Author: openjargon

• Chevrolet is hopeful its offerings will break through in a new EV market.
• Flooding the zone has worked with gas-powered cars.
• Gas-powered cars and hybrids can fill in the gaps while the EV market adjusts.

Chevrolet's new lineup of electric vehicles is arguably showing up at the worst possible time.

After a few years of rapid growth, EV sales are hitting a plateau. This has led to massive changes in EV strategies at most major automakers, with many now pivoting to hybrids.

And yet, Chevrolet Chief Marketing Officer Steve Majoros doesn't seem worried about the company's chances in this new EV market. He sat down with Business Insider last week at a press event for the launch of two electric vehicles: the Silverado electric pickup truck and the Chevy Equinox EV.

"I think it actually benefits Chevrolet," Majoros says of the changing EV market, which is now dominated by more frugal and practical customers—Chevy's bread and butter. Given that, he says, Chevrolet is pressing forward with EVs in hopes that their offerings can break through.

This lean-in approach is a classic strategy for a mass-market brand like Chevy. For years, Chevrolet has offered a wide range of pickup trucks, SUVs, and crossovers to meet demand for a huge swath of customers.

Simply by slotting vehicles in a segment and at a certain price point, Chevrolet, typically the third-largest brand in the US after Ford and Toyota, is able to siphon off market share from competitors and grow its volume.

It appears the brand is taking the same approach with its EVs, but it could turn out to be a risky move.

Chevy's first attempt at electrifying an existing nameplate – the Blazer EV – got off to a rocky start with a stop-sale related to software issues. Majoros insisted Blazer EV is recovering and notched impressive monthly sales, but didn't provide specifics since GM no longer shares monthly sales numbers.

Chevy is banking on more EV options leading to more buyers

Chevrolet is banking on the conventional wisdom in the automotive industry that half the battle of converting a customer to an EV is getting them in front of the vehicle.

Majoros offers a point of proof that a flood-the-zone approach might be working: Dealers and their employees – often the first to experience these electric cars – are also among Chevy's most reliable early EV adopters.

Majoros offers a point of proof that a flood-the-zone approach might be working: Dealers and their employees – often the first to experience these electric cars – are also among Chevy's most reliable early EV adopters.

"We're talking to a lot of first-time EV buyers with the Blazer EV, and a lot of them are dealership employees," Majoros said. "They get the first look at these cars, they test drive them and realize, 'This thing's pretty damn good.'"

Dealers and their employees buying up their own EV supply isn't necessarily a new phenomenon. Many of them see EV ownership as a requirement for selling these high-tech cars in order to speak with authority about the experience of driving, charging, and daily maintenance.

Dealers who own EVs are often enthusiastic about their battery-powered cars, but the trouble comes when trying to convince their customers. Factors like steep upfront costs, quirks of ownership, and overall lifestyle changes required to replace a gas-powered car with an EV keeps an entire swath of customers out of the battery-electric segment, dealers say.

Majoros concedes those points but thinks Chevy is poised to change a lot of minds with its new mass-market lineup of EVs. The Equinox, in particular, slots into the current EV market well, with a starting price of $43,295 and an estimated range of 319 miles.

"We're on the precipice of this click for a lot of customers," Majoros said. "Every year, or even every month, more people own EVs, talk about them with their friends or coworkers—all those factors add up for a brand like Chevrolet."

More EVs doesn't have to mean fewer gas-powered or hybrid cars

While Chevrolet waits for this "click" to happen, Majoros points out that the brand still has plenty of gas-powered cars to keep dealer lots humming. He also pointed to GM's plans to integrate hybrids into the US market but didn't offer a timeline for those releases.

GM isn't the only automaker relying on its gas-powered profits to shepherd it through this EV slowdown. Other legacy car companies are pulling back on EV goals, leaning harder into hybrids, and relying on the success of traditional gas guzzlers to offset losses in the still unprofitable EV business.

Chevrolet's dealers "have that reassurance of a pretty good and steady base of internal combustion engine product," Majoros told a group of journalists. "We are going nowhere in that space."

• A majority of Americans polled by Harris believe the US is already in an economic recession.
• About half of Americans polled also believe the S&P 500 is down this year and that unemployment is at a 50-year high.
• In reality, none of those things are true, and it highlights a big disconnect between Americans' perception of the economy and reality.

The US economy is in a recession.

At least, that's what a majority of Americans believe, according to a recent poll conducted by Harris for The Guardian.

The economy is, in fact, not in a recession, and by some metrics, it is firing on all cylinders. GDP growth since the pandemic has been rising at a faster pace than in the decade before, and unemployment is near historic lows. 

The poll results highlight a big disconnect between reality and Americans' perception of the state of the economy.  

Results from the poll include 49% believing that the S&P 500 is down in 2024, when in reality it is up about 11%, extending the 24% gain it experienced in 2023. 

Nearly half of poll respondents said they believe that unemployment is at a 50-year high, when in reality the unemployment rate has been below 4% for more than two years and is near a 50-year low. 

And 72% of poll respondents said they believe inflation is increasing, when in reality inflation peaked at 9.1% in June 2022 and has since been more than cut in half.

A record number of Americans are employed, incomes are rising faster than the rate of inflation, and 401k balances are hitting record levels, yet most Americans polled by Harris feel that the economic situation is dire.

Driving the disconnect appears to be continued dissatisfaction with inflation.

Even though the data shows that inflation has been mostly tamed, with prices rising at a much slower pace than they were during the pandemic, Americans are still feeling the sting of higher prices at the grocery store, the auto dealership, and in the housing market.

Americans want prices to return to their levels before the pandemic, but that requires deflation, not disinflation. Such an occurrence would probably have to coincide with a very weak economy and is therefore unlikely. 

What also appears to be driving Americans' disconnect between their views on the economy and the actual economy is politics.

When polled by Harris, 58% said they believed the economy is worsening because of mismanagement from the Biden administration. This dynamic is on full display when the results are broken down by political affiliation.

While 56% of poll respondents said they believe the economy is in a recession, that number was higher for poll respondents who identified as Republican, at 67%, while respondents who identified as Democrats and said the US was in a recession was lower, at 49%. 

The polling results highlight the "vibecession" that millions of Americans have been feeling over the past year, and it ultimately could be a big problem for President Job Biden's re-election chances.

• Several new emojis have been proposed for addition to your devices' operating systems.
• They're up for approval later this year and after that, would reach your phones likely in 2025.
• From a tired face with eyebags to a leafless tree, here's a closer look at the 7 new emoji.

A handful of new emojis could be coming to your phone next year.

There are seven new emoji being put up for approval before the emoji body Unicode Consortium later this year.

If approved, the emoji could reach your phones in 2025. But they'd probably look a bit different from how they appear now, as different companies make different versions for their respective operating systems (Apple's version would differ from Android's, for example).

Here's a closer look at the emoji candidates:

A tired face with eyebags

Other associated keywords: exhausted, sleepy, and tired.

A fingerprint

Other associated keywords: forensics, identity, safety.

A leafless tree

Associated keywords: barren, drought, winter.

A root vegetable

Other associated keywords include beet, garden, root, turnip, and vegetable.

A harp

The harp is associated with the keywords cupid, instrument, love, music, and orchestra.

A shovel

Other keywords associated with the shovel emoji include dig, hole, scoop, and spade.

A splatter

It's associated with the keywords holi, paint, spill, and stain.

While those emoji await approval, you can check out others in the meantime that are available now.

Apple's iOS 17.4 came out in March and brought with it a slew of new emoji, including a phoenix, shaking heads, and gender-neutral families.

• On Tuesday night, Libby Wadle and Olympia Gayot of J.Crew were honored at the 2024 Parsons Benefit.
• Speaking with BI, they shared advice for finding success in fashion careers like theirs.
• Wadle said a nurturing work environment is key, and Gayot noted the importance of creativity.

If you've started shopping at J.Crew again in recent years, you likely have Libby Wadle and Olympia Gayot to thank.

Wadle was named CEO of J.Crew Group in 2020, and Gayot became the brand's creative director of women's and kids' design that same year.

Since then, the two have routinely been credited with reviving the legacy label by introducing it to a new generation. And they've made their jobs look easy.

So, when Wadle, Gayot, and the J.Crew team attended the annual Parsons Benefit on Tuesday night, Business Insider asked the two executives how they think young fashion creatives can succeed in similar careers.

"First, I think they need to do what they love," Wadle advised those seeking jobs in the fashion industry.

Libby Wadle's take: find a job that nurtures your passion

According to Wadle, the first step to a successful fashion career is determining your niche. Maybe you want to design clothes, create marketing campaigns, or lead brands like her.

The key is doing what you're passionate about and then finding a work environment that supports you, she said.

"If you're in design and you're a creative person, you should look to work for people who honor and nurture that," Wadle told BI. "You can find many people in business who will do that and really put creativity first. There's a lot of opportunities out there, and I think people coming out of a place like Parsons should really look for that."

Wadle was honored with the Parsons Table Award, which is given to people in the fashion industry who have deeply inspired Parsons students and made a fundamental impact on the design industry at large.

Olympia Gayot's take: find inspiration in the mundane

Gayot has led the charge when it comes to modernizing J.Crew's beloved classic pieces. She's done so by balancing "art and commerce," she told BI.

"That might sound like a less creative answer, but on the design side, it really is about being super creative and trusting your instinct," she said. "Instinct is so important to a designer, and if you don't have that, it's hard."

Gayot's fashion instinct is tangible from the moment you meet her. She looked effortlessly cool at the Parsons Benefit, dressed in a black, double-breasted blazer over a beaded skirt. And mid-interview, she was even pulled aside by another J.Crew executive who needed fashion advice.

She said those who want to follow in her creative footsteps should start by finding inspiration in everyday life.

"Get inspiration from travel, friends, books, literature, movies," she told BI. "Really fill your cup up in terms of inspiration so that you have a lot of your own ideas to create from."

Those ideas then need to be translated into products that your customers love.

"Without your customers, you don't have a brand," Gayot said. "So really listen to them and understand what their needs are. So much of my job, which I love, is talking to people. Do you need an outfit for work? Are you a stay-at-home mom? Do you want to look chic on the weekends? Are you going on a trip? It's that real-life perspective of the end use that I think is really important."

The Parsons Benefit was hosted at Cipriani Wall Street on Tuesday night. The annual event raises funds for student scholarships, inspires young generations of designers, and celebrates influential creatives in fashion and design.

• Home prices climbed to record highs for April, according to the National Association of Realtors.
• The median home price in April was $407,600.
• Americans have been struggling to find affordable homes to buy, with prices and interest rates high.

Home prices reached record highs in April, according to a new report from the National Association of Realtors (NAR).

The median price of an existing home climbed 5.7% year-over-year in April to $407,600, keeping pressure on prospective homeowners already dealing with high interest rates.

According to the NAR, that's the tenth month in a row of year-over-year increases and the highest-ever tally for the month of April.

Home prices rose despite the relatively flat total number of existing home sales in April (4.14 million).

"Home sales changed little overall, but the upper-end market is experiencing a sizable gain due to more supply coming onto the market," the NAR's chief economist Lawrence Yun said in a statement.

While there are some brighter spots in the market with lower down payments, overall, home affordability has plunged since the pandemic with rocketing mortgage rates and high property prices driven by nationwide supply shortages.

The trends have now made renting more affordable than buying in most major cities — with landlords emerging as major winners.

If you're hoping for a drop in interest rates soon, you may need to keep waiting. This week, Federal Reserve governor Christopher Waller said the government will need to see "several months" more of signs that inflation is cooling before lowering rates.

The Fed had jacked up interest rates to combat a surge in inflation. But while rates have remained high, so have inflation indicators and consumer prices.

• Blackstone is set to grant shares to workers at the businesses it buys, The Wall Street Journal reported.
• It's set to award stock to employees at Copeland, which it bought last year for $14 billion.
• Other private equity giants including KKR and Apollo also offer equity to portfolio companies' staff.

Blackstone is set to start granting stock to its portfolio companies' employees, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The private equity giant's plans to give equity to workers at most of the large US-based businesses it buys are expected to be announced at a conference this week.

Blackstone plans to start the initiative by giving shares to workers at Copeland, a climate-tech company it bought from Emerson Electric last year for $14 billion, per the Journal.

The investment firm employs about 700,000 people across the 230 companies it owns globally. Blackstone shares are down 3% this year, but have risen more than 50% over the past 12 months leaving it worth just over $150 billion at Tuesday's closing bell.

Other private equity titans have made similar moves in recent years.

KKR started awarding shares to employees at its industrial businesses in 2011 and later broadened the program to cover workers at all of its US-based portfolio companies.

In April 2022, KKR's global cohead of private equity Pete Stavros launched Ownership Works, a nonprofit that seeks to promote shared ownership. Apollo, Ares, and Silver Lake are among the 19 firms that have backed the program.

The private equity titans see granting shares to rank-and-file employees as part of an effort to reduce income inequality, at a time when the industry's massive profits have come under fire from lawmakers, including senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

When Ownership Works launched two years ago, it set the goal of generating $20 billion in wealth for low and middle-income employees over the following decade.

• Target's comparable sales fell 3.7% last quarter, the fourth consecutive quarter of decline.
• Improvements in e-commerce weren't enough to cover a 4.8% slide for in-store comps.
• The company is pulling out a number of stops to avoid a fifth down quarter.

Target reported $24.5 billion in revenue last quarter, with comparable sales down 3.7%, marking the fourth consecutive quarter of decline. While e-commerce orders returned to growth and improved by 1.4%, it wasn't enough to cover a 4.8% slide for in-store comps.

Unlike total sales, comparable sales exclude new and closed stores, and analysts commonly use the measure to assess the underlying health of the business. In Target's case, the measure reflects only results from locations open for at least 13 months.

Although the company managed to improve profitability last quarter, CEO Brian Cornell told investors on Wednesday that "we won't be satisfied until we see positive comps in the second quarter and over the balance of the year."

Target is now pulling out a number of stops to affect that turnaround, the most recent of which are price cuts on thousands of items that Cornell says will collectively save shoppers millions of dollars this summer.

The company also revamped and expanded its membership program, Target Circle, adding over a million new shoppers during the quarter. It did not specify how many of those were in the paid tier, which offers unlimited free delivery like Walmart+ and Amazon Prime.

Target even tried on some new hats this quarter — wholesaler and exporter — as the company partnered with Canada's Hudson Bay chain to sell the wildly popular Cat and Jack children's clothing line.

While on the subject of private label (own brands, as Target likes to call them), the company expanded its assortment in the budget-minded Dealworthy brand of essentials and invested in improving the quality of its Up and Up line.

Unfortunately for Target, the moves over the past several months haven't resulted in people shopping more often or buying bigger baskets — something the company attributes in large part to inflation-weary consumers and stretched household finances.

Going into the summer, Target faces a tricky balancing act of growing top-line sales through deals and promotions while also keeping profitability in line with investor expectations.

"We're encouraged by the meaningful progress we've seen in recent quarters," Cornell said."These trends reinforce our confidence that we're on the right track and positioned to get back to growth in Q2."

• Large companies such as Bayer are seeking more real-time visibility for their global supply.
• With FourKites' AI-powered tracking systems, Bayer improved its ocean-shipment prediction quality by 48%.
• This article is part of "The Future of Supply-Chain Management," a series on companies' manufacturing and distribution strategies.

When the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed in Baltimore earlier this year, Bayer quickly received an alert that 168 of its shipments would be affected by the disruption in the port.

In March 2020, the German pharmaceutical and agricultural producer began working with FourKites, a supply-chain-intelligence platform that tracks shipments and provides real-time visibility for when goods will be delivered to ports, warehouses, manufacturing facilities, and stores.

As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded and upended the international supply chain, the benefits of Bayer's partnership with FourKites became evident.

"Everything is about expectations," Johnny Ivanyi, the global head of logistics for Bayer Crop Science, told Business Insider. "Even if we don't deliver on time, your customer can say, 'At least I got the information to make my decision.'"

Bayer Crop Science uses FourKites for shipments across more than 65 countries, with FourKites tracking the majority of Bayer's containers as they move from port to port. FourKites can also track raw materials as they move along oceans, railways, roads, and air, from fields to ports to trucks and then from manufacturing facilities and warehouses to final delivery on a farm.

"It is a lot of complexity," Ivanyi said.

This information helps Bayer establish "one source of truth," Ivanyi said, in terms of the visibility of raw materials such as seeds and soybeans that need to be delivered at the right time to ensure a successful harvest.

How AI-powered tracking systems can boost customer satisfaction

FourKites taps into Bayer's transportation-management system, data that shows which goods are assigned to various carriers along the supply chain. By using machine-learning and artificial-intelligence algorithms, Bayer has seen an improvement in prediction quality of about 48% throughout an ocean journey, FourKites said.

More recently, FourKites has also used generative AI to allow customers such as Bayer to ask AI chatbots questions about their logistics and what disruptions like the Baltimore bridge collapse may mean for them. The bots can even make recommendations on how to respond.

Priya Rajagopalan, the president of product, technology, and operations at FourKites, said the company launched more than eight years ago to give shipping visibility to large shippers, similar to how customers can easily track their orders via Amazon.

FourKites tracks more than 3 million shipments daily across roads, rails, the ocean, and air, reaching over 200 countries and territories and giving companies like Walmart, Coca-Cola, and Kraft Heinz better visibility into when the goods they produce will be delivered to customers.

Monitoring complex ocean shipments to avoid supply-chain disruptions

The supply-chain disruptions from the pandemic led to great interest from large food and beverage companies to more closely track shipments, especially those moving across the ocean, which hadn't previously been as big of a focus.

"The scale of the disruption was so large that just the fact that nobody is monitoring it and they have no tech around it became such a point of vulnerability," Rajagopalan said. "I think almost every chief supply-chain officer received the mandate that we cannot have these sorts of blind spots and areas of vulnerability."

Initially, FourKites focused on providing real-time visibility for shipments on trucks, a highly fragmented system with over 3 million trucks handled by over half a million carriers on US roads alone.

The seas have seen more high-profile disruptions in recent years, including a container ship getting stuck in the Suez Canal in 2021 and the ongoing Yemen Houthi rebel attacks on ships in the Red Sea. These challenges have led more large multinational conglomerates to work with FourKites to predict more accurately when their shipments will arrive in ports. This information is of particular interest to industries such as farming and fashion, both reliant on specific windows of seasonality to achieve maximum sales success.

FourKites' machine-learning algorithms have helped Bayer predict the time of arrival of ocean shipments within two days over 90% of the time.

These insights can help influence decisions along the full supply-chain journey. For example, think of a storm brewing outside Japan that's disrupting shipments of raw agricultural materials meant for delivery to Los Angeles.

"I need to think a couple steps ahead," Ivanyi said.

Bayer would get an alert from FourKites, which would then help influence a few key decisions. Knowing that a shipment is delayed across the ocean, Bayer may need to plan for congestion at the port. Now, a delivery that was intended for the first week of June won't come until a week later. Knowing this, Bayer could have its manufacturing plant in Iowa readjust its production-line planning to account for the delayed deliveries, instead focusing on making products with the goods it has on hand from other vendors.

This tracking system also allows Bayer sales representatives to know when the seeds will be delivered to the farmer in Illinois. Previously, that representative would need to talk to someone in customer service, who would then call logistics and then call the carrier to get intel on disruptions. Now, all that information is available virtually.

"Every day, you are feeding into this kind of intelligence that I think is getting better and better," Ivanyi said.

• The US has long restricted Ukraine from using American weapons to strike targets inside Russia.
• Analysts and officials say this policy is interfering with Ukraine's ability to defend itself.
• But Kyiv is pushing the US to change its stance in the wake of the Russia's new Kharkiv assault.

The Biden administration's policy restricting Ukraine from using US-provided weapons to strike military targets inside Russia is hamstringing Kyiv's ability to defend itself, analysts and officials say.

The US has sent Ukraine billions of dollars in security assistance over the course of the war, but it has barred the country from using American weaponry, especially certain powerful long-range missiles, to carry out strikes across the border.

Washington has been unwavering in its stance on this matter, instead giving Kyiv approval to only hit targets within Russian-occupied territory in Ukraine.

But the Biden administration is facing increasing pressure to soften this long-held policy in the wake of a new Russian assault in Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region, which began earlier this month. Analysts and officials have argued in the days since that the US position has prevented Kyiv from stopping the onslaught, effectively hamstringing its defensive capabilities.

'Handcuffing' the Ukrainian defense

After massing tens of thousands of troops near the border, Russia on May 10 launched an assault into the Kharkiv region as part of a bid to stretch thin Ukrainian forces across the front line and pin down Kyiv's defenses in the region, and also carve out a buffer zone along the border.

The limited incursion appears to be setting the stage for what could be a multi-pronged summer offensive that would stress a Ukrainian military still facing shortages in both material and much-needed manpower.

Immediately after the initial assault, analysts and officials pointed to the Biden administration's policy preventing Ukraine from using US weapons to strike military targets inside Russia as the catalyst for the unfolding situation, in which Moscow has already managed to capture a small amount of territory along the border.

George Barros, the geospatial-intelligence team lead and a Russia analyst at the Institute for the Study of War think tank, said last week that the restriction is "severely compromising Ukraine's ability to defend itself" against the assault.

"US policy has effectively created a vast sanctuary in which Russia has been able to amass its ground invasion force and from which it is launching glide bombs and other long-range strike systems in support of its renewed invasion," Barros wrote in a May 13 analysis.

Glide bombs, in particular, have been a significant threat to Ukrainian forces. Really the only way to defend front-line forces and civilians from these highly destructive weapons is to intercept the Russian aircraft before they can launch the munitions, or attempt to take them out on the ground. But these aircraft are operating within the safety of their own airspace, out of reach of air-defense systems.

"Whatever the merits of this US policy before the Russian assault on Kharkiv Oblast began, it should be modified immediately to reflect the urgent realities of the current situation," Barros said.

Ukrainian officials told POLITICO last week that the country watched as Russian forces gathered across the border, but they could not do anything to blunt the assault because of the US policy. The officials had traveled to Washington as part of a new push from Kyiv to try and get the Biden administration to lift its ban.

After meeting with the delegation of Ukrainian officials, a group of Congressional lawmakers on Monday wrote to US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, urging the Biden administration to lift its restrictions and provide Kyiv with additional defensive capabilities that it badly needs.

In the bipartisan letter, more than a dozen lawmakers cited the POLITICO report, saying that the administration's current policy "is handcuffing Ukraine's ability to push back on Russian forces near Kharkiv" with US-provided weaponry. "Ukrainian officials have watched for weeks as Russian troops have attacked Ukrainian communities from Russian territory with impunity," they wrote.

"Ukrainians have been unable to defend themselves due to the Administration's current policy," the lawmakers continued. "It is essential the Biden Administration allows Ukraine's military leaders an ability to conduct a full spectrum of operations necessary to respond to Russia's unprovoked attack on their sovereign land."

Indeed, Ukrainian soldiers have highlighted this challenge in recent discussions with Western media.

"There were a lot of Russians gathering, and we could have destroyed them on the way in, but we don't have many ATACMS, and we have a ban on using them over there," a Ukrainian special forces commander who watched as Russia built up its forces on the Russian side of the border told The Times of London, referring to the US-provided MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile Systems. He told the outlet that having to wait for the enemy to cross into Ukrainian territory proved costly.

The US has long feared that a change in its policy could be seen by Russian President Vladimir Putin as an escalation. Washington has also held this attitude when considering whether to send high-profile weaponry to Ukraine.

Former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland pushed back on this rationale during a Sunday interview on ABC News' "This Week." She said Russia has already taken steps to escalate the conflict, including by conducting its recent assault on Kharkiv, and argued that it's now time for the US to change its policy.

Bases in Russian territory that are facilitating Moscow's attacks should be "fair game" for Ukraine to go after, she said. "Russia has learned how to pull its forces back out of the range where we have allowed Ukraine to use our weapons and get our support."

Despite mounting support for the US to lift its ban, and the surprising loosening of similar restrictions by the UK government earlier this month, Washington seems unlikely to alter its position anytime soon.

"Our policy hasn't changed," Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters at a Tuesday press briefing. "We are focused on providing Ukraine with capabilities that it needs to defend itself within Ukrainian sovereign territory."

Ukraine, meanwhile, has been forced to find innovative and alternative solutions to carry out long-range cross-border strikes. In lieu of Western missiles, for instance, Kyiv has relied heavily on homemade drones packed with explosives to attack strategic military and energy facilities hundreds of miles deep inside Russian territory.