automotive industry, but that's not all. A much larger structural transformation is actually taking place in China today. Previously, the focus was on low-priced electric vehicle models, but now price is no longer the primary point of competition.

What are the implications of Trump's Somali'garbage' comments? What happens if the US attacks Venezuela? Does'America First' make the US weaker? What we know about the DC pipe bomb suspect Brian Cole Jr. US President Donald Trump has cleared the way for tech giant Nvidia to sell its advanced H200 chip to China, in a significant easing of Washington's export controls targeting Chinese tech. Trump said on Monday that he had informed Chinese President Xi Jinping of the decision to allow the export of the chip under an arrangement that will see 25 percent of sales paid to the US government.

US chip giant Nvidia will supply more than 260,000 of its most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chips to South Korea's government, as well as Samsung, LG, and Hyundai. The companies will all deploy the AI chips in factories to make everything from semiconductors and robots to autonomous vehicles and meant that South Korea can now produce intelligence as a new export, chief executive Jensen Huang said. Mr Huang did not disclose the value of the South Korean deals. It caps off a busy week for Nvidia, which on Wednesday became the first company to be valued at $5 trillion and on Thursday saw signs of a thaw in US-China trade relations that may mean it can export more of its chips to China . Speaking at a CEO summit on the sidelines of Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) in Gyeongju, South Korea, Mr Huang added that with the chips, companies would be able to create digital twins with other factories around the world.

Nvidia, the artificial intelligence (AI) chip leader, will build seven new supercomputers for the United States Department of Energy (DOE), CEO Jensen Huang has said. The company has $500bn in bookings for its AI chips, Huang said on Tuesday in a keynote address at the company's GTC event in Washington, DC, the US capital. It is striking deals around the world while also navigating a US-China trade war that could determine which country's technology is most used across the globe. Investors are looking for clarity on what chips the tech company will be able to sell to the vast Chinese market, but Huang in his keynote speech praised policies by US President Donald Trump while announcing new products and deals. These included network technology that will let Nvidia AI chips work with quantum computers.

These advanced chips are largely used for artificial intelligence (AI) applications at a time when investors are betting that AI will transform the global economy. Last month, Nvidia - which is the world's leading chip maker - became the first company ever to hit 4tn ( 3tn) in market value. Nvidia developed the H20 chip, and AMD developed the MI308 chip, especially for the Chinese market. They are less powerful and therefore cheaper than both companies' flagship chips. But developing them was the only option for accessing the significant Chinese market after the previous administration of President Joe Biden banned US companies from exporting the most advanced chips to China because of national security concerns.

Apple has unveiled its artificial intelligence-boosted iPhone 16, showing off the long-awaited phone hours after Chinese rival Huawei's tri-fold phone began racking up orders. "The next generation of iPhone has been designed for Apple Intelligence from the ground up. It marks the beginning of an exciting new era," Chief Executive Tim Cook said at a product launch on Monday. The iPhone 16 will use the new A18 chip and have an aluminium back, as well as a new customizable button that can be used for camera controls. Huawei's website showed on Monday that it had garnered more than three million preorders for its Z-shaped tri-fold phone.

Nvidia is working on a version of its new flagship artificial intelligence chips for the China market that would be compatible with current U.S. export controls, three sources familiar with the matter said. The AI chip giant in March unveiled its "Blackwell" chip series, which is due to be mass-produced later in the year. The new processors combine two squares of silicon the size of the company's previous offering. Within the series, the B200 is 30 times speedier than its predecessor at some tasks, such as serving up answers from chatbots. Nvidia will work with Inspur, one of its major distributor partners in China, on the launch and distribution of the chip, which is tentatively named the "B20", two of the sources said.

The United States and China have a relationship that could be summed up in a single word as, "complicated." And if you want to use more than one word, "kind of like that video of two dogs growling at each other through a gate." While megacorps just want to make as much money as possible, they have to keep this relationship in mind. Nvidia is in hot water with the US Commerce Department over recent chips designed specifically for the Chinese market. For context, Nvidia is making unbelievably, ridiculously, stupidly huge amounts of money at the moment, providing the hardware backbone for the AI software boom.

NVIDIA really, really doesn't want to lose access to China's massive AI chip market. The company is developing three new AI chips especially for China that don't run afoul of the latest export restrictions in the US, according to The Wall Street Journal and Reuters. Last year, the US government notified the chipmaker that it would restrict the export of computer chips meant for supercomputers and artificial intelligence applications to Russia and China due to concerns that the components could be used for military purposes. That rule prevented NVIDIA from selling certain A100 and H100 chips in the country, so it designed the A800 and H800 chips specifically for the Chinese market. However, the US government recently issued an updated set of restrictions that puts a limit on how much computing power a chip can have when it's meant for export to the aforementioned countries.