Aside from financing rounds, new companies, startups and business, we receive countless “smaller” reports every day, which we want to give a platform to here in our ticker in the future. Regardless of whether it is personnel news, project announcements or news and highlights from the industry: we summarize the day chronologically below.
The article is continually updated.
11:05 Tesla Model Y best-selling car in Europe
The Tesla Model Y secures the title of best-selling car in Europe for 2023, a historic achievement as the first electric vehicle to achieve this position. With 254,822 units sold, the Model Y narrowly beat out the affordable Dacia Sandero. Tesla achieved this milestone through strategic price cuts and government incentives, while the Juniper update fueled buyer expectations. Production at Gigafactory Berlin enables Tesla to produce 3,000 Model Ys per week for the European market.
11:00 Prominent business representatives take a stance against the AfD
Resistance to the AfD is forming in the German economy. Prominent economists such as Michael Hüther from the German Economic Institute and Clemens Fuest from the Munich Ifo Institute warn of the economic risks of a strengthening AfD. Hüther describes the party as “extremely dangerous” for Germany’s economic future, while Fuest criticizes the programmatic idea of leaving the EU as “highly problematic”. These warnings follow reports of a controversial meeting at which high-ranking AfD officials discussed. At the same time, there was widespread resistance to right-wing extremism and the AfD in several German cities over the weekend, with tens of thousands of people taking part in demonstrations.
10:50 Huawei will soon stop supporting Android apps
The Chinese company Huawei will not support Android apps in the latest version of its in-house Harmony operating system, as the financial medium Caixin reported. The company aims to strengthen its own software ecosystem and plans to launch a developer version of its HarmonyOS Next platform in the second quarter of 2024, followed by a full-fledged commercial version in the fourth quarter. Huawei first introduced its proprietary Harmony system in 2019 after US restrictions limited its access to Google’s technical support for its Android mobile operating system.
10:30: Off for the Flattr micropayment service
The micropayment service provider Flattr has been shut down largely unnoticed after 14 years. According to heise, there has only been a farewell message on the service’s official website for over a week now. Users could pay the service a flat monthly sum, which was then distributed to publishers on the Internet when they clicked on the corresponding button. At the end of the month, the total amount was divided equally among all offers for which this was done. The aim was to establish financial recognition for internet content. But the concept never caught on. Even the takeover in 2017 by the Cologne company Eyeo, which developed Adblock Plus, could not save Flattr.
10:00: DPD chatbot insults DPD
The parcel delivery service DPD has replaced the usual customer service in Great Britain with a chatbot. However, this is currently exhibiting rather strange behavior. The conductor Ashley Beauchamp recently showed on X that he could get the DPD bot to write a insulting poem about itself with a simple request. The AI described itself as completely useless. Apart from that, the bot also used swear words. DPD has now switched off the chatbot again; according to the company, a system error in conjunction with an update was to blame for the bizarre appearance of the AI.
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