The specs are there. The price is there. The will to conquer Western markets is very much there. So why does looking at the lineup feel like staring into a beige echo chamber? I spent a few years on the Coolbrands council, the annual ritual of picking the world’s coolest brands. That was a while ago. I wouldn’t claim to be the bellwether of cool in any general sense today. But I know a cool car brand when I see one. And I’m not seeing one WHAT THEY’RE GETTING RIGHT Tick. Tick

It’s striking how quickly we default to cynicism about technology. We assume its most powerful capabilities will inevitably be used to exploit. But technology itself is neutral. Exploitation isn’t physics, it’s economics. For the last two decades, products were born expensive. Venture capital demanded venture-scale returns. Which meant optimisation, extraction, dark patterns, surveillance… not because builders loved them, but because the maths required them. Now the cost of m

Every scroll, every notification, every autoplay episode is the product of systems that learned our psychological weak points and optimised for them. Addiction, outrage, comparison, FOMO. The algorithms got extraordinarily good at exploiting the patterns that keep us engaged, which is a polite word for trapped. But here’s the thing. If these systems are sophisticated enough to find and exploit our worst impulses, they’re sophisticated enough to find and nurture our best ones.