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China Has A Category Of Cars Called Minicars And They Are Simply Amazing

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China’s automotive landscape is buzzing with innovation, and minicars are leading the charge. Unlike Japan’s Kei cars, which follow a strict formula that restricts engine size and dimensions, Chinese minicars have no fixed definition. Generally, the max length is about 11 feet. Most are three-door hatchbacks, but automakers also sell five-door variants, coupes, and off-road variants. The broad Chinese term is 微型轿车 (wéixíng chē). Minicars are classified as real cars and are allowed on the highway, so these are not LSEVs (low-speed electric vehicles); that is a separate vehicle category with even smaller cars that are only allowed to drive in the city. Jason owns one of those.

A Market Bursting with Options

Everything in China is in abundance, big and lavish. Consumers can choose between more cars than anywhere else in the world. This also applies to the minicar market.

China Minicars 0b

It is difficult to find an exact number because new variants appear almost every day. At the beginning of 2025, there will be about 38 brands offering minicars. Some of these brands also make larger cars, but other brands only make mini cars. Due to the growing market, new players are constantly emerging.

A brand like Bestune, which previously mainly made large gasoline-powered cars, suddenly launched a minicar in 2024 that had absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the range in style and size. But there are even odder ones out. The automaker BAW is best known for the 212 series, an indestructible all-terrain vehicle, but this company also saw an opportunity and came up with a minicar as well. 

How Expensive?!

Minicars are very cheap, and thanks to increased competition getting even cheaper. The current bargain of the month is the Wuling Mini EV, which sells for 23,800 yuan after a price cut. That is $3,246! 

China Minicars A 4
The Wuling Mini EV Second Generation Macaron Edition is named after the famous French cookie. It is available in five colors.

Last month, the cheapest minicar was the Bestune Pony at 24.900 yuan or $3396::

China Minicars 4
Bestune is a brand owned by FAW, the same company that owns Hongqi. The large headlights are an absolute eye-catcher.

Next month, there will be another car cheaper yet again. Even the most expensive minicars cost no more than $8000. The average base price is around $3500. There is often a relatively big difference between the cheapest and most expensive variants of a model. This is because brands offer many different versions, with less or more power, small or large batteries, and all kinds of levels of luxury.

Chery Qq Icecream 4
Chery QQ Icecream pricing.

An example is the Chery QQ Ice Cream (shown above), which is available in nine different versions. The cheapest costs $4080 and the most expensive one goes for $7216.

Bold Designs That Stand Out

To distinguish themselves in such a busy market, car brands are experimenting with creativity and daring design. Thanks to the electric drive, there is plenty of space. There are cars with a square cabin, or round, or half-half. The designers have no regard for current conventions and traditions. Everything is possible and everything is allowed, as long as it stands out. This also applies to the finish and colors. Large headlights are popular, as are roof spoilers, two-tone color schemes, and colored wheels. 

Wuling Air EV

China Minicars A 1

Of all the minicar makers, Wuling goes the furthest with the design.  The Air EV is an almost indescribable device, with a one-box teardrop-shaped body with mirrors attached to the lamps and rear windows that are out of line. Yet the car is in great demand in China. 

Huazi Omega

China Minicars A 2

The most exceptional minicar is the Huazi Omega, a notchback sports model with round lights, wide wheel arches, and 15-spoke rims. It is the National Car, according to Huazi. It isn’t cheap at $6383 for the base model; it has 33 hp, a 10.24 kWh battery, and an 80-mile range.

Pocco MeiMei

Poco 2 Red

The Pocco MeiMei is a sporty minicar with a low hood and sports seats, painted in Wave Red.

BAW Jiabao
Baw Bao

BAW Jiabao. The BAW Jiabao has a complex and sophisticated front design, with a light bar for the daytime running lights, headlights down below, a sporty bumper section, and a shiny BAW logo. The Jiabao costs 39.8oo yuan ($5429). It is 138 inches long, it has rear-wheel drive, 34 hp, a 10.88 kWh battery, and a 75-mile range.

Baizhi Big Bear

Big Bear

Some minicars are a bit more utilitarian, like the Baizhi Big Bear. Yours for $3792.

Wuling Mini EV 5-door Capybara Edition

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Above is the upcoming Wuling Mini EV 5-door version, which was announced with silly cartoon decals. No tiny stickers here, it’s an entire landscape on the doors!

Playful Interiors With Weirdness

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Designers go even further in the interior, with dashboards in all shapes and sizes and trendy two-spoke steering wheels. Above all, the interior is expected to be nice.

Busy color schemes are highly sought after, with colored steering wheels, seat belts, and sun visors. There are large round buttons and pedals with buttons such as +/⇑ for forward and -/⏸ for stop. Buyers of these types of cars often put things on top of the dashboard; the manufacturers have responded to this with boxes that are sometimes equipped with a Lego mat on which the little-ones can click their creations. There is often no room for a cup holder between the seats. That is why minicar brands look for other solutions, such as cup holders in the corners of the dashboard.

Changan Lumin

Lumin Dash

Above is one of the best interiors in the minicar business. With blue, pink, black, and silver trim.

ZD Rainbow

A Flat A2

ZD goes pretty far with pink. Everything is pink — even the steering wheel! The ZD Rainbow also comes with marble-style white-pink trim in the door-cards, around the drive selector, and on the center stack.

Bestune Pony

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The Bestune Pony has a retro-center console with a vintage Nintendo-controller-style audio unit. The large dial on the left is the drive selector. Also, note the pedals with ⏸for stop and ︽ for drive. But the best stuff is on top.

On the right is a cup holder and on the left is a brick baseplate, which is meant to be a base plate, it isn’t just a funny pattern.

China Minicars 10
Image credit: Taobao.

When it was launched, Bestune included a Pony Camping Playset with the Pony. The set was also sold in Bestune’s online shops. The set features a pink Pony, a tea set, a BBQ with two chicken legs, a case of beer (yeah!), some nature, and a telescope.

A Screen For Every Budget

Screens are cheap in China, so almost every minicar has digital instruments. The infotainment offering varies. The basic versions have no more than a small LCD screen and a USB port for the smartphone. The more expensive models have a real touchscreen for infotainment.

The Fengon MiniEV, shown below, has a unique design where the screen is positioned sort of in front of the passenger. Some screens are a bit strange in shape, for example, the Pocco MeiMei has an upright rectangular instrument cluster that looks like it came straight out of a video game from the 1990s, complete with a racing wheel. The screen graphics are usually wild and busy, packing loads of information. Many minicar makers have also designed cartoon-style digital assistants that talk and move around over the screen.

Fengon MINIEV

China Minicars 5

Fengon is a brand under automaker “Seres.” The MINIEV has an interesting dashboard. As mentioned before, the touchscreen for the infotainment is located in front of the front passenger. The only cup holder is on the far right side of the dashboard. What if the driver wants to change the song and drink some tea? They can’t. The air vents are nicely hidden behind decorated panels. There is storage on top and below the dash.

On a side note: Fengon didn’t steal the name from Wuling. See, it is the Fengon MINIEV, spelled in all caps as one word, whereas the Wuling Mini EV is spelled with fewer caps and as two words. Different!

Lingbox UNI

Lingbox Uni Phone Holder

The Lingbox UNI has a phone holder for a screen. It makes sense. I have seen trillions of Chinese drivers using their smartphones for navigation, even in cars with high-tech zillion-inch screens.

BAW Jiabao

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The BAW Jiabao (家宝) with the optional twin-10.25-inch screen. The digital assistant is called Xiaobao. Call sign: Xiaobao Xiaobao (小宝小宝).

Pocco MeiMei

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The Pocco MeiMei is ready to race. Check that wheel! Flat bottom, extra grip, and red trim!

JMEV EV3 Lucky

Screeeeb

JMEV EV3 Lucky. The company calls this a “simple high-definition digital screen.” That seems about right.

Many Of The Powertrains Are Interchangeable

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Henrey Xiaohu rear axle and motor assembly.

The prices of minicars are low, mainly due to the low production costs. China is the workshop of the world in the largest EV market in the world. This means that every part of an EV is available in its own country.

Car brands can therefore purchase complete drivetrains, motors, and even bodywork off the shelf from other suppliers. Car makers only have to assemble, and even that does not always happen, because in China there is also a lot of contract manufacturing in this segment, where a brand completely outsources production to a third party.

As a result, it often happens that the specifications of minicars from different brands are very similar, for example with the same power because they use the same engines. Details such as fog lights and wheels are also often comparable. With a little skill, it should be possible to exchange the various parts between minicars of other brands. Because the minicars are easy to assemble, maintenance is cheap. In addition to brand dealers, there are also endless smaller garages that can carry out the most common repairs for a few dollars. Parts are not expensive in China anyway, a set of new tires for the minicar costs less than 100 dollars including labor. Many parts are also interchangeable so that even small garages can quickly build up a large stock.

The Technical Side

Platform 1
Henrey Xiaohu, RWD.

Underneath their whimsical exteriors, Chinese minicars boast smart engineering. Built on lightweight EV platforms, they weigh around 750 kg (under 1,700 pounds) on average. Most are rear-wheel drive, though some are front-wheel drive.

Pocco Duoduo
Pocco DuoDuo, electric motor.

The motors and batteries are purchased from specialized suppliers. Power varies greatly. The basic models have around 27 hp and 63 ft-lbs, while the top models produce around 41 hp and 81 ft-lbs. This means the minicars can reach a top speed of about 65 to 75 miles per hour.

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Kaiyi Shiyue, front-wheel drive.

The battery is under the floor, between the front and rear axle. Without exception, they are LFP batteries. The capacity varies greatly. The smallest batteries have an average capacity of 9 kWh and a range of approximately 75 miles. The largest batteries have around 17 kWh and can travel 134 miles. Energy consumption is relatively low due to the low weight, with a broad average of eight to nine kWh per 62 miles. Most minicars can only charge AC. A full charge can easily take seven hours. However, the more expensive minicars can also use DC fast charging and are often ready to continue driving in half an hour.

China Minicars 14
Geely Geome Panda, rear-wheel drive, with the charging port in the nose.

The most commonly used brake layout is disc brakes at the front and drum brakes at the rear. The minicars generally do not go fast, so rear disc brakes are unnecessary. Moreover, drum brakes are much cheaper. The suspension is simple. Most minicars have a MacPherson suspension at the front and a semi-independent suspension with a torsion rear axle at the rear.

 

Designed With Women in Mind

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Checking out the tailgate of the Pocco Duoduo.

In China, it is completely normal for a brand to launch a car specifically aimed at women. Brands openly admit this and no one makes things complicated about it. These cars often come with cute model names and in soft colors. They are also equipped with female-friendly features such as large makeup mirrors, cooled makeup boxes, and an extensive automatic parking function.

Many of the minicars have been developed for female buyers, and this is visible in the marketing, where women predominate, with or without a girlfriend or children. Some brands take a broader approach and sell both female and male variants of the same car. An example is the Geely Geome Panda. The Panda Knight has busy bumpers and a roof ladder, while the Panda Mini Cute Bear is covered in light pink accents. An interesting intermediate form is the Panda Karting, a racing model with many spoilers that is also available in bright pink.

Changan Lumin

Changan Lumin 1

The Changan Lumin is a bulbous little fellow, apparently popular with pigeons and fashionable folks. The car in the photo is painted in Moss Green.

ZD Rainbow

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ZD, or Zhidou, is a small Chinese EV minicar brand. The advert features a non-Chinese lady, which is rare in advertising in the minicar segment.

Lingbox Box

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Who’s your daddy now? Even the wooden table is painted in a soft tone. Pink roses, too.

JMC EV3 Lucky

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JMC EV3 Lucky, pink ballons with a pink car and a pink family.

Geely Geome Panda Knight, Panda Cute Bear, and Panda Karting.

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Geome Panda Knight. For men who like ladders. It has big bumpers, tow hitches, handles on the bonnet, wheel arch extensions, sidebars, cool wheels, roof rails, and that ladder.

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Geome Panda Cute Bear, for ladies who like stuffed panda bears. The wheels are shaped like panda claws. Geely has a long history with panda-themed cars. Back in 2009, Geely sold the GLeagle Panda, with panda-eye styled headlights.

China Minicars 16a

Geome Panda Carting, for racy ladies.

Crazy Specials: Turning Heads in the Minicar Market

Another way to stand out is to release special editions, sometimes with other brands that are popular with the target group, such as ice creams, coffee, or cartoons. Wuling has the Macaron Edition, after the French cookies, and the Capybara Edition, after the Japanese rodent/cartoon. Geely created a W.T. Duck Edition of the Panda, and Bestune has the My Little Pony Edition, with the cartoon horses. With other specials, it is mainly about the color. For example, the ZD Rainbow Edition has seven colors, at the same time, on the same car. 

ZD Rainbow Seven Colors Edition

Zd Rainbow Special

This is the ZD Rainbow Seven Colors Edition, a special edition of the ZD Rainbow. The Rainbow Seven Colors Edition combines the seven colors that are available for the standard Rainbow on one car.

The color names are great, as always (my translation): Free Blue, Fresh Green, Charming Purple, Brilliant Yellow, Temperament Apricot, Tough Gold, and Courage Pink. The car in the background is a standard Rainbow, painted in Tough Gold, which is the color of the door of the Rainbow Seven Colors Edition. A bit complicated, but I like the way it looks. Sadly, ZD didn’t do the wheels in seven colors too. 

Zd Rainbow Special 2

At the California Drive-in, with Courage Pink, Charming Purple, and the Seven Colors Edition.

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ZD delivery ceremony in the city of Shangqiu, Henan Province. The Seven Color Edition is in the middle. In its press release about the event, ZD said: “ZD has tailor-made the Rainbow model for the female population, with extremely colorful body colors to meet the pursuit of good-looking and personalized cars by female groups of different ages.”

Bestune Pony My Little Pony Edition

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The Pony My Little Pony Edition is a special edition inspired by the My Little Pony cartoon series, a predominantly girl-watched show about five ponies. The Pony My Little Pony Edition is painted in a color called Little Chery Pink with My Little Pony stickers on the doors.

Chery QQ Ice Cream Youth Edition

Qq Icecramd Loong

The Chery QQ Ice Cream Youth Edition debuted in April 2024. Chery issued a press release, saying [translated]: “It’s April and spring is in full bloom. What color can capture the hearts of young people more? The answer is of course green! … [the] QQ Ice Cream Youth Edition has added a pure green car color, which symbolizes the splendor of spring, freedom and new ideas. It is not only 100% suitable for the beautiful spring, but also creates a vibrant city for young users. , a carefree dream world that allows young people to abandon their anxiety and enjoy the wantonness and happiness brought by their youth.”

The Youth Edition is painted in green with yellow dragon decals. “Loong” is a play on long, the Chinese word for dragon.

Geely Geome Panda W.T. Duck Edition

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The W.T. Duck Edition is co-branded with W.T. Duck (什么鸭), a popular clothing, toy, and consumer electronics brand. It has duck decals and yellow wheels, and the interior got a makeover too.

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A typical W.T. Duck playset.

 

Simple, User-friendly, and Practical

Everyone should be able to drive a minicar and the operation has been deliberately kept as simple as possible, without complicated systems. The vast majority of minicars still have an old-fashioned handbrake. With rear-wheel drive, you can theoretically drift with it. The drive selection button is usually located between the front seats or on the dashboard. There are two control levers behind the steering wheel and the functions are almost always the same: the lighting is on the left and the windshield wipers are on the right. The buttons are large and clearly marked. The front seats can be adjusted manually and consist of one piece with a fixed integrated headrest. The front windows are electrically operated, but the rear windows often cannot be opened. 

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The center console in the Henrey Xiaohu. Simple does it.

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Large buttons for the AC in the ViAuto Boma EV.

Chery Qq Icecream 1
Four seats in the Chery QQ Ice Cream.

The minicars are also practical.  The boxy and high cabins translate into a lot of space given the vehicle footprint. The luggage space is not that bad either. Most cars have around 90 liters with peaks of up to 130. The rear seat can fold down for extra space. In some cars, the rear seats can be removed,  turning the minicar into a minivan, with easily 700 liters of cargo space. The doors open up to 90 degrees, making it easy to get in and out. 

A Flat

A flat floor and white luggage nets in the pink ZD Rainbow (3-door).

Wuling Mini Ev

Suitcases in the Wuling Mini EV. Trunk space is 123 liter and 745 liter with the rear seats down.

Pocco 4

Get in & get out easy in the Pocco DuoDuo.

Top Sellers

Minicar sales are about 100,000 units per month in China. The absolute emperor of the segment is the Wuling Mini EV, with 37,747 units sold in December. However, the Mini EV Family, as Wuling calls it, consists of 2 cars: the original Mini EV and an updated Second Generation Mini EV.

But even when you cut the number in half, the Mini EV is still first. The second place was for the Changan Lumin with 13.027 and the Bestune Pony was third with 12,560 units sold. The Geome Panda sold 10.659 units for fourth place. Then it goes rapidly downwards, the Chery Ice Cream sold 5,479 units, the ZD Rainbow 2,250, and the Linbbox Box 1,159. The others are selling even less. The brilliant BAW Jiabao? 25 units in December! The Fengon with the weird screen? Only 23! So it’s a top-heavy statistic, the top 3 best-selling minicars take more than 50% of the entire market.

China Minicars 0

To sell more, car makers often work with celebrities. Bestune has made an endorsement deal with Wu Yanni (吴艳妮) a famous track & field athlete. Wu is known for her cool-wild personality and tattoos. However, the Chinese government isn’t very fond of tattooing. So in most races, Wu hides her tattoos, and in the Bestune photo, the tattoos are shopped away.

The Future Is Bright

China Minicars 3

Everything is possible and everything is for sale; the minicar market excels through creativity and flexibility, and that makes it one of the nicest segments in China. As long as the market continues to grow, new brands will emerge. The Chinese consumer is spoiled and is always looking for something new. To stay afloat, brands must constantly innovate and continually come up with new models. Not everyone will survive the competitive battle, but a vacant spot will immediately be taken by a new player. The result? A vibrant and ever-evolving segment that promises endless possibilities. For minicar enthusiasts, the party has only just begun!

Commercial Vehicles  

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Matrix X2 flatbed truck.

Many brands also make mini commercial vehicles such as small vans, vans, and pick-up trucks. These types of vehicles are mainly intended for delivery services, government services, and taxi companies. As always, the manufacturers make hundreds of models in thousands of variants. There are trucks with large and small containers, with a cooled or heated loading space, mini container trucks, and food trucks. More on these vehicles in an upcoming post.

 

The post China Has A Category Of Cars Called Minicars And They Are Simply Amazing appeared first on The Autopian.

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Dell risks employee retention by forcing all teams back into offices full-time

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Dell is calling much of its workforce back into the office five days a week starting on March 3. The technology giant is framing the mandate as a business strategy, but there’s reason to believe the policy may drive employee turnover.

Business Insider detailed an internal memo today from CEO and Chairman Michael Dell informing workers that if they live within an hour of a Dell office, they’ll have to go in five days a week.

"What we're finding is that for all the technology in the world, nothing is faster than the speed of human interaction,” Dell wrote, per Business Insider. "A thirty-second conversation can replace an email back-and-forth that goes on for hours or even days."

The publication said that those living further from an office can continue to work remotely. It's possible that employees could try to move to avoid the mandate, but it's unclear how that might work after it takes effect. Business Insider reported that Dell's note asked workers to “hold” questions “for now” because the company is “still working through details, and additional information will be available soon."

Adding further complication, Dell is said to have previously made fully remote workers ineligible for promotion. This has implications for the type of talent that will be able to rise within the company.

Deena Merlen, partner at Reavis Page Jump LLP, an employment, dispute resolution, and media law firm, explained:

"If only those who are willing and able to come into the office will get promoted, Dell will be left with a workforce where this qualification impacts the talent pool. Dell may be missing out on some great talent because of this added requirement."

Marlen also noted the requirement for Dell's policies to consider the needs of workers with disabilities necessitating remote work. Dell would face "exposure to liability to the extent remote workers who are otherwise qualified are passed over for promotion because their disability requires them to work remotely as a reasonable accommodation" if it failed to oblige with workplace anti-discrimination laws, she told Ars.

Similarly to Amazon, which issued a five-day return-to-office (RTO) mandate for corporate employees effective this month, Dell's RTO mandate may face real estate obstacles, which it would address in February, according to Business Insider.

In a statement to Ars, Dell’s PR team said:

"We continually evolve our business so we're set up to deliver the best innovation, value, and service to our customers and partners. That includes more in-person connections to drive market leadership."

The road to full RTO

After Dell allowed employees to work from home two days per week, Dell’s sales team in March became the first department to order employees back into offices full-time. At the time, Dell said it had data showing that salespeople are more productive on site. Dell corporate strategy SVP Vivek Mohindra said last month that sales' RTO brought “huge benefits” in "learning from each other, training, and mentorship.”

The company’s “manufacturing teams, engineers in the labs, onsite team members, and leaders” had also previously been called into offices full-time, Business Insider reported today.

Since February, Dell has been among the organizations pushing for more in-person work since pandemic restrictions lifted, with reported efforts including VPN and badge tracking.

Risking personnel

Like other organizations, Dell risks losing employees by implementing a divisive mandate. For Dell specifically, internal tracking data reportedly found that nearly half of workers already opted for remote work over being eligible for promotions or new roles, according to a September Business Insider report.

Research has suggested that companies that issue RTO mandates subsequently lose some of their best talent. A November research paper (PDF) from the University of Pittsburgh, Baylor University, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business researchers that cited LinkedIn data found this particularly true for “high-tech” and financial firms. The researchers concluded that average turnover rates increased by 14 percent on average after companies issued RTO policies. This research, in addition to other studies, has also found that companies with in-office work mandates are at risk of losing senior-level employees especially.

Some analysts don’t believe Dell is in danger of a mass exodus, though. Bob O'Donnell, president and chief analyst at Technalysis Research, told Business Insider in December, "It's not like I think Dell's going to lose a whole bunch of people to HP or Lenovo."

Patrick Moorhead, CEO and chief analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, said he believes RTO would be particularly beneficial to Dell's product development.

Still, some workers have accused Dell of using RTO policies to try to reduce headcount. There's no proof of this, but broader research, including commentary from various company executives outside of Dell, has shown that some companies have used RTO policies to try to get people to quit.

Dell declined to comment about potential employee blowback to Ars Technica.

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LeMadChef
2 days ago
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I want one of these CEOs to tell me why they are never in the office if it's "so effective"
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“Just give me the f***ing links!”—Cursing disables Google’s AI overviews

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If you search Google for a way to turn off the company's AI-powered search results, you may well get an AI Overview telling you that AI Overviews can't be directly disabled in Google Search. But if you instead ask Google how to turn off "fucking Google AI results," you'll get a standard set of useful web suggestions without any AI Overview at the top.

The existence of this "curse to disable Google AI" trick has been making the rounds on social media in recent days, and it holds up in Ars' own testing. For instance, when searching for "how do you turn off [adjective] Google AI results," a variety of curse word adjectives reliably disabled the AI Overviews, while adjectives like "dumb" or "lousy" did not. Inserting curse words randomly at any point in the search query seems to have a similar effect.

A nice, polite query that results in a nice, polite "you can't" from AI Overviews. Credit: Google / Ars Technica
A cathartic curse eliminates the AI Overview in the results. Credit: Google / Ars Technica

There's long been evidence that Google's Gemini AI system tries to avoid swearing if at all possible, which might help explain why AI Overviews balk at queries that contain curses. Users should also keep in mind, though, that the actual web link results to a query can change significantly when curse words are inserted, especially if SafeSearch is turned off.

Not the first, probably not the last

For those who want to get rid of AI Overviews without a curse-filled Google search history, users have discovered plenty of other methods for disabling the intrusive recommendations. Just after Google launched the AI Overviews feature, savvy searchers noted that adding "&udm=14" to the search URL would get rid of both the AI Overviews and the "Web Snippets." A little fiddling with browser settings or plug-ins can even get this URL parameter inserted automatically into every search.

More recently, some Google users have noticed that appending the string "-ai" to a search (without quotes) seems to also turn off AI Overviews in the results. That method has worked in Ars' testing, as has appending practically any other text string after a minus sign at the end of a search, for some reason.

The bit about using glue on pizza can be traced back to an 11-year-old troll post on Reddit. (<a href="https://bsky.app/profile/morte.bsky.social/post/3kt4di6uj2i26">via</a>) Credit: Kyle Orland / Google

So while cursing at your Google search box to get rid of intrusive AI might not be strictly necessary, it can serve as a cathartic way to eliminate a feature that seems to be flawed by design and serves as a fundamental misunderstanding of why people use Google in the first place. More than that, the social spread of the new "curse the AI" method shows how many Google users are still annoyed or angered by a feature that often gives misleading, dangerous, or outright incorrect results.

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Bogus research is undermining good science, slowing lifesaving research

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Over the past decade, furtive commercial entities around the world have industrialized the production, sale, and dissemination of bogus scholarly research. These paper mills are profiting by undermining the literature that everyone from doctors to engineers rely on to make decisions about human lives.

It is exceedingly difficult to get a handle on exactly how big the problem is. About 55,000 scholarly papers have been retracted to date, for a variety of reasons, but scientists and companies who screen the scientific literature for telltale signs of fraud estimate that there are many more fake papers circulating—possibly as many as several hundred thousand. This fake research can confound legitimate researchers who must wade through dense equations, evidence, images, and methodologies, only to find that they were made up.

Even when bogus papers are spotted—usually by amateur sleuths on their own time—academic journals are often slow to retract the papers, allowing the articles to taint what many consider sacrosanct: the vast global library of scholarly work that introduces new ideas, reviews, and other research and discusses findings.

These fake papers are slowing research that has helped millions of people with lifesaving medicine and therapies, from cancer to COVID-19. Analysts’ data shows that fields related to cancer and medicine are particularly hard-hit, while areas such as philosophy and art are less affected.

To better understand the scope, ramifications and potential solutions of this metastasizing assault on science, we—a contributing editor at Retraction Watch, a website that reports on retractions of scientific papers and related topics, and two computer scientists at France’s Université Toulouse III–Paul Sabatier and Université Grenoble Alpes who specialize in detecting bogus publications—spent six months investigating paper mills.

Co-author Guillaume Cabanac also developed the Problematic Paper Screener, which filters 130 million new and old scholarly papers every week looking for nine types of clues that a paper might be fake or contain errors.

Table showing tortured phrases Credit: Guillaume Cabanac and The Conversation, CC-BY-ND

An obscure molecule

Frank Cackowski at Detroit’s Wayne State University was confused.

The oncologist was studying a sequence of chemical reactions in cells to see whether they could be a target for drugs against prostate cancer. A paper from 2018 in the American Journal of Cancer Research piqued his interest when he read that a little-known molecule called SNHG1 might interact with the chemical reactions he was exploring. He and fellow Wayne State researcher Steven Zielske began experiments but found no link.

Meanwhile, Zielske had grown suspicious of the paper. Two graphs showing results for different cell lines were identical, he noticed, which “would be like pouring water into two glasses with your eyes closed and the levels coming out exactly the same.” Another graph and a table in the article also inexplicably contained identical data.

Zielske described his misgivings in an anonymous post in 2020 at PubPeer, an online forum where many scientists report potential research misconduct, and also contacted the journal’s editor. The journal pulled the paper, citing “falsified materials and/or data.”

“Science is hard enough as it is if people are actually being genuine and trying to do real work,” said Cackowski, who also works at the Karmanos Cancer Institute in Michigan.

Legitimate academic journals evaluate papers before publication by having other researchers in the field carefully read them over. But this peer review process is far from perfect. Reviewers volunteer their time, typically assume research is real, and so don’t look for fraud.

Some publishers may try to pick reviewers they deem more likely to accept papers, because rejecting a manuscript can mean losing out on thousands of dollars in publication fees.

Worse, some corrupt scientists form peer review rings. Paper mills may create fake peer reviewers. Others may bribe editors or plant agents on journal editorial boards.

An “absolutely huge” problem

It’s unclear when paper mills began to operate at scale. The earliest suspected paper mill article retracted was published in 2004, according to the Retraction Watch database, which details retractions and is operated by The Center for Scientific Integrity, the parent nonprofit of Retraction Watch.

chart showing number of retracted papers growing over time Credit: Retraction Watch/The Conversation, CC BY-ND

An analysis of 53,000 papers submitted to six publishers—but not necessarily published—found 2 percent to 46 percent suspect submissions across journals. The American publisher Wiley, which has retracted more than 11,300 articles and closed 19 heavily affected journals in its erstwhile Hindawi division, said its new paper mill detection tool flags up to 1 in 7 submissions.

As many as 2 percent of the several million scientific works published in 2022 were milled, according to Adam Day, who directs Clear Skies, a company in London that develops tools to spot fake papers. Some fields are worse than others: biology and medicine are closer to 3 percent, and some subfields, such as cancer, may be much larger, Day said.

chart showing papers tripping alarm Credit: Clear Skies/The Conversation, CC BY-ND

The paper mill problem is “absolutely huge,” said Sabina Alam, director of Publishing Ethics and Integrity at Taylor & Francis, a major academic publisher. In 2019, none of the 175 ethics cases escalated to her team was about paper mills, Alam said. Ethics cases include submissions and already published papers. “We had almost 4,000 cases” in 2023, she said. “And half of those were paper mills.”

Jennifer Byrne, an Australian scientist who now heads up a research group to improve the reliability of medical research, testified at a July 2022 US House of Representatives hearing that nearly 6 percent of 12,000 cancer research papers screened had errors that could signal paper mill involvement. Byrne shuttered her cancer research lab in 2017 because genes she had spent two decades researching and writing about became the target of fake papers.

In 2022, Byrne and colleagues, including two of us, found that suspect genetics research, despite not immediately affecting patient care, informs scientists’ work, including clinical trials. But publishers are often slow to retract tainted papers, even when alerted to obvious fraud. We found that 97 percent of the 712 problematic genetics research articles we identified remained uncorrected.

Potential solutions

The Cochrane Collaboration has a policy excluding suspect studies from its analyses of medical evidence and is developing a tool to spot problematic medical trials. And publishers have begun to share data and technologies among themselves to combat fraud, including image fraud.

Technology startups are also offering help. The website Argos, launched in September 2024 by Scitility, an alert service based in Sparks, Nevada, allows authors to check collaborators for retractions or misconduct. Morressier, a scientific conference and communications company in Berlin, offers research integrity tools. Paper-checking tools include Signals, by London-based Research Signals, and Clear Skies’ Papermill Alarm.

But Alam acknowledges that the fight against paper mills won’t be won as long as the booming demand for papers remains.

Today’s commercial publishing is part of the problem, Byrne said. Cleaning up the literature is a vast and expensive undertaking. “Either we have to monetize corrections such that publishers are paid for their work, or forget the publishers and do it ourselves,” she said.

There’s a fundamental bias in for-profit publishing: “We pay them for accepting papers,” said Bodo Stern, a former editor of the journal Cell and chief of Strategic Initiatives at Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a nonprofit research organization and funder in Chevy Chase, Maryland. With more than 50,000 journals on the market, bad papers shopped around long enough eventually find a home, Stern said.

To prevent this, we could stop paying journals for accepting papers and look at them as public utilities that serve a greater good. “We should pay for transparent and rigorous quality-control mechanisms,” he said.

Peer review, meanwhile, “should be recognized as a true scholarly product, just like the original article,” Stern said. And journals should make all peer-review reports publicly available, even for manuscripts they turn down.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. This is a condensed version. To learn more about how fraudsters around the globe use paper mills to enrich themselves and harm scientific research, read the full version.

Frederik Joelving is a contributing editor at Retraction Watch; Cyril Labbé is a professor of computer science at the Université Grenoble Alpes (UGA); and Guillaume Cabanac is a professor of computer science at Institut de Recherche en Informatique de Toulouse.

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LeMadChef
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Look At This Fascinating 6×6 Military Vehicle I Saw At The Ford Event That Had Nothing To Do With Ford

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I got back super-super-late from the Ford Performance event last night, driving back from Charlotte at 2 am because in many fundamental and important ways, I’m a dummy. But while I was there I saw a fantastic off-road vehicle I wasn’t previously familiar with, and it had pretty much nothing to do with Ford Performance, though I suppose there are some historical Ford tie-ins. The vehicle was encased in glass, like it lived in a colossal terrarium, and it’s big strange face drew my attention like it hooked it on a winch. Let’s talk about this thing.

This thing, is technically known as the M561, but is better known as the Gama Goat. The name comes from the man who designed the powered, articulated joint this machine uses, Roger Gamaunt, and the “goat” part is because this thing climbs over terrain like a, you know, goat. The reason there was one preserved under glass at the facility Ford was holding their big event was because that facility was once known as Camp North End, and it started life as a Ford factory, where it was used to build Models T and A (get your mind out of the gutter) up until the 1930s.

Then it was used for Army warehouses, then in the 1950s Douglas Aircraft used some of those warehouses to build Hercules and Ajax guided missiles, and then in 1969 Consolidated Diesel Corp. (CONDEC) built a factory there to build these Gama Goats for the war in Vietnam. So that’s why one is preserved there, among all the restaurants and event spaces and clubs or whatever – they used to build them right there.

Cs Gama 1

The Gama Goat is a fascinating machine; it looks like a strange stubby 4×4 pulling a trailer, but really it’s all one 6×6 vehicle, it’s just jointed and articulated in the middle:

Cs Gama Blueprint

See? It’s six-wheeled, and six-wheel drive, with the three-cylinder 2.6-liter two-stroke diesel making about 101 horsepower, and contained in that box behind the two seats in the front part of the machine. The rear could be used for cargo or up to eight people, and the whole contraption steered with both front and rear axles, and that middle joint could articulate pretty dramatically, too. Look:

Cs Gama Vintage

The bodies were aluminum, and it was said you could puncture the body panels with a knife or other sharp somethings. The initial demand for these came from French troops already in Vietnam who felt the US Army trucks they were using were not at all suited to dealing with the rough terrain. A program called Project Agile was started to develop something better suited to the challenging terrain of South Asia, and the Goat was the result.

Cs Gama Vintage2

While it was incredible agile and capable off road and even amphibious enough to get across relatively calm waters, the M561s were also notoriously unreliable and mechanically demanding, breaking down frequently and requiring a lot of complex maintenance.

Cs Gama Int

They made about 14,000 of these up into the 1980s, but because of their temperamental nature, they tended to be disliked by those who had to actually use them in the field.

From my vantage point, though, on a couch, entirely free from any responsibility of maintaining or using one of these, I think they’re pretty damn cool! A mid-engine, two-stroke, six-wheel-drive, articulated convertible? What’s not to like?

 

 

The post Look At This Fascinating 6×6 Military Vehicle I Saw At The Ford Event That Had Nothing To Do With Ford appeared first on The Autopian.

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How The ‘Golden Brick’ Made This SUV The Fastest Charging EV In The World

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Chinese automakers have been making waves of late, and Zeekr is prime among them. The company may now hold an auspicious title, that of having the fastest charging EV currently on the market.

Meet the Zeekr 7X. From the outside, it looks like so many other electric SUVs, with bulbous curves and fancy LED lighting elements. Ultimately, though, it’s what’s inside that makes the difference. We’re talking about the Golden Brick battery, which is key to the fast-charging capability that makes the 7X so special.

Zeekr has been developing the battery for some time, touting the battery’s ability to resist heat and cold without undue degradation. Most of all, though, it’s prized for its fast-charging ability—with the company claiming it can go from 10% to 80% in just 10.5 minutes. Now, recent testing seems to show it lives up to the hype.

Out of Spec Reviews recently took to YouTube to show off the Zeekr 7X and its prime party trick. Testing the vehicle in China, the team found the 7X was able fill its battery from 10 to 80% in nine minutes and 45 seconds. Going further, the vehicle was also available to achieve a 0 to 100% charge in approximately 22 minutes. It’s particularly impressive when you consider that a full charge in the 7X will net you 382 miles of range.

The team also provided a second video covering the charging process in detail. The team recorded a full charging curve during a 0 to 100% charge, noting a peak at 467 kW and sustained charging at over 400 kW. It’s full of grainy detail for the EV nerds out there, but the simpler figures come straight from the 7X’s itself—the display noted the vehicle was adding range at about 1,270 miles per hour. That’s not how we normally use “miles per hour”, but you get the idea.

 

Specifically, the Zeekr 7X boasts a very high charge rate—the company claims the Golden Brick battery can charge at 5.5C. C is short for capacity—basically, it refers to charging at a rate of 5.5 times the capacity of the battery. Multiply the Golden Brick’s capacity of 75 kWh by 5.5, and you get the peak power level it charges at—nominally, 412.5 kW. Obviously, as per the testing above, it’s able to peak a little higher than that, though this rate is not sustained for the full charge. Most notably, lithium batteries charge slower as they near 100%, which is why charge rates are so commonly compared from 10% to 80% instead.

While the 7X can charge very quickly, it’s worth noting that this isn’t always practical in the real world. For the testing above, Out of Spec Reviews had access to a mighty 840 kW charger owned by Zeekr—something you won’t easily find out in the wild. Most charging stations are lucky to top out at 350 kW or less. With that said, Zeekr has been doing the work to roll out more powerful chargers in China, with the company planning to have over 10,000 ultra-fast chargers up and running by 2026.

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The Golden Brick, so named for the striking gold insulation on the prismatic cells.

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Rectangular cells provide great packing efficiency.

Zeekr is very proud of its battery, even throwing it in a fire to show off how robust it really is.

The Golden Brick relies on lithium iron phosphate cells, regarded as safer and more robust than other lithium-ion chemistries. They’re more stable and less likely to undergo dangerous thermal runaway, making it safer to push them to higher charge rates.

It also uses rectangular prismatic cells, rather than the cylindrical cells that have become more popular in the last decade of EV development. Notably, this allows the battery to achieve a strong volume utilization of 83.7%, according to CarNewsChina. In simpler terms, the rectangular cells pack together really nicely to make it remarkably space-efficient.

Fastest Charging Ev In The World! 0 100% Zeekr Golden Battery 00 00 12
The Golden Brick in the flesh.

The Zeekr 7X and its Golden Brick battery are quite the engineering feat. The vehicle is set to hit the market in the summer of 2025, and should quickly find fans in China and beyond. Owners won’t necessarily be charging at 400-plus kilowatts on the regular, given commonly available infrastructure. Regardless, it’s yet another forward step for EV technology—one that will have rival automakers rushing to catch up.

Image credits: Zeekr, Out of Spec Reviews via YouTube screenshot

The post How The ‘Golden Brick’ Made This SUV The Fastest Charging EV In The World appeared first on The Autopian.

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