this is your business briefing. i'm sally bundock. draining the batteries. more huge losses for electric car maker, tesla. but the boss, elon musk, insists they're well on the road to profitability. plus, showdown in beijing. team trump fly in as the us and china try to head off a looming trade war. and on the financial markets today, japan and again for a public holiday. that is wednesday's trading session per right now in hong kong, we are seeing losses down 1.6%. we will talk you through the losses later. let's get stuck in with the electric car maker, tesla.

its vehicles may not burn any fuel, but the company is burning through cash at an alarming rate — $6500 a minute, according to bloomberg. that's beginning to try the patience of once loyal investors. on wednesday, elon musk, its chief executive, promised that the firm will finally be profitable in the second half of this year, despite another quarter of huge losses. that show you some numbers. —— let's. tesla lost almost $710 million between january and march this year. that was its worst ever quarterly loss, and well over twice as much as this time last year. it has also been pouring money into the model 3 — its first truly mass market car. that is paying off though, total car production is up 40% this year. but tesla still has hundreds of thousands of customers waiting. and this chart shows you how tesla's cash flow since the start of the decade has barely been out of the red, but the costs of getting the model 3 off the ground recently

are clear to see. you can see how much it is losing. kim gittleson in new york has more. once you get to the 5—page letter touting tesla's latest production triumphs, under the hood of this report is not pretty. tesla is burning through cash at a much faster rate than many analysts had been expect and, to the tune of half $1 billion. at the heart of the problem is while tesla's production rate is improving, it is not improving fast enough. elon musk lane is the problem on an overreliance on automation, this he said causes downtime at the company's said causes downtime at the compa ny‘s factories. it said causes downtime at the company's factories. it cannot sell those cars and then it cannot get the revenue from those sales. that could cause the company to not have enough cash on hand in the future to pay its suppliers and creditors. all

of this has its investors terribly worried. tesla is the most bet against. on wall street and it is unlikely that this earning support will help the company removed that dubious honour. —— bet against stock on wall street. amanda stretton is a racing driver and motoring journalist. she's currently the motoring editor at the website confused.com. thank you for being on. elon musk, tesla, it is a disruptor, it does not do things in the normal way in the car industry but is trying to mass market now and that is proving difficult. that's right, yeah. i think for many years, tesla, it was niche, they had a really low volume and they were creating a niche, dynamic, high—value product with the model s. they are now trying to

scale up and facing the that conventional manufacturers have had when they face these problems of scale. i like to think of them as a sort of battleground between a hardware, traditional automotive company and a software, tech company, who can move very quickly and be very agile. one of the things we found just amazing to watch was the magic of elon musk, how he was able to get all these investors on board and raise incredible amounts of money on wall street despite the fa ct of money on wall street despite the fact that this company had yet to raise profit and there were lots of questions about whether he would deliver on his promises, he does have a real element about him. the question is will he deliver this time? you get the impression that people are starting to run out patients. there is, there is a lot of what is and look into the short term, they are talking about when they reach 5000 units per on the model three, that is when they can see themselves breaking even that

they are still so far offered and they are still so far offered and they consistently missed the target. they are two months away from that, imean is they are two months away from that, i mean is that realistic? well, i think we have heard targets from elon musk consistently and they have been consistently missed. i think within two months, it is probably over ambitious which then leaves the question, they are going to need to raise more capital to stay afloat, which of course puts the company and morejeopardy. if which of course puts the company and more jeopardy. if anyone can which of course puts the company and morejeopardy. if anyone can pull a rabbit out of a bad, elon musk is the man, he certainly has a very loyal following and a sort of mythical persona about him. he absolutely does, that is for sure but when tesla started out, he was on his own, but now all of the carmakers around the world are coming out with equivalents, and outward looking, financially viable equivalent. not only that because traditional car manufacturers go through a process, a much longer process , through a process, a much longer process, tesla is sort of design to manufacture, they are looking at 12 months for a model. traditionally in

a car maker, you would be looking at 36 months, that is to make sure that all of the processes and software is correct. tesla does not come at it like that, they put out as soon as they feel they can then send lots of softwa re they feel they can then send lots of software updates to the car to iron out any of the problems. so they are very disruptive and... i mean that who knows, who knows? it is... amanda, thank you so much for coming in. so many of you have sent in your views about tesla and elon musk. keep those coming in. let's go to china now, where the us treasury secretary steven mnuchin, along with a trade delegation, is about to begin talks with chinese officials. they're hoping to ease the escalating trade dispute between the two countries. according to the bbc‘s team in china, the impact of that dispute is already being felt, with imports of ford vehicles being blocked ahead of the talks. our china correspondent robin brant is in shanghai. tea m

team trump has arrived and it is quite a force, isn't it? the question is how much progress will they make in trade talks? well, i think the expectations are pretty low, frankly. let's talk firstly though about ford, the us number two automaker. understanding the past few days, in the buildup to negotiations, that their normal business in a key port up in the north—east china, where they import and export vehicles, i have been told that business has been put on hold there, suspended temporarily, but for the linking that the buildup to these negotiations and that is just a sign i think the pressure, the pushback the chinese authorities able to put on. and in terms of those who are there, we have the treasury secretary, the commerce secretary, there is a whole line of people. you mentioned the difficulty ford is facing, what are we looking for in terms of progress, what is the best hope? well, they are going

to have meetings tomorrow, then there is dinner tonight. the plan is to leave on friday. aside from that, it is kind of a famous five really, led by steve mnuchin, the former goldman sachs executive. he is the perhaps most pragmatic amongst the five. steal is his speciality and thatis five. steal is his speciality and that is a big part of the dispute between the us. robert lai ties is the us trade representative, he is there as well, here's the one who has done all of the new sure, all the detailed work on what they see as china's contributions particularly on intellectual property theft. we have another adviser and finally the man who wrote death via china, he is perhaps the most hawkish among this group. let's stay with china, because mobile device maker xiaomi has revealed plans for a huge floatation on the hong kong stock exchange.

xiaomi has been called the "apple of china", so the figures are going to be very large. rico hizon is following this. he is now asia business hub. rico, it's a case of xiaomi the money? xiaomi the money indeed. it could be worth $3 billion when it lists on the hong kong stock exchange and it could be the world's biggest public share offering since 2014. we still do not know the price and the listing date yet there is speculation it will take place in july and it will be the public offering since alibaba. despite all the excitement and optimism, there are still some investors who are concerned about the slowing smartphone market but xiaomi, more than 70% of its revenues comes from smart phones. —— that could hurt

xiaomi. recently, a slowdown in smartphone sales has been forecast. all right, thank you very much. let's squeeze in a few other stories. the commonwealth bank of australia has been forced to reveal it lost the records of almost 20 million accounts and decided not to inform its customers. following a report by buzzfeed, the bank — australia's largest — admitted it had lost two magnetic tapes containing 15 years of data on customer names, addresses and account numbers, but no pins or passwords. spotify shares dropped as much as 9% after the music streaming giant's results disappointed investors. in its first set of earnings since it listed on the new york stock exchange, spotify said revenue rose 26% to $1.36 billion in the three months of the year. just as a really quickly, asian stocks are mixed. the federal reserve said inflation is close to its target and of course kept rates as they are in the us. that is your

business briefing. polling stations will open at 7 o'clock this morning for voting in local elections across england, in the biggest test of public opinion since the general election 11 months ago. most councils are counting votes overnight, but others will declare results during the day on friday. our political correspondent jonathan blake reports. across london and in towns and cities around england, people are going to the polls. there are 4371 council seats up for grabs in 150 year tree authorities, metropolitan boroughs and district councils. six may all elections are also being held. all council seats are being

fought in london and some cities, including manchester, leeds and newcastle. elsewhere, a third of some seats are up newcastle. elsewhere, a third of some seats are up for grabs. elsewhere, in the largest elections since the general elections last year. —— in the first election since. the first results are expected at around midnight that cou nts expected at around midnight that counts in some areas will not start until the morning, so the final results will not be known until early on friday evening. jonathan blake, bbc news, westminster. a think tank has questioned why health chiefs didn't do more to find out why the take up for routine breast screening in england for 50 to 70—year—old women had fallen to its lowest in a decade. yesterday, the government announced up to 270 lives may have been shortened because of the error. the institute for public policy research said the data should have raised the alarm a lot earlier. will be talking about that in

detail, that stories on the trunk pages of all the newspapers further. coming up at 6:00am: breakfast will have more of the day's sports and business news. that is coming up on the activist. —— breakfast. this is the briefing from bbc news. the latest headlines: the company at the heart of the facebook data scandal, cambridge analytica, says it can't stay in business anymore and is to close down. america's new top diplomat is sworn in. mike pompeo pledges to change the course of history on the korean peninsula" now it is time look at the stories that are making the headlines in media across the world. we begin with the independent, which leads with reports that nearly 500,000 women in the uk missed out on nhs cancer screening because of an it error.

its thought around 270 of those affected could have died prematurely as a result of the error. in the guardian, the political consultancy cambridge analytica is closing down. the company has been plagued by scandal since the personal data of about 50 million americans and at least a million britons had been harvested from facebook and improperly shared. the south china morning post says, according to beijing, china has insisted that it will not succumb to united states pressure to change its industrial policy or offer major concessions on the bilateral trade deficit. the ft reports there are new signs of european economic weakness emerging as the eurozone recorded it slowest growth in 18 months, heightening fears that the currency union's post—crisis recovery is petering out. and on the mashable website, there appears to be a positive ending to the recent racial bias incident involving two black men at a starbucks in philadelphia. rashon nelson and donte robinson

both settled with city authorities for $1 each, and asked the city to pledge $200,000 to develop programs for young entrepreneurs. with me is jane foley, who is a senior fx strategist at rabobank. let's get started. so the story on the front