Welcome to The Morning Dump, bite-sized stories corralled into a single article for your morning perusal. If your morning coffee’s working a little too well, pull up a throne and have a gander at the best of the rest of yesterday.
Lucid Gets Liquidity, Which I Shall Call Luquidity
It’s a truism of building cars that the first car a company makes costs a $1 billion (or $400 million, or whatever), and the company slowly keeps making and selling until all the money it gets for selling the cars finally surpasses the cost of developing and building them, and then the company reaches profitability. That’s a little oversimplified, but you get the point. For a massive car company it’s not a big deal because massive car companies don’t build one car at a time. For smaller companies it can create a cash crunch. American electric automaker Lucid has cleared the first few hurdles to be coming a real automaker, and you can see the company’s cars on the road. Still, Lucid is losing hundreds of millions of dollars every quarter, and to turn that around it has to ramp up production of the quite interesting Lucid Gravity. What Lucid needs is cash, and it just announced a successful $1.5 billion haul. The first $600 million came from selling 56.2 million common shares of the company at market prices (they’re listed on the NASDAQ). What about the rest? The Public Investment Fund is a great name. You see that and you might think: “It’s money, for the public!” And this is true, assuming you recognize that the public in this case represents the Saudi public, and that the money is actually controlled by the Saudi Royal Family. They already own a huge amount of Lucid, as well as Uber, and Electronic Arts. This deal seems to keep them roughly equal with where they were before the fundraise (about 62% of the company). This is good news for Lucid and, probably, anyone who invested in Lucid, though the Bank of Japan is out here throwing bombs this morning so who really knows.
So, About That Manchin Story Yesterday
Remember that big story yesterday about West Virginia v. South Korea and Joe Manchin and all that mishegas about whether or not Ubers and rental cars qualify for federal EV tax credits? A key piece in that story is that we’d find out what happens when the Treasury Department announces guidance at the end of the year. What did the government do? What government does best: kick the can down the road. From the Associated Press: Hahahahahaha. Technically, this means that the tax credit continues until March, I guess? […] Instead, Treasury said it will release information before the end of the year that will outline the “anticipated direction” of the critical mineral and battery component requirements that new EVs must meet to qualify. The information also will help automakers “prepare to be able to identify vehicles eligible for the tax credit when the new requirements go into effect,” the department said.
The Brits Love “Fairytale Of New York” by the Pogues ft Kirsty MacColl For Christmas Driving
As has been well-established, I’m a big fan of Skoda. I try to read all of the Skoda news. I don’t share all the Skoda news because I understand that this fascination of mine is perhaps limited only to me. A release from Skoda this morning caught my eye, though not for the reason one might expect. Most of the release is dedicated to “research” Skoda did that found out 23% of drivers in the UK are going to reduce their mileage because everything is expensive now after they catapulted themselves out of Europe and trashed their economy… because reasons. What caught my eye was the song chosen as the most popular one for Christmas road trips. Wait, really? It’s a good song! I live in New York and you sometimes hear it on the radio, but it’s not a popular song. More of a novelty. The results speak for themselves, with a clear winner, the Fairytale of New York with 26% of the vote. In second place was Driving Home for Christmas by Chris Rea with 23% and third place went to Last Christmas by Wham! with 20%. The ŠKODA UK Christmas driving playlist, ranked according to popularity, is as follows: It turns out the Brits actually love this song. This isn’t some Skoda weirdness. There’s a whole Billboard article on the phenomena. It’s amazing to me that the most popular holiday song in the United Kingdom is about a Christmas in New York (and a pretty rough one at that).
If You Have A Takata Airbag You Gotta Get That Fixed
The Takata airbag recall crisis occurred before this site existed, but the repercussions continue to be felt. The faulty airbags contain a chemical called ammonium nitrate to inflate the devices in the case of an accident. In warm and humid environments the chemicals can become more volatile and, instead of gently [Ed note: I dunno about “gently.” This is an airbag, here. -DT] filling the bag to protect a car’s passenger in an accident, it instead sends metal shrapnel into the cabin. In spite of all the work done to recall vehicles with these airbags, many cars have not had their airbags replaced under the free recall. According to the Associated Press, another death has been linked to the exploding airbags in a Steallantis vehicle. A recall is no fun, but I brought in one of my vehicles for the Takata recall a few years ago and it wasn’t a long procedure. It was certainly better than getting in an accident and having my airbag grenade into my face. Stellantis is urging people to stop driving Dodge Magnum wagons, Dodge Challenger and Charger muscle cars and Chrysler 300 sedans from the 2005 through 2010 model years. Since 2009, the exploding air bags have killed at least 33 people worldwide, including 24 in the United States. All three deaths this year were in warm-weather U.S. states and happened since April, the company said.
The Flush
What are your favorite holiday songs? The off-key Michael Caine “Thankful Heart” from “A Muppet Christmas Carol” gets me every time.
West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin Is In A Fight With Hyundai Over EV Tax Credits Ford Raises The Ford F-150 Lighting Base Price Again Elon Musk Sells $3.6 Billion In Tesla Stock The Volvo XC40 and Escape are the only two SUVs that did well on new IIHS test The men who helped Carlos Ghosn escape had a far worse fate The 2023 Subaru WRX Miraculously Only Costs $31,625
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Photos: Lucid, US Dept. of Treasury, Stellantis
( I must be getting old) ＼(´ ε｀ )／
I’m of two minds on Lucid: I’m glad they’re here because we need more EV makers shaking up the legacy makers. I’m not glad they’re taking money from King Bone Saw. I’m glad that Saudi Arabia is looking out for its people by diversifying away from oil. I’m not glad that Saudi Arabia is a (at this moment sorta benevolent) dictatorship that Lucid’s success will help keep in place, even if only a little.
I’ve no idea how we manage to get it all so wrong.
I swear some people think voting is trying to guess the final outcome, rather than choosing the one that’s best.
I still look forward to live performances of The Nutcracker, church choirs, and other similar performance art because there’s still life and passion in them, even though they are often born of indoctrination.
But any life or interest that Christmas recordings may have had has been mercilessly ground out of them by the wheels of retail capitalism, and the office and store managers who choose the muzak played in workplaces.
To me, even the best, most recent and fresh Christmas recordings are simply to be endured. Classic pop Christmas tunes are the worst. After 1000s of replays, “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”, “Holly Jolly Christmas”, “Santa Baby”, “Baby It’s Cold Outside” and “Jingle Bell Rock” are among the worst audio curses known to humanity no matter who performed the recording.
- “A Christmas Gift for You From Phil Spector.” Just put all of the crazy Spector thoughts out of your head and listen to the smooth sounds of Darlene Love and the ‘Wall of Sound.’ 2. “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” No more needs to be said. If you have those 2, you’ve got the best stuff covered.
