Tesla has issued a recall for 127,785 Model 3 vehicles, including 93,578 China-made sedans from model years 2019 to 2022 over what has been described as faulty inverters, according to a statement published Thursday by China’s State Administration for Market Regulation. The US EV giant said that these vehicles have a manufacturing issue with the inverters, a part of the power system, which could shut the car down while driving and increase the risk of a crash. The recall involves an over-the-air software update for all the cars and, in some cases, the replacement of faulty components. [SAMR release, in Chinese]

Intelligent Terminal Golden Seal Alliance (ITGSA), an alliance formed by Alibaba, Baidu, OPPO, Tencent, Vivo, and Xiaomi, announced on Thursday that it will push to drop support for 32-bit apps. The processing power of these apps is slower, older, and less secure, while newer 64-bit apps run faster and are the current mainstream choice for mobile devices. Beginning in April, Oppo, Vivo, and Xiaomi app stores will cease supporting all 32-bit apps, except for gaming apps. Google Play dropped 32-bit apps last year, while Apple began phasing out 32-bit apps with the launch of iOS 11 in 2017. [ITGSA]

Leading Chinese semiconductor maker SMIC announced on Wednesday that it will donate RMB 10 million ($1.6 million) to the city of Shanghai as it battles a major Covid outbreak. The eastern Chinese financial hub has seen rapidly rising case numbers of the Omicron variant in recent weeks and has implemented a city-wide lockdown. Shanghai-based semiconductor businesses such as SMIC and TSMC have said that they won’t stop production despite the measures and even though the neighboring city of Kunshan has shut down dozens of semiconductor-related firms due to the outbreak. [SMIC, press release]

China’s biggest messenger app WeChat announced on Wednesday that it has added the ability to pay with China’s digital currency to its wallet function in all of the 23 regions where the eRMB is being trialed, including Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. Users need to apply for accounts with Tencent’s WeBank before they can use the digital currency. Payments options via the eRMB are now available in the Tencent-owned super app’s wallet interface. Tencent’s major rival Alibaba has been testing digital currency in its payment app Alipay since May 2021, Yicai reports. [ITHome, in Chinese]

Li Auto, a major Chinese EV maker, announced on Wednesday that it will delay the release of its new L9 model SUV, which was scheduled for April 16, due to surging Covid cases in China. The L9 is Li Auto’s second model and is designed for the family market. The company has pledged that the new model will have a host of entertainment features, including high-spec display screens, stereo sound, and connections for Nintendo Switch devices.

JD’s president Xu Lei has been appointed as CEO of the company to succeed its billionaire founder Richard Liu, the online retailer announced today. Xu will join the company’s board of directors as an executive director while Liu will remain as board chairman. Liu will focus on guiding the company’s long-term strategies, mentoring younger management, and leading the revitalization of rural areas, the statement says. Xu was named president of the company in September, paving the way for Liu to step back from daily operations. Liu joins a slew of Chinese tech tycoons including Pinduoduo’s Colin Huang and ByteDance’s Zhang Yiming to leave CEO roles in the companies they founded in the past year. [JD press release]

BYD has announced that it ceased production of internal combustion engine cars in March and will now focus on electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid vehicles. Despite the milestone, China’s biggest EV maker added in a statement on Sunday that it will continue producing gasoline engines for its plug-in hybrid models, which accounted for nearly half of its car sales in March. China has set a target of ending the sale of gas-powered vehicles by 2035 and of reaching carbon neutrality by 2060. [BYD statement]