Chinese Artists Bring Art Installations to Burning Man

Burning Man, the annual weeklong festival in Nevada closed its entrance Saturday due to flooding from recent storms. Some of the thousands of festivalgoers are being warned to shelter in place. Despite the weather, the event drew artists from around the world, including six Chinese artists who spoke with Genia Dulot before the rain set in. (Camera and Produced by: Genia Dulot)

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‘Equalizer 3’ Cleans Up, ‘Barbie’ and ‘Oppenheimer’ Score New Records

The third installment in the Denzel Washington-led “Equalizer” franchise topped the domestic box office this weekend with $34.5 million according to studio estimates Sunday. By the end of the Monday holiday, Sony expects that total will rise to $42 million.

Labor Day signals the end of Hollywood’s summer movie season, which will surpass $4 billion in ticket sales for the first time since the pandemic thanks in no small part to “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” which are still netting records even after seven weeks in theaters. This weekend, Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” officially became the biggest movie of 2023 with over $1.36 billion globally, surpassing “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” while Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” sailed past $850 million globally to become the No. 3 movie of the year and Nolan’s third highest grossing.

“The Equalizer 3” arrived at a fraught time for Hollywood, with actors seven weeks into a strike for fair contracts with major entertainment companies and movie theaters bracing for a somewhat depleted fall season as a result.

The ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike meant Washington was unable to stump for the movie, which was directed by his frequent collaborator Antoine Fuqua and brings his vigilante character Robert McCall to Italy’s Amalfi coast. While the lack of a major star on a promotional tour would normally be considered a liability for a film’s box office potential, “Equalizer 3” may be the rare exception that could withstand a rollout without Washington’s help simply because it’s a recognizable franchise.

“One of the biggest movie stars in the world took us out on a high note,” said Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for Comscore. “Studios often coast to Labor Day, but Sony was smart to choose this weekend to open ‘The Equalizer 3.'”

Sony opened the R-rated “Equalizer 3” in over 3,900 locations in North America, including on IMAX and premium large format screens, where it opened in line with the previous two films which both went on to make over $190 million globally. With co-financing from TSG and Eagle Pictures, the film carried a $70 million production price tag. The film received generally positive reviews from critics (76% on Rotten Tomatoes) and overwhelmingly positive reviews from audiences, who gave it an A on CinemaScore and a five-star PostTrak rating.

“It’s uncanny the consistency of the Equalizer franchise,” Dergarabedian said.

Overseas, it made $26.1 million, contributing to a $60.6 million global debut.

In second place, “Barbie” added $10.6 million over the weekend in the U.S. and Canada, pushing its domestic total to $609.5 million. Warner Bros.’ other main theatrical offering, “Blue Beetle” added $7.3 million to take third. The DC superhero film has grossed $56.6 million in three weekends in North America. Fourth place went to Sony’s “Gran Turismo: Based on a True Story,” which is projecting $6.6 million through Sunday, down 62% from its first-place opening weekend, and $8.5 million including Monday.

“Oppenheimer” landed in fifth place on the domestic charts with an estimated $5.5 million ($7.4 million including estimates for Monday) from 2,543 theaters. This brings its domestic total to $310.3 million and its global take to $851 million.

The Universal film opened in China on Wednesday, playing on 35,000 screens, where it is estimated to have made $30.3 million in its first five days. A significant portion of that ($9.3 million through Sunday) came from 736 IMAX screens.

IMAX CEO Rich Gelfond said in a statement that “Oppenheimer’s” China debut showed that “it’s nowhere near finished dazzling audiences worldwide.” Gelfond added that its success also offers “a powerful demonstration of our surging market share around the world.”

That the 18-week summer movie season hit $4 billion is significant for an industry still recovering from the pandemic and facing uncertainty in the fall if the actors and writers strikes continue. Before the pandemic, $4 billion summers had become the standard for the industry and generally accounted for at least 40% of the total box office for the year. Last summer netted out with $3.4 billion.

And this summer had its share of hits, flops and surprises, with “Barbenheimer” accounting for over $900 million of the $4 billion haul.

“The summer box office is vitally important and a strong indicator of the health of the industry,” Dergarabedian said. “Many were really skeptical that we could get to $4 billion. We’re hitting it literally in the final days of the summer. It’s a reminder that any hit or miss makes a profound impact on the bottom line.”

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Tuesday.

  1. “The Equalizer 3,” $34.5 million.

  2. “Barbie,” $10.6 million.

  3. “Blue Beetle,” $7.3 million.

  4. “Gran Turismo: Based on a True Story,” $6.6 million.

  5. “Oppenheimer,” $5.5 million.

  6. “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem,” $4.8 million.

  7. “Bottoms,” $3 million.

  8. “Meg 2: The Trench,” $2.9 million.

  9. “Strays,” $2.5 million.

  10. “Talk to Me,” $1.8 million.

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Accent Masking Software Aims to Smooth Call Center Interactions

A California tech startup is using artificial intelligence, or AI, to mask the accents of call center workers to reduce discrimination, but some say diversity is being erased. Matt Dibble has the story.

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Israeli-Iranian Movie, Filmed Undercover to Avoid Suspicion, Premiers in Venice

The first production co-directed by Iranian and Israeli filmmakers had to be shot in secret to prevent possible interference by Tehran, directors Zar Amir Ebrahimi and Guy Nattiv told Reuters Sunday.

“Tatami,” a tense thriller centered on a world judo championship, got its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival at the weekend, receiving a standing ovation.

The film takes place over the course of the single day of competition as an Iranian judoka champion, played by Farsi-speaking U.S. actress Arienne Mandi, is ordered to fake an injury to avoid a possible match-up with an Israeli competitor.

Amir Ebrahimi and Nattiv shot the movie in Georgia, a country Iranians can easily visit. They stayed in separate hotels, spoke English and did not let on that they were making such a politically charged film.

“I knew there are many Iranians there, so we were trying to keep it calm and secret,” said Amir Ebrahimi, who is an award-winning actress and stars in the film, playing the judoka’s increasingly terrified trainer.

“We were undercover. We knew it was a dangerous thing,” said Nattiv, whose previous movie “Golda” premiered at this year’s Berlin Film Festival.

Iran does not recognize Israel’s right to exist and has banned its athletes from competing against Israelis.

In an incident that inspired “Tatami,” the International Judo Federation in 2021 gave Iran a four-year ban for pressuring one of its fighters not to face an Israeli.

Claustrophobic

Amir Ebrahimi, who won the best actress award in Cannes in 2022 for “Holy Spider,” fled Iran in 2008 for fear of imprisonment and lashings after a private video of her was leaked.

She said she had to take time to think through the possible consequences before accepting Nattiv’s offer to make the film.

“What I have learnt about the Iranian government is that as long as you are afraid, they can arrest you, they can kill you, they can make trouble around you. But as long as you are not afraid … it is going to be fine,” she said.

The film was shot in black and white, using a tight, 4:3 format, like for old television programs.

“These women are living in a black and white world. There are no colors. The box is the claustrophobic world they live in. That is the one thing they want to break. They want their freedom,” Nattiv said.

Children growing up in Iran were made to fear Israel as an implacable enemy, Amir Ebrahimi said – something Nattiv said was also happening in his own homeland, with Iran portrayed as an existential threat.

Nattiv revealed he had helped Amir Ebrahimi pay a clandestine visit to Israel, something that Tehran absolutely forbids for its citizens.

“I loved it. We could be from the same nation, the same family, we are the same,” said Amir Ebrahimi.

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Corgis Parade at Buckingham Palace, Marking Year After Queen Elizabeth’s Death

The changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace may draw tourists from far and wide, but Sunday visitors to the landmark were treated to a different sort of spectacle: a parade of corgis dressed up in crowns, tiaras and royal outfits.

Around 20 royal fans and their pet corgis gathered to walk their dogs outside the palace in central London to remember Queen Elizabeth II a year since her death.

Corgis were the late queen’s constant companions since she was a child, and Elizabeth owned around 30 throughout her life. Generations of the dogs descended from Susan, a corgi that was given to the queen on her 18th birthday.

Agatha Crerer-Gilbert, who organized Sunday’s event, said she would like the corgi march to take place every year in Elizabeth’s memory.

“I can’t see a better way to remember her than through her corgis, through the breed that she loved and cherished through her life,” she said.

“You know, I can’t still get used to the fact that she’s not physically around us, but she’s looking at us. Look, the sun is shining, I thought it would shine on us today,” she added.

Aleksandr Barmin, who owns a corgi named Cinnamon and has taken the pet to attend past royal-related events, said the parade was a poignant reminder that Elizabeth is no longer around.

“It’s a really hard feeling, to be honest … it’s really sad that we don’t have (the queen) among us anymore,” he said. “But still, Her Majesty the Queen is still in our hearts.”

Sept. 8 will be the first anniversary of the death of the 96-year-old queen at her Balmoral castle estate in Scotland. She was queen for 70 years and was Britain’s longest-reigning sovereign. 

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Americans Have Long Wanted the Perfect Endless Summer; Jimmy Buffett Offered Them One 

It seemed wistfully appropriate, somehow, that news of Jimmy Buffett’s death emerged at the beginning of the Labor Day weekend, the demarcation point of every American summer’s symbolic end. Because for so many, the 76-year-old Buffett embodied something they held onto ever so tightly as the world grew ever more complex: the promise of an eternal summer of sand, sun, blue salt water and gentle tropical winds.

He was the man whose studied devil-may-care attitude became a lifestyle and a multimillion-dollar business — a connecting filament between the suburbs and the Florida Keys and, beyond them, the Caribbean. From Margaritaville to the unspecified tropical paradise where he just wanted to eat cheeseburgers (“that American creation on which I feed”), he became a life’s-a-beach avatar for anyone working for the weekend and hoping to unplug — even in the decades before “unplugging” became a thing.

“It’s important to have as much fun as possible while we’re here. It balances out the times when the minefield of life explodes,” he posted last year.

The beach has stood in for informality and relaxation in American popular culture for more than a century, propelled by the early Miss America pageants on the Atlantic City boardwalk and the culturally appropriative “tiki” aesthetic that GIs brought back from the South Pacific after World War II. It gained steam with the Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello “Beach Blanket Bingo” years, the mainstreaming of surfing and beach-motel culture and the Beach Boys’ “California Girls.” And it continues unabated — just look to the dubious stylings of MTV’s “Jersey Shore.”

That train arrived at Margaritaville in the 1970s, and Buffett jumped aboard and became the conductor and chief engineer of its gently rebellious counterculture. He was hardly a critical darling, but he was, as he sang, “a pirate, 200 years too late” who believed that latitude directly impacted attitude. That accounted for a lot of the mass appeal.

These days, for every piece of the culture that made the shoreline or the tropical island a potentially dispiriting place to become unanchored — “The Beach” or “Lost” or even, heaven help us, “Gilligan’s Island” — there is a counterbalancing Buffett song right there to tell you that at the edge of the land you can find peace, or at least a chance at it.

There was of course “Margaritaville,” the song that launched a “Parrothead” empire, the one that prescribed taking time “watching the sun bake” and invoked “booze in the blender” and shrimp “beginnin’ to boil” (from which you can draw a direct line to the sensibility of seafood restaurant chains like Joe’s Crab Shack).

There was “Last Mango in Paris,” in which the singer had to “get out of the heat” to meet his hero, who told him to inhale all that life offers, and that even after that, “Jimmy, there’s still so much to be done.” There was “’Bama Breeze,” an ode to a bar along the Gulf Coast where “you’re one of our own” and, says the protagonist, “Good God, I feel at home down there.”

And there was “Come Monday,” in which a trip to do a gig in San Francisco — on Labor Day weekend, no less — became a meditation on city (“four lonely days in that brown LA haze”) vs. paradise (“that night in Montana”) and which he liked better.

Here was the funny thing, though: In that song, the unrepentantly inland Montana became his beach, his paradise of the moment. That was part of why he resonated: because the metaphorical Buffett beach could be pretty much anywhere that contained people looking for a bit of peace.

Just as country music spent decades building “country” from an actual geography into an entire state of mind, Buffett — whose roots were in country and folk — did the same thing with the beach. In his hands, it became an aesthetic as much as a place — the anti-city, where the backbreaking labor and the cubicle blues could be left behind for a realm where real people roamed. That’s been a deeply American trope from the beginning.

Americans have always romanticized the frontier — the edge of civilization, the place whose exploration defined them. But the frontier was, of course, a lonely and dangerous place. As Buffett rhapsodized, the sand-covered edge of the land that he so adored was also the edge of civilization — but only in the most appealing (and, not coincidentally, mostly apolitical) ways possible. In the universe of his songs, the beach was a safe frontier that you could explore if you wanted to. But you could also sit back in a straw hut and hat, sip a Corona, contemplate your navel and your sins — and be left alone.

In their 1998 book “The Beach: The History of Paradise on Earth,” Lena Lenček and Gideon Bosker trace the emergence of the beach as “a narcotic for holiday masses.” They write: “Before it could be transformed into a theater of pleasure, it had to be discovered, claimed and invented as a place apart from the messy business of survival.”

Buffett and his music — and the empire they begat — became pivotal figures in that claiming and invention. Through them, the off-the-grid sensibility and the loud-shirt aesthetic were vigorously mainstreamed and popularized.

All of his imagery, beach and beach-adjacent, shouted to us that there was a better, more relaxing way than regular daily life. It said that all those characters and people were waiting there for us with bare, sandy feet and cold beers and a bit of melancholy, and that we could jack into that sunny world and escape the monotony — for a long weekend or forever.

And therein lies a rub.

These days, summer ain’t what it used to be. With apologies to Buffett and the Beach Boys, the notion of an “endless summer” has a different, more unsettling connotation after these climate-change-inflected months of dangerous heat and devastating wildfires in places like Maui. Five years ago, even Paradise burned. So “watching the sun bake” has become a statement with multiple layers, and some of them are more rueful than relaxing.

Jimmy Buffett’s work was big on not reading too much into things. You could say, fairly, that his musical aesthetic was built around a three-word statement: Don’t overthink it. “Never meant to last,” he once sang. But as with most artists who echo resoundingly in the culture, his work — and, not incidentally, the legions of Parrotheads whose lifestyles he inspired — takes on additional dimensions when you pull the lens back and consider the broader shoreline.

That was true especially when the flip-flop fantasy collided with the reality that most people live. That collision took place at the intersection where Buffett was the most memorable, where the summer of the mind met the reality of the rest of the year. As he put it in “Son of a Son of a Sailor”: “The sea’s in my veins, my tradition remains. I’m just glad I don’t live in a trailer.”

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Cambodian Ex-Leader Hun Sen Back on Facebook After Long-Running Row

Cambodia’s ex-leader Hun Sen returned to Facebook on Sunday, claiming the social media giant had “rendered justice” to him by refusing to suspend his account after he posted violent threats on the platform.

In a post, Hun Sen said Facebook had rejected a recommendation from its Oversight Board to suspend his account after he had posted a video threatening to beat up his rivals.

It is the latest twist in a months-long row that has seen the prolific user quit Cambodia’s most popular social media site, deactivate his account, and threaten to ban the platform.

“I have decided to use Facebook again… after Facebook rejected recommendations of a group of bad people and rendered justice to me,” he wrote on Sunday, referencing the Oversight Board.

Hun Sen’s hugely popular page — which has around 14 million followers — was reactivated in July, but his social media assistant claimed to be running it in his place at the time.

Facebook’s parent company Meta did not respond to AFP’s request for comment.

Suspension row

The row kicked off in June when the platform’s Oversight Board recommended that Hun Sen’s Facebook and Instagram accounts be suspended for six months due to a video he posted in January.

In the clip, he told opponents they would face legal action or a beating with sticks if they accused his party of vote theft during elections in July.

The Oversight Board’s recommendation prompted a furious reaction from the then-leader, who banned Facebook representatives from the country and blacklisted more than 20 members of the board.

However, on Sunday, Hun Sen said the ministry of telecommunications would allow Facebook representatives to return to work in Cambodia — although the ban on members of the Oversight Board remained.

The move comes after the country’s parliament elected Hun Sen’s son Hun Manet as the new prime minister last month.

Hun Sen, who ruled Cambodia for nearly four decades, has publicly said that he will continue to dominate the country’s politics, serving in other positions until at least 2033.        

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Flooding Closes Burning Man Entrance; Festivalgoers to Shelter in Place

The entrance to the Burning Man counterculture festival in the Nevada desert was closed and attendees were urged to shelter in place Saturday as flooding from storms swept through the area.

The entrance will be closed for the remainder of the event, which began Aug. 27 and was scheduled to end Monday, according to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which oversees the Black Rock Desert where the festival is being held.

“Officials from BLM and the Pershing County Sheriff’s Office have closed ingress to the Burning Man event effective immediately and for the remainder of the event. Participants inbound for the event should turn around and head home.

“Rain over the last 24 hours has created a situation that required a full stop of vehicle movement on the playa. More rain is expected over the next few days and conditions are not expected to improve enough to allow vehicles to enter the playa.”

About 15 centimeters of rain is believed to have fallen on Friday at the festival site, about 177 kilometers north of Reno, the National Weather Service in Reno said. Another 7.5 centimeters of rain is expected late Saturday into Sunday.

Organizers urged festivalgoers to conserve their food, water and fuel. 

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‘Margaritaville’ Singer Jimmy Buffett Dies At 76

Singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett, who popularized beach bum soft rock with the escapist Caribbean-flavored song Margaritaville and turned that celebration of loafing into an empire of restaurants, resorts and frozen concoctions, has died. He was 76.

“Jimmy passed away peacefully on the night of September 1st surrounded by his family, friends, music and dogs,” a statement posted to Buffett’s official website and social media pages said late Friday. “He lived his life like a song till the very last breath and will be missed beyond measure by so many.”

The statement did not say where Buffett died or give a cause of death. Illness had forced him to reschedule concerts in May and Buffett acknowledged in social media posts that he had been hospitalized but provided no specifics.

Margaritaville, released on Feb. 14, 1977, quickly took on a life of its own, becoming a state of mind for those “wastin’ away,” an excuse for a life of low-key fun and escapism for those “growing older, but not up.”

The song is the unhurried portrait of a loafer on his front porch, watching tourists sunbathe while a pot of shrimp is beginning to boil. The singer has a new tattoo, a likely hangover and regrets over a lost love. Somewhere there is a misplaced salt shaker.

“What seems like a simple ditty about getting blotto and mending a broken heart turns out to be a profound meditation on the often painful inertia of beach dwelling,” Spin magazine wrote in 2021. “The tourists come and go, one group indistinguishable from the other. Waves crest and break whether somebody is there to witness it or not. Everything that means anything has already happened and you’re not even sure when.”

The song — from the album Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes — spent 22 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and peaked at No. 8. The song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2016 for its cultural and historic significance, became a karaoke standard and helped brand Key West, Florida, as a distinct sound of music and a destination known the world over.

“There was no such place as Margaritaville,” Buffett told the Arizona Republic in 2021. “It was a made-up place in my mind, basically made up about my experiences in Key West and having to leave Key West and go on the road to work and then come back and spend time by the beach.”

The song soon inspired restaurants and resorts, turning Buffett’s alleged desire for the simplicity of island life into a multimillion brand. He landed at No. 13 in Forbes’ America’s Richest Celebrities in 2016 with a net worth of $550 million.

Music critics were never very kind to Buffett or his catalogue, including the sandy beach-side snack bar songs like Fins, Come Monday and Cheeseburgers in Paradise. But his legions of fans, called “Parrotheads,” regularly turned up for his concerts wearing toy parrots, cheeseburgers, sharks and flamingos on their heads, leis around their necks and loud Hawaiian shirts.

“It’s pure escapism is all it is,” he told the Republic. “I’m not the first one to do it, nor shall I probably be the last. But I think it’s really a part of the human condition that you’ve got to have some fun. You’ve got to get away from whatever you do to make a living or other parts of life that stress you out. I try to make it at least 50/50 fun to work and so far it’s worked out.”

His special Gulf Coast mix of country, pop, folk and rock added instruments and tonalities more commonly found in the Caribbean, like steel drums. It was a stew of steelpans, trombones and pedal steel guitar. Buffett’s incredible ear for hooks and light grooves were often overshadowed by his lyrics about fish tacos and sunsets.

Rolling Stone, in a review of Buffett’s 2020 album Life on the Flip Side, gave grudging props. “He continues mapping out his surfy, sandy corner of pop music utopia with the chill, friendly warmth of a multi-millionaire you wouldn’t mind sharing a tropically-themed 3 p.m. IPA with, especially if his gold card was on the bar when the last round came.”

Buffett’s evolving brand began in 1985 with the opening of a string of Margaritaville-themed stores and restaurants in Key West, followed in 1987 with the first Margaritaville Café nearby. Over the course of the next two decades, several more of each opened throughout Florida, New Orleans and California.

The brand has since expanded to dozens of categories, including resorts, apparel and footwear for men and women, a radio station, a beer brand, ice tea, tequila and rum, home décor, food items like salad dressing, Margaritaville Crunchy Pimento Cheese & Shrimp Bites and Margaritaville Cantina Style Medium Chunky Salsa, the Margaritaville at Sea cruise line and restaurants, including Margaritaville Restaurant, JWB Prime Steak and Seafood, 5 o’Clock Somewhere Bar & Grill and LandShark Bar & Grill.

There also was a Broadway-bound jukebox musical, Escape to Margaritaville, a romantic comedy in which a singer-bartender called Sully falls for the far more career-minded Rachel, who is vacationing with friends and hanging out at Margaritaville, the hotel bar where Sully works.

James William Buffett was born on Christmas day 1946 in Pascagoula, Mississippi, and raised in the port town of Mobile, Alabama. He graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and went from busking the streets of New Orleans to playing six nights a week at Bourbon Street clubs.

He released his first record, Down To Earth, in 1970 and issued seven more on a regular yearly clip, with his 1974 song Come Monday from his fourth studio album Living and Dying in ¾ Time, peaking at No. 30. Then came Margaritaville.

He performed on more than 50 studio and live albums, often accompanied by his Coral Reefer Band, and was constantly on tour. He earned two Grammy Award nominations, two Academy of Country Music Awards and a Country Music Association Award.

Buffett was actually in Austin, Texas, when the inspiration struck for Margaritaville. He and a friend had stopped for lunch at a Mexican restaurant before she dropped him at the airport for a flight home to Key West, so they got to drinking margaritas.

“And I kind of came up with that idea of this is just like Margarita-ville,” Buffett told the Republic. “She kind of laughed at that and put me on the plane. And I started working on it.”

He wrote some on the plane and finished it while driving down the Keys. “There was a wreck on the bridge,” he said. “And we got stopped for about an hour so I finished the song on the Seven Mile Bridge, which I thought was apropos.”

Buffett also was the author of numerous books including Where Is Joe Merchant? and A Pirate Looks at Fifty and added movies to his resume as co-producer and co-star of an adaptation of Carl Hiaasen’s novel Hoot.

Buffett is survived by his wife, Jane; daughters, Savannah and Sarah; and son, Cameron. 

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Artist Pays Tribute to Iranian Women Killed Fighting Injustice

An art exhibition in Rockville, Maryland, pays tribute to women in Iran who have been killed for speaking out against injustice. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.

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Tesla Launches New Model 3 in China, Europe With Longer Driving Range

Tesla on Friday unveiled a restyled Model 3 with a longer driving range in China and other markets including Europe, the Middle East, Australia and Japan, putting pressure on rivals who are expected to announce new electric vehicles in the next few days.

In China, the world’s largest auto market, the refreshed version of the Model 3 came with a starting price 12% higher than the previous, base rear-wheel drive model, reversing a trend toward price cuts which had sparked a price war between Tesla and its Chinese EV rivals.

The updated version of the Model 3 was Tesla’s first new or restyled car since it launched its global best-seller, the Model Y, in 2020. Tesla plans to start production of its Cybertruck later this year.

The rollout of the Model 3 in China and markets to which Tesla exports from its manufacturing hub there suggested that its Shanghai plant would be first to make the model. Tesla also makes the Model 3 at its plant in Fremont, California.

The new Model 3 promises a longer driving range for China, according to the company’s website. The standard version has a rated range of 606 kilometers based on China’s testing standards. That’s about 9% higher than the base model it replaces in China.

Tesla said it had started taking orders and would begin deliveries in China in the fourth quarter. In Australia, deliveries were set for January.

Tesla sold 64,285 China-made electric vehicles in July, down 31% from a month earlier, the most recent data from the China Passenger Car Association showed.

In a statement issued by its China operations, Tesla said the new model featured a better acoustic system, an improved and more comfortable interior and a display screen for back-seat passengers. Images of the exterior showed small changes that gave the sedan a sleeker front and new headlights.

The Tesla announcement came days before the Munich auto show where German automakers are expected to announce a run of new EVs. Those include a new version of the Volkswagen VOWG_p.DE ID.7 and a new electric CLA model sedan from Mercedes MBGn.DE.

Reuters first reported last November that Tesla was developing a revamped version of the Model 3 in a project codenamed “Highland.” People involved in the project said it was aimed at cutting production costs and boosting the appeal of the model.

In China, the new Model 3 starts at $35,807.78, the company’s website showed Friday.

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