The 500kg Microlino is part of a new set challenging the ever-increasing domination of huge cars

Driving through central London in a tiny Microlino electric car, barely visible between the hulking SUVs, it’s surprising to be the focus of so much attention. “Yes, Lego car!” shouts a scaffolder.

Made by Micro, the family-owned Swiss company behind the mini-micro kick scooters, and modelled on the bubble cars that had a brief heyday in the 1950s, the two-seater is only 2.5 metres long – marginally smaller than a Smart car. The most unusual feature is its one and only door (there is also a rear hatch for accessing the boot), which is at the front. The windscreen and bonnet swing open to let you in.

Deals this month could see two of the UK’s most prominent companies fall into foreign ownership

• Business live – latest updates

Shareholders in Royal Mail’s owner and in the mining company Anglo American are awaiting a final deadline on Wednesday for firm offers that could see two of the UK’s most prominent companies fall into foreign ownership.

Czech billionaire Daniel Křetínský has made an approach to International Distributions Services (IDS), which runs Royal Mail, while Australia’s BHP is trying to buy its rival Anglo American, a stalwart of London’s FTSE 100 index.

Funding round values artificial intelligence startup at $18bn before investment, says multibillionaire

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI has closed a $6bn (£4.7bn) investment round that will make it among the best-funded challengers to OpenAI.

The startup is only a year old, but it has rapidly built its own large language model (LLM), the technology underpinning many of the recent advances in generative artificial intelligence capable of creating human-like text, pictures, video, and voices.

Performance across network still poor as delays and cancellations continue, says public accounts committee

The government has “achieved very little” in reforms to Great Britain’s railways six years after identifying the need for big changes to improve the situation for passengers and taxpayers, according to an influential parliamentary committee.

MPs on the cross-party public accounts committee said the Department for Transport has not paid enough attention to the needs of passengers or taxpayers, six years after a botched introduction of new timetables led to chaos on the rail network and a widespread consensus that deep changes were needed.

Analysis of real-world data suggests annual cost of fuelling PHEVs is nearly double manufacturers’ claims

Drivers of bestselling plug-in hybrid cars pay £500 a year more on fuel for their cars than manufacturers’ figures suggest, according to analysis of real-world data, largely because owners tend to charge them less frequently than expected.

Laboratory tests of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) suggest that fuel should cost £560 a year, but real-life data suggests the cost is nearly double that, at £1,059 a year, according to analysis by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), a climate research group.

Petrolheads are quick to scorn the idea of electric car racing, but the series’ chief executive is sure that time, technology – and even geography – are on his side

Jeff Dodds has been a fan of Formula One “all my life”, he says. That is probably a good thing because, as chief executive of electric racing series Formula E, he must find the comparison with its fossil-fuelled cousin is constant.

So he takes it head-on. Such is the growth and improvement in technology in Formula E that one day, he says, it is “realistic that a question will be asked about whether both can exist together”. Talking to the Observer in the race company’s west London headquarters, he adds that maybe one day, as Formula E develops, “they won’t [both exist]”.

Norway’s sovereign wealth fund to take full control of the largest shopping centre in Yorkshire

• Business live – latest updates

The property developer British Land has sold its 50% stake in the Meadowhall shopping centre in Sheffield to Norway’s sovereign wealth fund in a £360m deal, ending its holding in the site after 25 years.

Norges Bank Investment Management will take full control of the shopping centre, the largest in Yorkshire. It already owned 50%, having first invested in 2012.

Video game services company backs EQT private equity bid in latest foreign move on UK-listed firm

• Business live – latest updates

The video game services company Keywords Studios has said it would be willing to accept a £2bn buyout offer, in the latest foreign takeover of a London-listed business.

Shares in the Dublin-headquartered Keywords jumped 62% on Monday morning after it said it would be minded to recommend an offer from the Swedish private equity investor EQT Group.

Budget airline says summer ticket prices will be lower than expected

• Business live – latest updates

Ryanair has reported record annual profits of €1.9bn (£1.6bn) as the Irish airline announced the appointment of former UK home secretary Amber Rudd to its board and said summer fares would be lower than previously expected.

Profits after tax increased by more than a third in the year to the end of March compared with the previous year as the number of passengers increased by 9% to 184 million – 23% above the heights reached before the pandemic.

New furnaces will be powered by electricity from 2027 but up to 2,800 workers will be made redundant

Tata Steel has reached a deal with the UK’s electricity grid to start supplying the energy for new furnaces in south Wales from 2027, as the company moves ahead with its plan despite union opposition.

The agreement with the National Grid’s electricity supply operator (ESO), the company that controls how energy is moved around Great Britain, will provide hundreds of megawatts of power to a new electric arc furnace at the steelworks in Port Talbot.