Mark your calendars: Tesla CEO Elon Musk suggested this afternoon that his electric automaker is going all-in on autonomous vehicle tech—and that Tesla’s robotaxi will be unveiled on August 8.
The announcement, posted by Musk on X Friday afternoon, capped off a weird day of reports and counter-reports that sent Tesla’s stock on a roller-coaster ride, slipping down 6 points on the day before recovering in after-hours trading. Earlier in the day, Reuters reported that Tesla had canceled long-gestating plans to develop an affordable electric vehicle for the masses. The “next generation” vehicle is widely thought to be key to the electric automaker’s survival, especially as competition heats up in the EV space. Instead, the news agency reported, Tesla would focus on building a robotaxi, which would use much of the same hardware as the low-cost vehicle.
But Musk logged on to X to deny at least part of the Reuters story. “Reuters is lying (again),” he posted, without specifying what the news agency got wrong. Hours later, he seemed to confirm part of the report by posting that Tesla’s next product release would focus on robotaxis.
The apparent pivot is surprising for a few reasons.
Tesla has promised for years, but has not delivered, truly self-driving technology. In 2016, Tesla said that all the company’s vehicles would be shipped with the hardware necessary to drive themselves—allowing drivers to nap or even send their cars cross-country without anyone inside.
In a “master plan” posted by Musk that year, he outlined a (still) futuristic scenario in which Tesla owners could share their autonomous vehicles with others. “When true self-driving is approved by regulators,” he wrote, customers would “be able to add your car to the Tesla shared fleet just by tapping a button on the Tesla phone app and have it generate income for you while you’re at work or on vacation.” In 2019, Musk told a room full of investors that by the next year, the automaker would have “over a million Tesla cars on the road with full self-driving hardware.” That didn’t happen.
Meanwhile, Tesla’s driver assistance tech, called Full Self-Driving, is technically only a “level 2” on the five-point autonomy scale, meaning the car can pilot itself only with driver supervision. Tesla’s latest self-driving software update is the first to not be labeled as “beta” by the automaker.
Still, Tesla’s driver assistance technology has been heavily criticized by the National Transportation Safety Board, the US’s transportation safety watchdog. A two-year investigation by the nation’s top road safety regulator concluded late last year with a determination that Tesla’s technology could be misused by drivers because it didn’t force them to pay sufficient attention while driving. Tesla, which said it didn’t agree with regulators’ analysis, pushed out fixes to customers via over-the-air software updates. Tesla maintains that its driver assistance features are safer than human drivers.
What’s more, other autonomous vehicle developers have faced serious growing pains in the last half-decade. A technology that was once touted as “just around the corner” proved both harder and way more expensive than once planned. Today, years after most major auto and tech manufacturers pledged self-driving software, just a few major players remain. After billions of dollars in dedicated research and development and more than 7 million miles driven, Google spinoff Waymo only provides paid taxi rides in two cities—Phoenix and San Francisco—though it plans to launch in Austin, Texas, as well as Los Angeles and the wider San Francisco Bay Area soon. Another robotaxi competitor, General Motors’ Cruise, has put its entire service on pause after a driverless taxi struck and injured a pedestrian, which led to a clash with California regulators. If Tesla wants to roll out robotaxi service everywhere its cars are sold, its plans will be even more ambitious than these competitors’, who have been working on the problem of autonomy for years.
The high interest rates over the last few years have led to the explosive growth of cash holdings, including certificates of deposit (like guaranteed investment certificates (GICs) in Canada) and money market funds. Cash holdings in the fourth quarter of 2023 increased by $270 billion to $18 trillion. Despite that relatively small increase, the rise in value of U.S. equities has led to American households to hold more of their wealth in equities than at any point in history (save the dot-com boom in 2000).
There are likely many reasons for this shift, but these factors could likely be the most prominent influences:
It’s just simple math, since U.S. stocks are on such a long “winning streak” post-2008, the value of those assets is going to be worth more relative to other assets.
As companies complete the shift from defined-benefit pension plans to defined-contribution plans, it’s possible more stocks are being purchased at the individual level.
The average investor got smarter thanks to much more accessible information. Consequently, they now understand the long-term wealth-creating potential of owning large companies (both domestically and internationally).
Millennials and older Gen Zers are sticking around in the stock market after being introduced to it during the meme-stock and pandemic world of 2021.
There hasn’t been a brutal bear market for U.S. stocks since 2008. Sure, there were substantial pullbacks at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and then again in 2022. But, those were relatively short-lived. When the stocks did come back, they returned in a massive way—thus, rewarding buy-and-hold investors.
A contrarian investor might say this indicates an oversold market. We’re not so sure that’s the case. Given the long-term track record of U.S. stocks, we’d be surprised to see stock allocations fall below 35% of household assets in the foreseeable future. That’s as low as it got during the worst days of the pandemic. There has been a durable paradigm shift in how investors see the stock market from a risk/reward perspective.
Canadian investors aren’t doing so bad either. We hit a record high last quarter for financial assets of $9.74 trillion, and overall net worth reached $16.4 trillion. Financial assets (shorthand for stocks and bonds) increased overall net worth by about half a trillion bucks, while residential real estate was down about $158 billion. Household debt was up 3.4%, but that’s actually the slowest rise in debt since 1990, and the debt-to-income ratio actually fell slightly.
Will new corporations spin off more value?
When big corporations buy new companies or dive into new lines of business they often tout the advantages of integration and synergies. The theory goes that the asset will be more valuable as a cog in the bigger machine. General Electric (GE/NYSE) and 3M (MMM/NYSE) are two of the world’s largest industrial companies and it was interesting to see them move in the opposite direction this week.
In contrast to the bigger-is-better theory, companies can sometimes get too big and be hindered by layers of bureaucracy. In that case, the spin-off idea is put forward, in which a part of the company will be separated into its own entity so it can focus on providing a narrower product or service. The more narrowly-focused company should, in theory, excel as it’s no longer distracted by the tangle of corporate machinery at the parent company.
GE completed its corporate restructuring last Wednesday, as the former parent company has now been divided into:
GE Vernova (GEV/NYSE): The energy assets of the old GE.
GE Aerospace (GE/NYSE): The old GE market ticker continues on as a pure aerospace company.
GE HealthCare (GEHC/NASDAQ): GEHC was successfully spun off in late 2022, and is up about 57% since it started trading.
GE Aerospace shares finished down 2.42% on their first day of trading, while GE Vernova was down 1.42%.
Tesla sales fell sharply last quarter as competition in the electric vehicle market increased worldwide and price cuts the company enacted months ago failed to entice more buyers.
The Austin, Texas, company owned by Elon Musk, said Tuesday it delivered 386,810 vehicles from January through March, almost 9% below the 423,000 it sold during the same period last year. The company blamed the decline in part on phasing in an updated version of the Model 3 sedan at its Fremont, California factory. Plant shutdowns due to shipping diversions in the Red Sea, and an arson attack that knocked out power to its German factory also caused fewer deliveries, it said.
Last year, Tesla dramatically lowered prices by up to $20,000 for some models. In March, it temporarily knocked $1,000 off the Model Y, its top-selling vehicle. The reductions cut into the company’s profit margins, which spooked investors.
The drop in Tesla’s sales marks the first time its number of vehicle deliveries has fallen since 2020, the Wall Street Journal reported. The company’s poor performance last quarter “was an unmitigated disaster that is hard to explain away,” Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives said Tuesday.
In its letter to investors in January, Tesla predicted “notably lower” sales growth this year. The company added that it’s between two big growth waves — one from global expansion of the Models 3 and Y; and one from the Model 2, a new smaller and less expensive vehicle.
“For Musk, this is a fork-in-the-road time to get Tesla through this turbulent period, otherwise troubling days could be ahead,” Ives said. “With the ongoing debacle around margins, production and ongoing macro events, Musk will need to quickly take the reins back in to regain confidence in the eyes of Wall Street with a big few quarters ahead.”
Automakers around the globe have indeed rolled out EVs aimed at competing with the likes of Tesla’s Model Y and Cybertruck. As more Americans grow curious about owning EVs, companies like Ford and General Motors are investing billions of dollars to produce vehicles that are less expensive than Tesla cars. Between 2018 and 2020, Tesla accounted for 80% of EV sales in the U.S., but that figure fell to 55% in 2023, according to Cox Automotive.
A record 1.2 million EVs were sold in the U.S. last year, according to Cox data. A semiconductor chip shortage three years ago kept some major automakers from running their EV factories at full capacity, but those woes have dissipated and companies are starting to rev up production, auto experts said.
During the quarter, Tesla lost production time in Germany after what is suspected to have been an arson attack cut its power supply. U.S. production was slowed by an upgrade to the Model 3, and Ives estimated that Tesla’s China sales slid 3% to 4% during the period.
Deliveries of the Models 3 and Y, which are by far Tesla’s top sellers, fell 10.3% year over year to 369,783. Sales of the company’s other models, the X and S and the new Cybertruck, rose almost 60% to 17,027. Tesla produced 10% more vehicles than it sold during the first quarter.
Khristopher J. Brooks is a reporter for CBS MoneyWatch. He previously worked as a reporter for the Omaha World-Herald, Newsday and the Florida Times-Union. His reporting primarily focuses on the U.S. housing market, the business of sports and bankruptcy.
The news comes with a new software update and just a few months after the company recalled more than 2 million cars. Most Tesla vehicles come with the technology built in for Full Self Driving. However, owners have to pay an upcharge, of up to $12,000, to unlock the technology for use.
Tesla recalled 2,031,220 vehicles, including their Model 3 (2017-2023), Model X (2016-2023), Model S (2012-2023) and Model Y (2020-2023).
The reason?
“In certain circumstances when Autosteer is engaged, and the driver does not maintain responsibility for vehicle operation and is unprepared to intervene as necessary or fails to recognize when Autosteer is canceled or not engaged, there may be an increased risk of a crash,” the recall read in part.
In response to the recall, Tesla issued a remedy to the problem via an over-the-air update.
“At no cost to customers, affected vehicles will receive an over-the-air software remedy, which is expected to begin deploying to certain affected vehicles on or shortly after December 12, 2023,” Tesla said.
But here’s the thing: The update didn’t actually disable the “Autosteer” function that is part of the Autopilot feature in Tesla vehicles. Instead, it beefed up the warnings drivers get if they’re found to not be paying attention to the vehicle.
Keeping your eyes on the road and hands on the steering wheel, while being ready to take over at any moment, is part of the agreement while using Autopilot functions.
“Neither the recall nor its remedy disables Autosteer or features that rely on Autosteer. As mentioned, the remedy will incorporate additional controls and alerts to those already existing on affected vehicles to further encourage the driver to adhere to their continuous driving responsibility whenever Autosteer is engaged, which includes keeping their hands on the steering wheel and paying attention to the roadway,” Tesla said.
Fast forward three months, now Musk is giving everyone that owns a Tesla capable of self-driving the opportunity to unlock the tech for free.
“We didn’t know that until you said something about it,” said Darius Haywood while charging outside of a Houston Tesla dealership.
The giveaway came in the wake of the massive recall, but also with open arms.
Haywood is one of many interested in trying out the feature that costs a third of the sticker price on an entry-level Model 3.
“The possibilities is endless with these cars,” he said. “I feel like Elon Musk, I feel like he trying to push his brand out to stand out in a certain way than what other people think about it.”
Regardless, the idea of more self driving cars on Houston highways than ever before has some drivers, including fellow Tesla owners, a little concerned.
“Some people are responsible, some people can be irresponsible,” Erni Salguero said while charging his Tesla.
“I don’t know how to feel about a car driving by itself,” added Ashunti Sanders.
Tesla’s own safety data says their vehicles driving on Autopilot average one crash for every five million miles driven.
That’s ten times fewer than the U.S. national average.
While the tech is there, it might just take time for the trust to follow.
Copyright 2024 by KPRC Click2Houston – All rights reserved.
With so much going on in the world, it might have slipped past some Canadian investors that the U.S. fossil fuel industry just hit an interesting milestone. America now has the honour of producing more oil in a single day than any other country in the history of our planet. Yes, even more than Saudi Arabia.
When you consider that the USA has been a massive oil importer for much of the last 70 years, it’s pretty noteworthy that the U.S. exported four million barrels of oil per day last year.
It certainly appears that investors are not shying away from providing capital to American fossil fuel companies. It also means that Canadian efforts to turn away from natural gas (despite our allies essentially begging us for more yet again this week) may not add up to much in the great push against global warming.
The USA is now the world’s largest exporter of natural gas, as well.
Wow, it’s a good thing the Keystone XL pipeline got cancelled, as it appears to have put a stop to all that American fossil fuel business—and at hardly any cost to the Canadian economy either!
Economists would argue that the best way, by far, to reduce the amount of fossil fuel being burned would be to put a tax on it. How popular is that tax on carbon these days anyway?
Clearly, the world has to decide on what sort of level playing field it wants to create in regards to the rules for carbon reduction efforts, as Canada’s attempt to go it alone doesn’t seem to be gaining much traction.
Canadians dreading their spring and summer mortgage renewals got some good news this week, as Canada’s annualized inflation rate dropped to 2.8%.
The Statistics Canada report stated that the slower growth of cell phone service fees, groceries, and internet bills were key reasons why the consumer price index (CPI) number came in significantly lower than the 3.1% economists had reported.
The main takeaways from Tuesday’s StatCan report are:
Rent and mortgage costs are still the main drivers of inflation. Excluding shelter costs, the CPI is up only 1.3% from a year ago.
Gas prices rose 4% in February from January, and were a major reason for the 3.1% economist inflation predictions. If prices return to a decline (as has been the trend), it would continue to be disinflationary.
Notably, cell phone plans were down an astounding 26.5% from last February.
While grocery prices have risen by 22% over the past three years, it appears we’re finally reaching an equilibrium. February was the first time in two years that grocery CPI was lower than overall CPI headline.
Restaurant meals, property taxes and electricity were outliers above the 3% CPI mark.
The preferred metrics of core inflation for the Bank of Canada (BoC) are also subsiding, and are down to 2.2% annualized over the last three months.
If we use interest-rate swaps to judge the likelihood of an interest rate cut, there is roughly an 80% chance (up from 50% before the CPI numbers came in), that the BoC will cut rates in June. (Interest rate swaps are basically a way for the free market to speculate or bet on what interest rates will be at a specific point in time.)
In a related note, as the chances of interest-rate cuts increase, the value of the Canadian Dollar falls. The CAD hit a 3-month low on Tuesday. Overall, that’s good news for mortgage holders, bad news for USD-paying snowbirds.
By comparison, Japan raised its interest rates for the first time in 17 years this week, ending the world’s last negative interest rate policy. The Eurozone also released its inflation data this week, and in a pattern quite similar to Canada’s, it also surprised to the downside, as inflation fell to 2.8% from 3.1%.
This week, both the U.S. Federal Reserve and the Bank of Canada reiterated plans for rate cuts later in the year. Here’s how mortgage rates are responding.
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Soft earnings for Power Corp and Alimentation Couche-Tard
It wasn’t exactly a banner week for Canadian heavyweights Power Corp and Alimentation Couche-Tard.
Canadian earnings highlights of the week
While Power Corp reports in CAD, Couche-Tard reports in USD.
Power Corporation of Canada (POW/TSX): Earnings per share of $0.89 (versus $1.08 predicted). Revenue for the quarter was not provided by Power Corp at press time.
Alimentation Couche-Tard (ATD/TSX): Earnings per share of USD$0.65 (versus USD$0.84 predicted). Revenue of USD$19.62 billion (versus USD$20.85 predicted).
Shares of Couche-Tard were down 4.2% on Thursday after its earnings release. ATD president and CEO Brian Hannasch stated that the lower-than-expected earnings were primarily due to lowered customer traffic and decreased gross fuel margin in the US. He went on to talk about how the integration of the TotalEnergies acquisition is going smoothly and that the company is excited about adding four new countries and 2,175 stores to Couche-Tard’s network of convenience stores.
Power Corp shares didn’t suffer quite the same fate as Couch-Tard, as they were up 1.4% on Thursday, despite the significant earnings miss. It appears that a 7.1% dividend increase was enough to quell any fears that the company was underperforming its current valuation.
It seemed like a good idea at the time. Now we know better.
Hertz, reeling from a bankruptcy and the pandemic, announced plans to buy 100,000 Teslas in late 2021. The splashy move certainly helped Elon Musk’s electric-vehicle maker, which saw its market cap surge past $1 trillion for the first time.
Hertz enjoyed a bump in its market value as well, and the car-rental giant hired NFL star Tom Brady to show off its new fleet of Teslas.
“How do we democratize access to electric vehicles? That’s a very important part of our strategy,” interim CEO Mark Fields said at the time. “Tesla is the only manufacturer that can produce EVs at scale.”
But Hertz paid close to list prices for the Teslas, rather than demanding a large discount as car-rental giants often do. That decision would come back to bite it.
Last year, Musk’s EV maker cut prices across its lineup to boost sales. That not only angered individual customers who’d recently bought a Tesla at a higher price, but it also crushed the resale value of Hertz’s used EVs.
‘Elevated costs’ of EVs
This January, the rental giant revealed that it was selling off 20,000 electric vehicles, noting the costly depreciation, weak demand, and pricey repairs. It took a $245 million hit and suffered its steepest quarterly loss since the pandemic.
“The elevated costs associated with EVs persisted,” Hertz CEO Stephen Scherr said at the time. “Efforts to wrestle it down proved to be more challenging.”
This week, Hertz announced that Scherr would be replaced by Gil West, the former COO of General Motors’ Cruise robotaxi unit. While Scherr took over after the Tesla deal, under his leadership Hertz continued its focus on EVs, placing big orders for them with GM and Polestar.
The ill-fated EV push followed a difficult stretch for Hertz that culminated in billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn unloading his substantial stake in the car-rental company in 2020 days after its bankruptcy. In 2014, Icahn had begun acquiring his stake in Hertz, which was struggling. He called Hertz “a great brand” that he hoped would “return to its former glory,” and three of his allies soon had board seats, while the hunt for a new CEO began.
After selling selling his stake, Icahn said, “Yesterday I sold my equity position at a significant loss, but this does not mean that I don’t continue to have faith in the future of Hertz.”
The following year, the company announced the decision to buy Teslas. Now it’s about to welcome yet another new CEO, again tasked with turning things around.
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Hertz Global Holdings Inc. is replacing its chief executive officer in the wake of a disastrous bet on electric vehicles that the company began unwinding in recent months.
Stephen Scherr, who ran Hertz for just over two years after three decades at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., has decided to step down, the rental-car company said late Friday in a statement. It’s replacing him with Gil West, the former chief operating officer of General Motors Co.’s Cruise robotaxi unit. West also will join the board of directors on April 1, according to the statement, which confirmed an earlier Bloomberg report.
Scherr, 59, joined Hertz several months after it emerged from bankruptcy and started making splashy wagers on electric vehicles. Under new owners Knighthead Capital Management and Certares Management, the rental company announced plans to order 100,000 vehicles from Tesla Inc., sending the automaker’s market capitalization soaring past the $1 trillion mark at the time.
Hertz doubled down on EVs in the months after Scherr took over, placing big orders with Polestar, the electric-car maker owned by China’s Geely and Sweden’s Volvo Car, and GM. The company ended up buying a small number of cars from the two companies, a spokesperson said.
Those bets went awry last year, when Tesla slashed prices across its lineup to keep growing vehicle sales. This hammered the resale value of used Model 3 sedans and Model Y crossovers just after Hertz had added tens of thousands of those vehicles to its fleet.
By December, Hertz started selling off 20,000 electric vehicles, or about a third of its EV fleet. Germany’s Sixt SE — a leading car-renter in Europe — is taking even more drastic measures, phasing Teslas out of its fleet entirely.
Hertz announced its EV sell-down plans in January, citing lackluster demand, costly depreciation and expensive repairs. The Estero, Florida-based company took a $245 million charge and reported its biggest quarterly loss since the pandemic.
Shares of Hertz fell 2% after regular trading in New York Friday.
Scherr’s successor, West, was one of nine Cruise executives that GM dismissed at the end of last year after California regulators accused the company of withholding information about one of its self-driving vehicles striking and dragging a pedestrian.
Prior to joining Cruise as COO in early 2021, West held the same position at Delta Air Lines Inc. There, he played an instrumental role in the integration with Northwest Airlines and was credited with improving efficiency and performance.
“Gil is a fantastic operator. We worked side-by-side for a dozen years,” Delta CEO Ed Bastian said an interview. “He’s an innovator, he loves technology, he’s meticulous, he’s curious and he loves a challenge — all great attributes.”Play Video
Even before they completed the Hertz acquisition, Tom Wagner at Knighthead and Greg O’Hara at Certares had identified West as a CEO candidate and approached him about leaving Cruise, according to two people with knowledge of those discussions who asked not to be identified. But GM, which had big plans for robotaxis at the time, didn’t want to let West go. So the investors installed Mark Fields, who’d run Ford Motor Co., as Hertz’s interim CEO and conducted a full CEO search, settling on Scherr in February 2022.
Once he’d left Cruise, Wagner and O’Hara approached West again, confident that by virtue of his firsthand experience with EVs and appreciation for the pitfalls of electrification, he’d be a better fit. And they liked that, as a resident of southwest Florida, he wouldn’t have far to travel to Hertz headquarters, the people said
West will be the latest in a long line of Hertz CEOs tasked with turning the company into a more profitable player and stiffer competitor for closely held Enterprise Holdings Inc. and Avis Budget Group Inc.
Before Knighthead and Certares swooped in to take Hertz out of bankruptcy, billionaire investor Carl Icahn struggled to put a shine on the century-old business as its controlling shareholder. Misreading the car market has cost Hertz in the past, including under John Tague, the former United Airlines COO whom Icahn installed as CEO in 2014.
Tague inherited an aging fleet from ousted CEO Mark Frissora and went long on passenger cars as consumer tastes were shifting to sport utility vehicles. He lasted a little more than two years in the job.
Hertz said Scherr will assist with the CEO transition until he leaves the company and its board on March 31.
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Business textbooks are always teaching the Japanese business concepts of Kaizen, Kanban, Andon and just-in-time production. But despite this, the actual market valuations of Japanese businesses have been falling behind for a long time now (basically my entire life).
What some investors fail to understand about this historical anomaly is just how massively overvalued the vast majority of companies were in Japan in 1989. It’s as if Japan’s entire stock market had Tesla- or Nvidia-level expectations of world domination.
From 1956 to 1986, land prices in Japan increased by 5,000%, even though consumer prices only doubled in that time.
At the market peak, the grounds on the Imperial Palace were estimated to be worth more than the entire real estate value of California or Canada.
In 1989, the price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio on the Nikkei was 60x trailing 12-month earnings.
Japan made up 15% of world stock market capitalization in 1980. By 1989, it represented 42% of global equity markets.
From 1970 to 1989, Japanese large-cap companies were up more than 22% per year. Small caps were up closer to 30% per year. That’s incredible growth for a 20-year period.
Japan was trading at a CAPE ratio (cyclically adjusted P/E, which uses 10 years of inflation-adjusted earnings in its calculation) of nearly 100 times, which is more than double what the U.S. was trading at during the height of the dotcom bubble.
So, in regard to the constant naysayers who want to compare the “lost decades” of the Japanese stock market to current market conditions, we can only say there is no data to support this level of pessimism. In other words, there are market bubbles, and then there’s the Japanese bubble.
As usual, celebrated investor and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett was a bit ahead of the curve on this one. He’s been buying up Japanese assets for several years. Buffett was quoted by CNBC back in 2023 as saying, “We couldn’t feel better about the investment [in Japan].”
It’s also worth noting that even Japanese stocks win “in the long run.”
If you put $1 a day into Japanese stocks starting in 1980 (~$10,500 in total), you’d have over $17,000 today (thanks to recent all-time highs).
This is true despite Japan experiencing one of the worst equity market returns in history during this time period. pic.twitter.com/2t8SG9xJfV
As Nick Maggiulli, author of Just Keep Buying (Harriman House, 2022), says in the above tweet, if you had started investing in the Nikkei 225 in 1980 (in the run-up to the Japanese bubble), you’d still have a real annual return of 3.5% today (inclusive of dividends).
Carlson also points out that if you invested in a Japanese stock index back in the early 1970s, your returns would still be about 9% a year, despite the biggest bubble of all time bursting in the middle. It’s just that all future returns were pulled forward due to manic speculation—and investors have been waiting for companies to “grow into their valuations” ever since. After waiting a long time for the earnings growth spurt to kick in, it appears the valuation shoes finally fit.
Of course, no such Japanese index fund existed at the time. Today, Canadian investors can efficiently get Japanese exposure through exchange-traded funds (ETFs), such as the iShares Japan Fundamental Index ETF (CJP) or the BMO Japan Index ETF (ZJPN).
On March 13, Elon Musk said that Dogecoin might be accepted as a payment method for Tesla “at some point.”
The comments came while Musk was addressing the public at a Tesla manufacturing plant in Berlin.
Musk was asked by an audience member if the electric vehicles can be bought using DOGE in the near future. “At some point, I think we should enable that,” he responded before adding, “Dogecoin to the moon.”
Elon Musk said he started endorsing DOGE after walking around his factories and talking to people on the production lines. “DOGE is the people’s crypto, so I will support it,” he said before adding that lots of rich people were supporting Bitcoin, but “If the people on the line want me to support DOGE, I’ll support DOGE.”
BREAKING: Tesla will enable $DOGE payments “at some point” in the future
Moreover, it is not the first time the automaker has dabbled in Dogecoin. Tesla started accepting DOGE payments for company merchandise in January 2022.
Dogecoin Spikes Again
Dogecoin spiked 14% immediately after the comments went viral, surging from $0.166 to $0.189 during the Asian trading session on Thursday morning.
The doggy-themed token has now made a whopping 43% over the past fortnight as it rides on the coattails of Bitcoin, which hit an all-time high this week.
DOGE was trading at $0.184 at the time of writing but remains 75% down from its all-time high of $0.731 in May 2021.
It spent the first two months of this year trading around the $0.080 level before taking off in late February.
The meme coin is the tenth largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization which is a whopping $26 billion, according to CoinGecko.
Meme Coin Madness
Meme coins have been pumping recently, with Shiba Inu, PEPE, and BONK surging. PEPE is up 17% on the day, dogwifhat (WIF) has surged a ridiculous 35%, and BONK has made 17% over the past 24 hours.
The total market capitalization of all memecoins is $65.5 billion, which equates to around 23% of the entire crypto market, according to CoinGecko.
Total crypto market capitalization has reached $2.90 trillion as it nears all-time highs. Bitcoin hit a new peak of $73,700 during Thursday morning trading in Asia, but Ethereum has retreated below $4,000.
Binance Coin (BNB) and Solana (SOL) also performed well, with gains of 14% and 10% respectively.
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Semi-automated driving systems that can help drive your car are not doing enough to ensure drivers are staying focused on the road, according to first-of-its-kind testing from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Kris Van Cleave has details.
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Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photos: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue; Scott Olson/Getty Images
For several years now, Elon Musk and Donald Trump, two of our most volatile rich dudes, have been engaged in an on-again, off-again feud. Trump has dismissed Musk as a “bullshit artist,” and the Tesla–SpaceX–Boring Company CEO has endorsed several of Trump’s political rivals. However, the two men’s anti-Establishment views often align, and when Musk bought Twitter in 2022, Trump celebrated his acquisition of the social-media giant. Musk eventually made good on his promise to reverse Trump’s permanent ban from Twitter (now known as X), but the ex-president mostly stayed off the site, insisting that Truth Social would remain the exclusive home of his social-media ramblings.
So what exactly went wrong between Musk and Trump? Are they back on good terms? And how is the public supposed to follow this drama when one of the participants only posts his “truths” on a site barely anyone uses? Here’s a guide to how it all went down, which we’ll continue to update as long as this chaotic duo keeps at it.
As president, Trump regularly lashed out at CEOs who crossed him, but somehow Musk stayed on his good side even as he repeatedly disparaged Trump’s policies and personality.
Days before the 2016 election, Musk told CNBC that he generally agreed with Hillary Clinton’s economic and environmental plans. His assessment of Trump was harsher. “I feel a bit stronger that he is not the right guy,” Musk said. “He doesn’t seem to have the sort of character that reflects well on the United States.”
And early in Trump’s presidency, Musk criticized the “Muslim ban.”
Nevertheless, the CEO went on to join two of Trump’s business-advisory councils — only to quit in protest.
In August 2019, Musk said he supported Democrat Andrew Yang’s presidential campaign. That still didn’t keep Trump from heaping praise on the tech billionaire at Davos in January 2020, calling him in a CNBC interview “one of our great geniuses, and we have to protect our genius.” He continued, “You know, we have to protect Thomas Edison, and we have to protect all of these people that came up with originally the lightbulb and the wheel and all of these things. And he’s one of our very smart people, and we want to cherish those people.”
In the final year of his presidency, Trump found himself increasingly in agreement with Musk over “Twitter, the moon, and sticking it to the establishment,” as Politico put it. In May 2020, Trump defended Musk’s calls to reopen Tesla’s plant in Fremont, California, which had been closed because of COVID restrictions; then he headed to Florida’s Kennedy Space Center to watch a SpaceX rocket launch two NASA astronauts. Musk echoed some of Trump’s criticisms of pandemic precautions, adding a new wrinkle to his ongoing drama with Twitter. Per Politico:
From the beginning of the crisis, Musk, the temperamental billionaire leader of SpaceX and Tesla, has frequently questioned mainstream scientific research, reporting and policy on Covid-19, to the point that Twitter was forced to deal with a wave of complaints suggesting the social-media platform remove his tweets for spreading disinformation. He accelerated the proposal of hydroxychloroquine as a potential cure from the backwaters of Bitcoin Twitter discussions into the mainstream, off of two tweets (“maybe worth considering …”), bucked government lockdowns in order to keep his electric cars in production and recently stated that he believed policies designed to keep Americans safe were violating their constitutional rights. As he bluntly tweeted in March: “The coronavirus panic is dumb.”
The announcement of Musk’s deal to buy Twitter prompted speculation that he might let the former president and various other exiles back onto the platform. Sure enough, Musk, a self-described “free-speech absolutist,” soon declared that he was against permanent bans in general and Trump’s ban specifically. He said Twitter’s decision to kick Trump off over his January 6 rhetoric was “a mistake because it alienated a large part of the country and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump not having a voice.”
At this point, Trump had already publicly claimed he was sticking with the flailing social-media network he had barely been using. “Truth Social will be a voice for me,” Trump told Fox News. “And that’s something nobody else can get.”
But he made it clear that he was rooting for the Musk-Twitter alliance. “I think it is good. We want liberty and justice and fairness in our country, and the more we can have open, the better,” Trump said. “I don’t view that as a competition for what I am doing.”
Over the years, Musk has said he’s a registered independent and described himself as “politically moderate” and “somewhere in the middle, socially liberal and fiscally conservative.” But at the All-In tech conference in May 2022, he said Biden’s support for unions and inability to “get a lot done” had driven him to embrace the GOP, though he had mostly voted for Democrats in the past.
“I have voted overwhelmingly for Democrats historically,” Musk said. “Like, I’m not sure I might never have voted for a Republican, just to be clear. Now, this election, I will.”
Although it was unclear whether “this election” referred to the midterms or the 2024 presidential contest, initially this seemed like it could be good news for Trump. A few weeks later, however, the “moderate” tech CEO revealed that the Republican who’d won him over was the Florida governor known for the “Don’t Say Gay” law and for punishing companies that defy him.
Even though Trump initially praised the Musk-Twitter deal, in mid-May he posted on Truth Social, “There is no way Elon Musk is going to buy Twitter at such a ridiculous price, especially since realizing it is a company largely based on BOTS of Spam Accounts. Fake anyone?”
So when Musk’s agreement with Twitter appeared to be falling apart, Trump was eager to do some gloating and settle some political grievances. At a July 9 rally in Anchorage, Alaska, for Republicans Sarah Palin and Governor Mike Dunleavy, he claimed he had predicted the deal wouldn’t happen and accused Musk of lying about voting for him in 2016.
“He said the other day, ‘Oh, I’ve never voted for a Republican.’ I said, ‘I didn’t know that,’” Trump said. “He told me he voted for me, so he’s another bullshit artist.”
Musk responded in a series of tweets, saying that Trump’s claim was “not true” and that he’s too old to run for president again anyway.
The former president escalated the budding feud on July 12, attacking Musk’s various endeavors in a series of Truth Social posts and claiming he could have made him “drop to [his] knees and beg” when he was in office.
Trump’s “truths” still don’t play nicely with other social-media sites, so Musk responded via another Twitter user’s screenshot of Trump’s post:
On October 28, the morning after Musk officially acquired Twitter, Trump took to Truth Social to wish him well. But he also claimed, dubiously, that his own site has become “somewhat of a phenomena” so it will be his home for the foreseeable future.
While Trump’s tweets were visible again, he refrained from returning to Twitter, claiming that he was perfectly happy on Truth Social.
“Truth Social is through the roof. It’s doing phenomenally well,” he said when asked about his social media intentions. “Truth Social has been very, very powerful, very, very strong, and I’ll be staying there. But I hear we’re getting a big vote to also go back on Twitter. I don’t see it because I don’t see any reason for it.”
Trump also assured his Truth followers, “we aren’t going anywhere.”
Announcing that you’re a fan of the U.S. Constitution used to be innocuous. But in this dark timeline it counts as a political statement.
Musk was clearly criticizing Trump’s Truth Social post from two days earlier, in which he called for the “termination of all rules, regulations, & articles, even those found in the Constitution” to undo Biden’s 2020 win.
On May 24, Ron DeSantis announced he was running for president in an audio stream with Musk on Twitter Spaces. It did not go well. The event was marred by multiple technical issues and failed to answer the fundamental question, “Why should I vote for DeSantis over Trump?”
Trump mocked DeSantis relentlessly on Truth Social and took a few shots at Musk too. For example, he posted what appeared to be a video of a SpaceX rocket labeled “Ron! 2024” falling over and exploding.
As of this writing, it’s the only post Trump has shared on the site since the tweets that got him banned in 2021.
Donald Trump desperately needs money. Elon Musk is absurdly wealthy and loves demonstrating his power. So when the New York Timesreported on March 5 that Trump and Musk had recently met, it seemed like there might be huge consequences for the 2024 election:
Donald Trump, who is urgently seeking a cash infusion to aid his presidential campaign, met on Sunday in Palm Beach, Fla., with Elon Musk, one of the world’s richest men, and a few wealthy Republican donors, according to three people briefed on the meeting who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private discussion.
… It’s not yet clear whether Mr. Musk plans to spend any of his fortune on Mr. Trump’s behalf. But his recent social media posts suggest he thinks it’s essential that Mr. Biden be defeated in November — and people who have spoken to Mr. Musk privately confirmed that is indeed his view.
Musk has publicly criticized President Biden and his policies multiple times, and he recently posted, “Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) is a very real disease” in response to a clip of Bill Maher saying he would vote for anyone but Trump in 2024.
But Musk quickly poured cold water on the idea that he’d be funding Trump, writing on X:
On March 12 the Washington Postreported that Trump and Musk communicate more than has been publicly reported — and at one point Trump even offered Musk his flailing social media site. The deal was reportedly floated in the summer of 2023, and Musk declined (possibly because Truth Social is basically a MAGA-y Twitter clone).
When the offer was made in summer 2023, Trump Media & Technology Group, which owns Truth Social, was “trapped in a long-delayed merger process.” But in February 2024 the Securities and Exchange Commission signed off on the media company’s merger with a SPAC, and now Trump could potentially make billions if the company goes public.
When contacted by the Post some of the parties involved gave sassy responses that did not address the substance of the report:
When The Washington Post asked Musk about the Truth Social call and his other talks with Trump, Musk responded only that he had “never been to Mar-a-Lago,” Trump’s estate in Palm Beach.
Trump Media & Technology Group did not address any of the facts reported in this story when invited to do so by The Post. In an emailed statement, Trump Media spokeswoman Shannon Devine said only, “We heard Trump and Musk were actually discussing buying the Washington Post but they decided it had no value.”
The Trump campaign did not respond at all, but stay tuned. Everything we know about Musk and Trump tells us this won’t be the last word on the subject.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos took back his spot as the world’s richest man on Monday, dethroning Elon Musk on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Bezos’ net worth stands at $200 billion, according to the tracker, surpassing the Tesla chief’s $198 billion.
Jeff Bezos (left) and Elon Musk
AP Photos / Mark Lennihan / Ringo H.W. Chiu
Musk, who also heads X, the former Twitter, and SpaceX, has seen his riches fall by more than $30 billion as Tesla’s share price has dropped 25 percent in recent months.
Meanwhile Bezos, who no longer runs Amazon, has benefited from the ecommerce giant’s rising stock price.
Even after recently selling off $8.5 billion in shares, he remains the company’s largest stockholder.
The French CEO of the luxury group LVMH, Bernard Arnault, remains in third place in the rankings of the world’s richest people, with a net worth of $197 billion.
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DOVER, Del. — The lawyers who successfully argued that a massive pay package for Tesla CEO Elon Musk was illegal and should be voided have asked the presiding judge to award them company stock worth $5.6 billion as legal fees.
The attorneys, who represented Tesla shareholders in the case decided in January, made the request of the Delaware judge in court papers filed Friday.
The amount would apparently be far and away the largest such award, if approved. Lawyers in class-action suits stemming from the collapse of Enron got a record $688 million in legal fees in 2008.
“We are ‘prepared to eat our cooking,’” the Tesla plaintiff attorneys wrote in the court filing, arguing the sum is justified because they worked purely on a contingency basis for more than 5 years. If they lost they would have gotten nothing. The benefit to Tesla “was massive,” they said.
The requested award represents 11 percent of the Tesla stock — worth some $55 billion — that Musk was seeking in the compensation package, which Judge Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick ruled illegal in January.
Not only does the request take nothing from the electric car company’s balance sheet, it is also tax deductible, the attorneys argued. They are also seeking $1.1 million in expenses.
In her ruling, Judge McCormick accepted the shareholder lawyers’ argument that Musk personally dictated the landmark 2018 pay package in sham negotiations with directors who were not independent.
It would have nearly doubled Musk’s stake in Tesla. He currently holds 13 percent.
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Nvidia doesn’t have much room left for multiple expansion when it comes to an increased share price for the stock. After accounting for its incredible earnings day, Nvidia is still trading at a P/E ratio of 66x. Even fellow tech heavyweights Microsoft and Apple are only at 36x and 28x respectively. Consequently, if Nvidia continues its incredible bull run, one would have to believe that the demand for chips will continue to skyrocket and that Nvidia will be able to hold off competitors like AMD and Intel. —K.P.
RRSPs are not a scam or a rip-off
With the deadline to contribute to registered retirement savings plan (RRSP) officially passed as of February 29, we wanted to quickly address the becoming prominent idea that RRSPs are some sort of scam.
We’ve noticed an increasing number of inquiries from friends and family over the last few years that go something along the lines of, “RRSPs are just a rip-off because you have to pay tax on them anyway.”
Since you’re reading a column called “Making sense of the markets,” you’re probably aware that RRSPs are not in fact an asset. The fact that some Canadians don’t understand is shocking. It’s important to understand precisely what RRSPs are.
RRSPs are a type of investment account—one that’s registered. It’s a place where you can hold investments, and it has powers that protect investments from taxation. If you think you’re purchasing RRSPs as an asset, then you might have gone to a bad wealth management company. A good financial advisor helps you understand what asset you were investing in. A bad financial advisor will be vague by using phrases such as “invest in RRSPs.” Investment information is often murky so money can be put into whatever high-fee investments (such as mutual funds) they wanted to sell that day. (Need an advisor? Check out MoneySense’s Find A Qualified Advisor tool.)
Of course, an RRSP doesn’t avoid taxes entirely. It defers tax on the contributed amount from when you relatively earn a lot of money (while working) to when you earn less money (when retired). If you get a tax refund when you contribute or owe less taxes when you contributed to a RRSP, that’s essentially the government saying, “Since you contributed to your RRSP, your taxable income this year is not as high as it would’ve been. So you don’t owe us that money now. Oh, and if you have children, we’ll likely increase your Child Care Benefit cheque, as well.”
If you get a refund, then invest it and let all of that money compound in low-fee investments for the next several decades, you’re very likely to be happy with the results. But those people who say “RRSPs are scams” are usually salespeople pedalling life insurance for higher commissions.
Yes, for some Canadians investing within a tax-free savings account (TFSA), it means they could come out ahead of investing within an RRSP. Yet, for the vast majority of Canadians, they could end up in a pretty similar place. Don’t forget, if you invest inside a TFSA, you don’t get that tax refund to stuff right back into your investment account—you’re contributing after-tax income. When deciding on a TFSA or an RRSP, you would need to know exactly how much income you and your spouse will have when you retire.
Elon Musk tweeted late Wednesday night that he’s never gone to therapy, a fact that he wants to be immortalized on his gravestone. And whatever you think of the billionaire’s attitude to mental health treatment, Musk’s tweet would seem pretty unremarkable in isolation. However, Musk keeps tweeting about this for some reason, including three times in the past two months alone.
Did Elon Musk Regret Buying Twitter? | Walter Isaacson Interview
“Put ‘Never Went to Therapy’ on my gravestone,” Musk tweeted on February 28.
“He’s dead right. Please put ‘Never went to therapy’ on my gravestone,” Musk tweeted on January 29 in response to a video of film director Wernher Herzog.
“Please put ‘Never Went to Therapy’ and ‘Invented Car Fart’ on my gravestone. Those are my only requests,” Musk tweeted on January 8, adding an extra element for his hypothetical tombstone.
But those are just the most recent times Musk has tweeted about therapy. Another instance of Musk using the same language happened in July 2023, when the Tesla CEO was responding to a far-right influencer on X who suggested white liberals have more mental illness than the general population.
“Why is mental illness so prominent amongst Liberal Whites?” the account, which goes by the name The Rabbit Hole, tweeted.
“’Never went to therapy’ Please put that on my gravestone,” Musk responded.
Obviously the choice to go to therapy is a personal one and Musk is free to decide if he’d find that kind of thing helpful. But if he’s truly “never” gone to therapy it does seem a little odd that he’d think he can make an effective judgement about whether it would work for him. After all, the billionaire microdoses ketamine for depression, according to a Wall Street Journal report from last year. Typically, any drug interventions for mental health issues require treatment from a professional.
Musk has made repeated suggestions that he’s often struggled with mental health issues, including on the Lex Fridman podcast when he referred to his mind as a “storm” last year.
“My mind is a storm. I don’t think most people would want to be me. They may think they’d want to be me but they don’t know, they don’t understand,” Musk told Fridman.
Musk was asked about that comment—that his mind is a storm—in an interview with the New York Times’ Andrew Ross Sorkin on November 30, 2023 at the DealBook Summit in New York. Sorkin tried to probe deeper into the issues that may be troubling Musk and after an achingly long 12-second silence in front of a live audience, Musk said completely unprompted that it felt like he was in a therapist’s office.
“I wish we were like on a psychiatrist couch or something. You know, I think to some degree I was born this way, but, and then it was amplified by a difficult childhood frankly. But I can remember even in happy moments when I was a kid that there’s just, it just feels like there’s just a… a rage of forces in my mind constantly,” Musk explained.
Musk said that sometimes this disturbance in his mind would make him productive. But after listing successes, Musk seemed to get troubled and introspective again.
“So these demons of the mind, you know, are for the most part, harnessed to productive ends. But that doesn’t mean that once in a while they don’t, you know… go wrong,” Musk said.
Musk also brought up the topic of suicidal ideation at a young age.
“I mean, I did have this existential crisis when I was around twelve about what’s the meaning of life? Isn’t it all pointless? Why not just commit suicide? Why exist?” Musk recalled.
That interview is probably best remembered for Musk’s defiant attitude in the face of advertiser backlash over comments that were widely seen as anti-Semitic. But these comments are worth revisiting as the billionaire keeps repeating that he doesn’t need therapy.
Again, Musk can hold whatever opinions he likes about the mental health profession and is free to choose whatever path he wants to make in life. He is, after all, the wealthiest man in the world who is doing just fine in a material sense. But given the frequency Musk tweets about how he’s never been to therapy, it’s clearly a topic that’s on his mind, and some people do find it useful to just have someone to talk with.
More than 50,000 Americans died by suicide in 2023, slightly higher than the 49,449 suicide deaths in 2022 and 48,183 suicide deaths in 2021, according to the CDC. And while therapy isn’t magic, it can help people who find themselves in desperate circumstances.
If you or someone you know is having a crisis or contemplating suicide, please call or text the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at988. You can also call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255 or text the Crisis Text Line at 741-741.
At long last, Tesla’s next generation Roadster is going to become a reality—definitely. Maybe. There’s at least an offhand chance.
The successor to the car that started it all has completed final engineering, and if you believe Elon Musk, its “least interesting” feature is a 0-60 time clocking in below a second.
A street-legal two seater twice as slow would still rank among the fastest on the planet, and even Formula 1 race cars with professionally licensed drivers behind the wheel can’t hit that kind of acceleration. The aerodynamic downforce needed to firmly plant the Roadster’s wheels on the road and maintain grip at that pace would have to be truly staggering.
In short, it’s the kind of claim one might think is better reserved for April 1st, but Musk appeared to be dead serious when he announced it late on Tuesday.
“There will never be another car like this,” he told fans, “if you could even call it a car.”
The Tesla CEO said the production design has been signed off after performance targets were “radically” increased such that his engineers required help from their counterparts over at Musk’s SpaceX company.
“Unveil end of year, aiming to ship next year,” he added.
Tonight, we radically increased the design goals for the new Tesla Roadster.
There will never be another car like this, if you could even call it a car.
It was all the way back in November 2017 when Musk first revealed his stunning next-gen sports car, already then claiming it would be the first EV to ever drive 1,000 kilometers on one charge at highway speeds.
Market launch was initially slated for 2020, but—either conveniently or inconveniently—the pandemic hit, and then right after that was the semiconductor chips shortage, which delayed other projects like the Cybertruck that only launched at the end of last year.
“Honestly, I’m trying not to get too excited, especially as someone who won two of them in the referral program,” wrote Fred Lambert, editor of the EV site Electrek. “Technically the only new thing that Elon said today is that it is again delayed.”
Priorities began to shift with the changing times—and the arrival of the Model S Plaid performance version meant it lacked a bit of its raison d’etre. Fans began to acknowledge it was not mission critical to spurring higher EV adoption rates, especially as the volumes for a two-seat convertible are minute.
Like the Boring Company’s promise of a Hyperloop, the Tesla Roadster has for years had the distinction of being among the innovations Musk promised that never even remotely saw the light of day, despite the company accepting customer deposits of $50,000 and more per reservation.
‘Most mind-blowing product demo of all time’
Why announce now, then, when most have already forgotten the Roadster? Maybe it came as a result of all the trolling Musk received the other week for claiming Tesla would never make a concept car that would not go into production, when the Roadster was nowhere to be seen more than six years after its unveiling.
Maybe it was China’s BYD debuting a Ferrari-priced super sports car called the Yangwang U9 that signalled other rivals are turning up the technological heat on the once undisputed EV leader.
Musk has, after all, tried to kneecap rivals by stealing their thunder, like a quad-motor Cybertruck capable of turning a full 360 degrees on its axis like a tank, or drive sideways like a crab. In the end, the promise was never fulfilled, because Rivian had already dropped the idea prior.
Whatever the motivation to go public with another milestone he will now need to meet, Musk had no intention of being faint of praise for what could be his next creation.
“I think it has a shot at being the most mind-blowing product demo of all time,” he wrote.
Still not everyone was happy at the news. Some reactions from the Tesla fan community suggested Musk should instead focus first and foremost on bringing to fruition his $25,000 entry model that has yet to be seen, since the annual volumes expected are in the millions rather than the thousands.
The to-do list is, in other words, long, and getting longer with each new promise. Shareholders will want tangible results before signing off on Musk’s next gonzo pay package.
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Elon Musk has shared a new video on Saturday featuring Optimus, the robot Tesla has been working on since 2021. But anyone who tries to watch the video will immediately notice something weird. The clip of Optimus is so low quality and pixelated that it looks like it was shot on a flip-phone from two decades ago.
Mr. Tweet Fumbles Super Bowl Tweet
The new video was posted in the early morning hours of Saturday and has been viewed over 35 million times as of this writing. But the video appears to show Optimus just walking around without doing much of anything. That would have been quite impressive around 2013 or so, since it’s relatively difficult to get machines to walk like humans, but it’s not entirely clear why Musk would want the world to see Optimus walking like this.
Update, 3:58 p.m. ET: At some point in the past 30 minutes or so Elon Musk’s video was swapped out to include a higher resolution version. Curiously, tweets that have been edited will typically show a note at the bottom that says a tweet has been edited and the time it occurred, but Musk’s tweet doesn’t indicate anything has been changed.
The screenshots below show a side-by-side of what the tweet looked like before it was changed to include a higher resolution video.
Screenshot: Elon Musk / X
We’ve reached out to Twitter to see if Musk has special rules as owner of the social media platform and will update this post if we hear back. The rest of this post is being kept up for posterity.
Incremental technical achievements aside, why does this video look so terrible? We weren’t the only ones to notice the bizarrely pixelated quality, as plenty of Musk fans made jokes about the blurriness.
“Was this filmed with a potato?” one user quipped.
“Same photographer?” another X user quipped with a photo of Bigfoot.
Tesla didn’t immediately respond to questions about this new video of Optimus emailed Saturday.
Musk unveiled Optimus with an unconventional presentation in the summer of 2021 that really felt like the billionaire was desperate to hype virtually anything futuristic. Tesla’s AI Day that year didn’t feature a real robot, but rather someone dressed in a white and black suit moving around like a stereotypical robot before starting to dance a jig.
Tesla’s robot has made progress since that first jokey unveiling, but Optimus still has quite a ways to go before it can catch up to the most cutting edge robots of the 2020s. Atlas, a humanoid robot made by Boston Dynamics, started learning how to pick itself up in 2016, standing on one leg that same year, doing backflips in 2017, and achieved parkour-style jumping in 2018.
And Atlas is still making progress in ways that rival how humans actually move. Last year, the Atlas robot showed off its ability to manipulate its environment to navigate complex worksites.
Optimus has made improvements since it was first announced but it has quite a ways to go if it wants to catch up to a company like Boston Dynamics. Arguably the most impressive thing we’ve seen Optimus do is fold laundry, but if you take a close look at the video, there was a person standing just off-screen mimicking the movements. And, frankly, that’s technology that’s been possible since the 1960s.
Can Tesla develop a truly autonomous robot that can work as a household servant, just as Musk has promised? Only time will tell. But we’ve been waiting on that version of the future for over a century now. Robotics is hard. But we can certainly keep dreaming.
• Walmart (WMT/NYSE): Earnings per share of $1.80 (versus $1.65 predicted). Revenue of $173.39 billion (versus $170.71 billion predicted).
• Home Depot (HD/NYSE): Earnings per share of $2.82 (versus $2.77 predicted). Revenue of $34.79 billion (versus $34.64 billion predicted).
Walmart continued to show why it deserves its best-in-class status for mass retailers. Quarterly revenue was up 6% and e-commerce sales were up a massive 23%. No doubt shareholders were excited about the 9% dividend raise the company announced.
The big news from “the big blue retailer,” a.k.a. Walmart, was that it’s buying TV manufacturer Vizio for $2.3 billion. The move makes sense given how many Vizio TVs Walmart sells. The company pointed out that the acquisition would be a major boost for its advertising business, as it could now better track customer data. Look forward to massive Black Friday Vizio sales for years to come.
“Our market is on its way back to normal demand conditions. We’re not quite there yet, but the pressures we saw in 2023 are receding.”
—Richard McPhail, Walmart CFO
Home Depot announced that its sales were down about 3% from 2022’s fourth quarter, but that was significantly less of a pullback than it had been expecting, given the current high interest rate environment.
Canadian earnings: who needs profits anyway?
Sometimes you have to wonder if the analysts who predict quarterly earnings know what they’re talking about. Take Nutrien, Suncor and Loblaw, which all reported their earnings. Loblaw’s quarter was predictably boring, and the stock moved up slightly, score one for the analysts. However, Nutrien came in way below earnings expectations, yet the stock went up 7%. Suncor on the other hand had a great earnings report, but shares were down slightly on the day.
Canadian earnings highlights
Here are the numbers released this week. Note: Nutrien is a Canadian company based in Saskatoon, but trades on the New York Stock Exchange and reports in U.S. dollars.
Suncor Energy Inc. (SU/TSX): Earnings per share of $1.26 (versus $1.07 predicted). Revenue of $14.14 billion (versus $12.69 billion predicted).
Nutrien (NTR/TSX, NYSE): Earnings per share of USD$0.37 (versus $0.65 predicted). Revenue of USD$5.40 billion (versus $5.20 billion predicted).
Loblaw (L/TSX): Earnings per share of $2.00 (versus $1.90 predicted). Revenue of $14.53 billion (versus $14.53 billion predicted).
Analysts usually point to anticipated forward guidance being the key in instances like this. So, because the future doesn’t look great for oil prices (recessions, supply increases, etc.) and Nutrien believes potash demand will increase going forward, the stock market is looking ahead and not simply reacting to last quarter’s news.
Nutrien shareholders definitely miss the days of sanctions crippling the supply of Russian potash to the market, despite the bump on Thursday. The fourth quarter price was USD$235 per tonne, compared to USD$526 per tonne a year earlier.
In more positive news, Nutrien’s CEO Ken Seitz said, “We do see potential for firming of potash prices,” and went on to add that Red Sea logistics issues were likely to continue to add to cost pressures for the foreseeable future.
Suncor announced that it had set a new oilsands production record at 757,400 barrels per day, however, profit margins were down on lower oil prices. The oil giant also announced it would be bringing in a familiar corporate face as its next board chair, as Russ Girling (former CEO of TC Energy Corp) would be taking over fromMichael Wilson.
