The move follows the departure of Tesla’s head of North American sales, Raj Jegannathan, marking the latest in a string of executive exits at the EV maker over the past couple of years

International News via Reuters:

Tesla has named its head of European operations, Joe Ward, to oversee the company’s sales globally, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The move follows the departure of Tesla’s head of North American sales, Raj Jegannathan, marking the latest in a string of executive exits at the EV maker over the past couple of years.

Tesla did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Ward joined Tesla as a logistics intern in 2010 and rose up the ranks to be named vice president for the EMEA region in 2022, according to his LinkedIn profile.

The Elon Musk-led EV maker’s sales have been pressured by increasing competition, particularly from Chinese and legacy automakers offering lower-priced EVs and brand damage from the CEO’s right-wing political stance.

The company reported its second consecutive drop in annual deliveries last month despite the EV maker’s efforts to drum up demand with incentives.

Tesla is pivoting to focus on developing its full self-driving system, robotaxis, and humanoid robots, as it shifts away from being primarily a carmaker even though its core EV business brings most of the company’s revenue.

Reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona

The industry endured a bruising 2025, with many projects cancelled or delayed amid high European energy costs and cheaper fossil fuel-based hydrogen

International News via Reuters:

Europe’s fledgling green hydrogen industry is urging the EU to introduce “made in Europe” requirements for public spending on the sector, warning that without support to scale up quickly, domestic producers risk being overtaken by Chinese rivals.

The industry endured a bruising 2025, with many projects cancelled or delayed amid high European energy costs and cheaper fossil fuel-based hydrogen. 

Brussels is counting on green hydrogen to help chemicals, steel and fertiliser producers cut emissions. Today, more than 90% of the hydrogen used in European industry still comes from fossil fuels.

Kim Hedegaard, CEO of Power-to-X at Danish engineering company Topsoe, told Reuters that manufacturers backed EU plans for “made in Europe” rules for publicly funded electrolyser purchases – pointing to solar panels as a cautionary tale if the industry fails to scale fast.

Europe lost most of its solar panel production in the 2000s as Chinese manufacturing costs plunged, leaving the region heavily dependent on imports.

PRIORITISING EUROPEAN MANUFACTURERS

“You can use that as an example of what will happen to the European electrolyser industry if we don’t do something different,” Hedegaard said.

The European Commission plans this month to propose a law to prioritise European manufacturers in public procurement, aiming to tap the 2.5 trillion euros that EU public authorities spend each year on goods and services.

A draft of the proposals, previously reported by Reuters, included electrolysers. But the plans face pushback from some governments and firms, and officials are still haggling over which technologies to cover – and whether “made in Europe” should include non-EU countries such as Turkey.

Hakon Volldal, CEO of Norwegian electrolyser manufacturer Nel Hydrogen, said European firms were missing out on large-scale projects like those progressing in China, which public contracts could help secure.

“We have technology leadership, but unless we’re able to deploy that technology and also learn with that technology, the Chinese will catch up, and they will race past us,” he said.

“China is getting an edge … because of the scale of their projects,” said Nicolas de Coignac, CEO of the hydrogen arm of Belgian engineering group John Cockerill.

European Investment Bank President Nadia Calvino this month singled out electrolysers and wind energy as “low-dependency sectors” where Europe can still stay ahead.

“But it will require continued investment in EU value chains,” she wrote in a letter seen by Reuters ahead of Thursday’s meeting of EU leaders on industrial competitiveness.

China already hosts 60% of global electrolyser manufacturing capacity. European firms still dominate their home market, supplying more than 80% of sales to European projects since 2022, according to the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.

But there are signs that Chinese companies are making gains. Brussels tightened access for Chinese-supplied projects to the EU’s main hydrogen support fund in 2024, after finding many past beneficiaries planned to use cheaper foreign equipment.

Reporting by Kate Abnett. Editing by Mark Potter

Big Tech’s effort to swiftly build and electrify giant data centers across the U.S. to expand technologies like artificial intelligence has been slowed by the country’s aging power system and constrained electricity supplies

International News via Reuters:

Microsoft is exploring using superconducting power lines in its data centers, which could potentially accelerate its massive U.S. build-out of the server warehouses by making them more energy-efficient, the company said on Tuesday.

Big Tech’s effort to swiftly build and electrify giant data centers across the U.S. to expand technologies like artificial intelligence has been slowed by the country’s aging power system and constrained electricity supplies.

Microsoft said recent tests of high‑temperature superconductor cables have shown that the power lines can deliver the same amount of electricity as traditional cables while taking up less space. 

“The technology helps us scale power density without expanding our physical footprint,” Husam Alissa, who leads the Systems Technology Team at Microsoft’s CO+I CTO Office. “It can also help us reduce the size of power transmission infrastructure and lower community impact.”

High-temperature superconductor cables use a ceramic-like material that transports electricity more efficiently than conventional copper and aluminum conductors, which are used widely in power infrastructure.

Deploying the cables, which are not currently used in data centers, could shorten the time it takes to power the large server warehouses.

Microsoft said the technology could allow it to increase electrical density inside facilities without expanding infrastructure like substations. The company, however, did not disclose its investment in superconducting technology or when it would be able to deploy them in its data centers. 

U.S. government research shows the electricity use of data centers may consume about 12 percent of U.S. power supplies by 2028, a tripling from four years earlier, which would require more infrastructure to generate and transport the electricity.

Single data center campuses being built today will require more than one gigawatt of electricity at a single location, enough to power about 750,000 homes.

The cable technology has been under development for  decades, but stymied by high costs and manufacturing constraints.

Microsoft is investing in superconducting companies, including Massachusetts-based cable manufacturer and cooling system vendor, VEIR, which closed a $75 Series B funding round this last year. VEIR, which recently completed a test of its three megawatt cable to power a server rack in a  simulated data center, said the advanced cables can be more than 10 times smaller and lighter than traditional cables, allowing for a smaller data center footprint. 

Reporting by Laila Kearney in New York; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama