Why Electric Cars Will Take Over Sooner Than You Think

Ford Motor Co. is the latest company to lay off workers in a shift to electric vehicle production. In a statement shared on Tuesday, Ford said it intends to cut 3,800 product development and administration jobs in Europe in the next 3 years. The overhaul won't change the automaker's plan to have an all-electric fleet by 2035, even though electric cars are simpler to make. Ford expects production of its first European-built electric passenger vehicle to kick off later this year.

This comes after Rivian Automotive laid off 6 percent of its workforce earlier this month to cut overhead costs as it braces for a possible industry-wide price war. CEO RJ Scaringe said again that operating efficiency must be a "core objective" for the company that makes electric trucks. Rivian plans to ramp up production of its R1 trucks and Amazon’s EDV delivery vans and develop its upcoming smaller R2 vehicle platform.

It’s been a busy week for Tesla and its Chief Executive, Elon Musk. Barely a day after Biden offered rare praise for Musk as Tesla promised to open its charger network to other electric vehicles, Tesla fired dozens of employees from its Buffalo plant Autopilot department in retaliation to a union campaign. In a Wednesday filing with the United States National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the Workers United Upstate New York union accused the automaker of hitting back by dismissing some of the workers “in retaliation for union activity.” CEO Elon Musk has recently been vocal about his opposition to unions.

The electric car war is far from over as Charlie Munger, the long-time business partner of Warren Buffett, said BYD is so far ahead of Tesla’ it’s almost ridiculous.’ Munger said that BYD was his best investment at Berkshire Hathaway at the annual meeting of the Daily Journal Corporation, where he is a board member. The Chinese carmaker is currently the world’s?top-selling?EV brand. BYD delivered 1.86 million cars in 2022, with China’s middle-income consumers flocking to the company's models, which sell at affordable prices compared to offerings from its competitors like Tesla and Xpeng.

Elon Musk, a co-founder of OpenAI, the firm behind the popular generative AI chatbot ChatGPT, warned that AI is “one of the biggest risks to civilization.” While addressing attendees at the World Government Summit in Dubai, UAE, Musk said, “I think we need to regulate AI safety, frankly. I think it is a bigger risk to society than cars, planes, or medicine.” While he no longer holds a stake in OpenAI, his words come at a time when?the rise of ChatGPT?threatens to upend the job market. ChatGPT has led to a heated clash between search engine giant Google and software giant Microsoft, with only 9 percent of Americans thinking AI development will do more good than harm.

Is the United States losing its allure as a residence for millionaires? This is the case as more wealthy Americans are moving abroad at an unprecedented rate. According to a USA Wealth Report 2023 by Henley & Partners, a London-based immigration consultant, the US no longer has the “millionaire magnet” title it held before the pandemic. Net inflows of high-net-worth individuals plunged more than 80 percent last year compared with pre-pandemic levels.

Stocks fell Thursday after another hot inflation report, along with fewer jobless claims showing the economy is holding up despite the Fed’s rate hikes. The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 303 points (or 0.89 percent), the S&P 500 dipped 1.25 percent, and the Nasdaq Composite fell 1.61 percent. The new data comes after January’s retail sales report, and CPI were both higher than expected, suggesting that the Fed Reserve may have further to better its efforts to tame inflation.

Bitcoin hit a 6-month high on Thursday as investors gained confidence in the economic outlook and dismissed concerns about regulatory scrutiny of the cryptocurrency sector. Bitcoin reached $24,895 on Thursday, its highest since August 2022. This single-day price surge took many by surprise, given that February has been historically bearish for Bitcoin.

Bitcoin’s rise comes at a time when the Securities and Exchange Commission proposed rules that would change which crypto firms can custody customer assets. The proposed changes would mandate custodians (crypto exchanges included) to secure or maintain certain state or federal registrations. This adds to the regulators’ efforts to increase scrutiny on crypto companies and make it harder to secure regulatory approval for crypto products.

Let’s talk real estate. According to a?new report?by the First Street Foundation, a nonprofit seeking to improve awareness of climate change-related risks, US homes in areas prone to floods may be currently overvalued in the range of $121B-$237B. This range was arrived at by considering how much homes are selling for now and deducting the estimated average annual losses that they’ll incur from flooding over the next 30 decades, which is the average length of a mortgage in the US.

US single-family homebuilding fell in January, but the ease in mortgage rates and increase in homebuilder confidence suggested the recession-hit housing market bordered on finding a floor. The Commerce Department said on Thursday that single-family housing, which accounts for most of the homebuilding, dropped 4.3 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 841k units last month. Single-family homebuilding tumbled 27.3 percent on a year-on-year basis in January.

Our take: There are signs that the worst housing market downturn is over. The housing sector has been the most significant causality of the Fed’s aggressive interest rate hiking campaign. According to data from mortgage finance agency?Freddie Mac, the 30-year fixed mortgage rate is averaging just above 6 percent, a sharp retreat from the average of 7.08 percent in early November.