China's cool reply to heated air-con debate

Quest for relief

When the record-breaking heat arrived, demand immediately overwhelmed supply and led to stock shortages across Europe.

But even if a customer is able to buy an air conditioner, he or she finds installation often involves layers of administrative procedures.

In Paris, for example, if an installation alters the appearance of a building — by attaching an outdoor compressor to an exterior wall, drilling through the facade or mounting equipment outside a balcony — homeowners generally must first make a submission to the local authorities before any work can begin. The formal review period alone is typically one month.

Besides, many Parisians live in apartment buildings where exterior walls are considered common property. Any installation affecting those areas often requires approval from the condominium association, whose general assemblies may meet only once a year.

Large parts of Paris consist of historic buildings, many located within protected heritage districts. In such cases, projects may also require authorization from the Architectes des Batiments de France, the body responsible for preserving France's architectural heritage.

"Generally speaking, after spending six months or even a year dealing with all these procedures, the frustration has already outweighed the heat," said Zhang Yuanyuan, a Chinese woman who has lived in Paris for more than seven years without installing an air conditioner in her apartment.

Faced with soaring temperatures, empty shelves, lengthy approval procedures and high installation costs, not everyone chose to wait.

Among them was Denis Yurchak, an Austrian software engineer that founded online-calling website Yadaphone, who documented on X his quest to secure one of the few air conditioners still available in Europe.

He was searching for Midea's PortaSplit. The unit was co-developed by Midea's engineering teams in China and Germany, which proposed the product concept after identifying the "pain point" of local AC users, and conducting testing and iterations since 2024.

The design eliminates the need to drill through walls or permanently alter a building's facade, making it attractive for renters and residents of historic European buildings where installing traditional air conditioners can be legally or practically difficult.

So far, there have been no publicly reported cases of European users being fined or penalized by local authorities for using the product.

On June 23, after seeing weather forecasts predicting an exceptional heat wave in Austria, Yurchak decided it was finally time to buy an air conditioner.

The first model he checked was a Comfee portable air conditioner. Yet the model that sold for about 200 euros the previous year had risen to around 650 euros, so he turned to the PortaSplit and found that every retailer he checked was sold out.

On secondhand marketplaces, units with an original retail price of around 899 euros were being offered at double or even triple that amount, with some listings climbing into several thousand euros.

The shortage became so severe that someone created a website called braucheklima.de — literally "need air conditioner" in German — to monitor inventory updates across major appliance retailers in real time.

"So I set up three AI agents looking for this AC 24/7 and have been monitoring the market myself," Yurchak wrote on X.

He first considered buying the product from Hungary, the only European Union country where it still appeared to be available. The plan ultimately failed because the retailer would deliver only within Hungary, and no forwarding company was willing to transport the unit across the border.

Then, shortly after 2 am on June 25, one of his AI agents detected a single PortaSplit that had just appeared in stock in Linz, Austria, about 200 kilometers from his home.

"I jumped on my phone, rushed through the reservation form, and went to bed happy," he wrote.

The next morning, he grabbed a coffee and set off before dawn. But by the time he arrived at the store, the listed price had increased from 749 euros to 849 euros. It was after he demanded to talk to the manager that they agreed to sell it at the reservation price. "I was happy like a child — this was the only Midea left in the whole country, and it was mine!"