The most important story you missed last week was this:
"Why This Could Be a Critical Year for Electric Cars - Booming in a depressed market, battery-powered vehicles are a plus for the climate but pose a big threat to carmakers and parts suppliers that are slow to change.": nyti.ms/351DH8s
Last year, electric cars made up NINE PERCENT ((9%) of new car sales worldwide...NINE PERCENT! That's astronomical!
But in the U.S?
Only 4%.
This is what drives me nuts about America. The supposed greatest country in the world whose biggest advocates are uneducated nincompoops who've never been anywhere.
Go to Norway. It's all electric! And Norway is a rich country because of its oil. It's the Scandinavian Saudi Arabia. And just like Saudi Arabia, it's investing in the future. But America? The last time I wrote about electric cars I got an e-mail from some idiot telling me internal combustion engines were forever!
Er, no. Absolutely not.
And even worse, the Detroit companies are way behind.
Even Mercedes-Benz. Its vaunted EQS is being panned by all the critics. Not because it's a bad car, but it's not in the league of Tesla and Lucid and the rest of the electric startups who began with a blank sheet of paper. There's too much legacy in the EQS, because the underlying platform has to work for a gasoline version too. Turns out you can't compromise in the fight for the future, you're either all in or you're out.
GM? Had to take its Bolt off the market. It caught fire. Ford's a bit better. Stellantis is way behind. Turns out the future of automobiles is Chinese. They are the only country that can compete with Tesla. China bought up lithium production around the world, a crucial element in battery cars, while Detroit was still asleep at the wheel.
But I take you back to Kodak. We kept hearing that digital would supersede film. But it never happened. There were digital cameras in the marketplace, but then seemingly overnight, EVERYONE switched to digital and your film camera was worth nothing.
Gonna be the same deal with electric cars. DO NOT BUY A NEW GASOLINE CAR! Unless you plan on getting rid of it within five years. Because the value is gonna crash overnight, your car will be worth nothing. Buy used. Or lease, which is insane for most people, financially stupid, today's cars are so good you can keep them for two decades, after your payments are through you're sailing clear, without payments. Some have tax advantages to leasing, most don't. They just want to drive a new car every few years or don't want to lay down for ownership, or can't afford it. If you're leasing a new car for status, just talk to the younger generation, THEY DON'T EVEN HAVE DRIVER'S LICENSES!!!
So people are e-mailing me that 112 million people watched the Super Bowl.
That's because it's a national event, the only time the country is all on the same page, there are parties, IT'S NOT BECAUSE OF FOOTBALL! Because otherwise the rest of the playoff games would have numbers in the same neighborhood and they're not even close.
People are driven to that which everybody else is, especially in the disconnected world we now live in. They want to feel included, they want to be able to comment. But if you think it's about the game... Look at the Grammys and the Oscars, flying high and then ratings tanked almost overnight, AND WILL NEVER COME BACK! Turns out their universality is gone. Used to be everybody watched them like the Super Bowl, then they all looked at each other and asked why and now don't.
This is how it happens, and it happens fast.
So the negatives of football are huge. First and foremost, the younger generation participation numbers are going down down down. They don't even have youth leagues in Inglewood, where the Super Bowl took place. Come on, every person has a mother, and most want to protect their children. As for the effects of football, read this article:
"For N.F.L. Perfection, a Steep Price - Nick Buoniconti, Jim Kiick and Jake Scott, of the undefeated 1972 Miami Dolphins, were each found to have C.T.E., the brain disease linked to head hits, bringing to six the number of players diagnosed from that team.": nyti.ms/3JwB6SG
I remember watching Nick Buoniconti on "Inside the NFL." They were always talking about him raising money for charity. His son was paralyzed playing football. And then Buoniconti disappeared. I wondered what happened. Turns out he had dementia from CTE and now he's DEAD!
You don't want to die, really. You'll be begging for more life at the end, believe me. As for full functionality, people killed themselves because of long Covid, football players are routinely committing suicide because of CTE. And mothers are gonna let their kids play the game? Come on!
And you're right, I used to watch. But now I can't. It offends my sensibilities.
Meanwhile, soccer has made inroads over decades and when the World Cup is played this year...believe me, all those kids who grew up playing soccer will be tuned in. And THE WHOLE WORLD will be tuned in, just like they are for electric cars. Turns out America is too often last.
And don't say that's because I hate the country. I'm saying to wake up, so we can compete! Trump kept all those foreigners out, who worked at Silicon Valley companies, and now they're creating startups in their own countries, we missed out.
So the esports revolution will happen overnight, just like digital cameras and electric cars. It's been in the marketplace for years, but change happens very slowly, then all at once.
Meanwhile, boomers are getting older every day. Young people are being minted as I write this.
It's kind of like baseball. I grew up when it was the number one American sport, absolutely. And then in the mid to late sixties the NFL usurped its title, because it was faster with more action. Meanwhile, I know tons of boomers who are addicted to baseball. Younger people? NONE! Why do you think your perspective is the world's, and nothing will ever change. And then the world changes and you want protection, you want to be made whole, no one can lose in America.
Football's got a ton of negatives. And nothing is forever. Gladiators? Those are history. But no, nothing can die in your lifetime, nothing you're addicted to!
Even skiing, my love. It was hip in the sixties and seventies, everybody talked about it. Then it became saturated, the tree-huggers wouldn't let them build new ski areas and the smaller areas closed when the big ones invested so much money in infrastructure that the middle class was squeezed out. There's still a ski industry, but it's mature, if you're a skier you're in a backwater, with the rest of your minority group. Even snowboarding! Gen-X embraced it, then kids started to ski instead of board, they didn't want to be like their parents, and snowboarding stalled, despite what you see in the Olympics, which reflect what was happening DECADES AGO! Hell, Shaun White is 35.
For the last twenty five years all we've seen is change. The CD is forever! Well, it turns out no.
And then change happened so rapidly. Big floppies to small floppies to hard drives to solid state storage. For years you've been angry at your cable company having a monopoly, and now the wireless companies are providing home broadband, actually that was one of the commercials in the Super Bowl!
So when you stand on ceremony, believe there will be no change, that your love is forever, you're just demonstrating a narrow perspective. Unfortunately, head in the sand ignorance is rampant in America today. But that doesn't mean change doesn't happen. Mark Zuckerberg was caught off guard by Apple's privacy protections and TikTok, and I'm supposed to believe you have your finger on the pulse of the future?
NO WAY!
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