Author: openjargon

• Some millennials are suddenly surging ahead financially.
• Those with growing fortunes can thank a set of unique economic circumstances in recent years.
• It means some feel more confident about retirement, or were able to buy new homes outright.

James Barnes is surprised to find himself beating the millennial odds.

At age 33, he is firmly in the middle of the generational cohort born 1981 to 1996. By some accounts, they killed off staples like napkins and cereal and spent too much money on avocado toast and fancy coffee. Many started their careers in the aftermath of the Great Recession, have contended with a housing affordability crisis throughout adulthood, and generally seemed to be doomed to economic misery.

Pre-pandemic, Barnes' situation skewed closer to that traditional millennial image. In his early 20s, Barnes and his wife lived with his parents. She went corporate and he worked with a managed service provider for assisted living facilities as they steadily paid down their student loans and saved for their own home.

"Just starting out and graduating college, you're saddled with student debt, you're living in an apartment which you're paying rent for, you're not building any equity, you're generally not making nearly as much money as you thought you'd be making right out of the gate at college," Barnes said. "So looking at even a $150,000 price tag for a house, you're just like, when is that ever going to happen?"

In 2017, it did finally happen for the Barneses. They put a down payment on a house in Lawrenceville, Georgia. Barnes said it was just a regular, normal life: They commuted to Atlanta for work, hung out with friends, worked on home improvements, enjoyed being DINKs, and took care of their pet bearded dragon. They weren't struggling, but they always watched their budget and spent conservatively.

When the pandemic hit, Barnes' wife intensified her very millennial hobby: Perusing real estate and touring open houses. She discovered they were sitting on a gold mine — their house had doubled in value.

It prompted a strategic life move. The couple decided to sell and move back to Barnes' home state of Alabama. When a real estate company offered $300,000, double what the couple had paid, they jumped on it.

"I know this is a very odd scenario for most millennials and really most people, but we sold a house and basically just bought a house outright," he said.

The Barneses are part of a new millennial group that is suddenly doing very well financially — especially if they bought real estate pre-pandemic. In the fourth quarter of 2019, millennials held $3.5 trillion in real estate wealth; as of the fourth quarter of 2023, that's more than doubled.

After an adulthood plagued by economic woes, the pandemic brought on a student-loan payment pause, rising salaries, spiking real estate and stock holdings, and government stimulus. It all helped change the fortunes of some millennials. While all of that is not enough to lift up a whole generation struggling with high living costs, a lucky few managed to capture the golden egg.

Doubling wealth in just a few years

While many millennials are approaching an age that's generally associated with peak earning and homeownership years, they were lagging behind pre-pandemic: As of early 2020, millennials owned 4% of the country's real estate value; at that same age, baby boomers owned 32%.

Now, however, things are looking up. Over half of millennials now own their homes — up from 43% in 2019 — and, as of 2022, millennials' average pre-tax household income was $100,315, up from $79,514 in 2019.

Khary, an elder millennial parent of two who works in technical advising, weathered his generation's classic economic double punch: The Navy veteran said he got laid off in 2008 and, going into the pandemic, had about $40,000 in combined student loan debt between him and his spouse.

"It felt like I lost about four or five years of progress in trying to build up my savings and plan ahead for the future," he said. Khary and other millennials BI spoke to asked to go by first name only over privacy concerns.

When the pandemic hit, Khary suddenly got some relief. Between the student loan pause, stimulus checks, a pay raise, and a robust stock market, he doubled his investment savings and was able to max out his retirement accounts, according to documentation viewed by BI. He's still paying off student loans but said his payments are much easier to make now.

And he's within sight of something coveted by Americans of all generations: a comfortable retirement. He said his early-career layoff lost him a few years of building up his savings and planning ahead.

"The pandemic really just helped to bridge that gap and helped me get back what I had lost," he said.

Many in his generation can relate. Average millennial wealth doubled between 2019 and 2023, according to an analysis from the Center for American Progress. Similarly, the real median net worth for Americans under the age of 35 grew by 143% from 2019 to 2022.

The most striking thing about millennials' sudden surge in wealth: It dwarfs the progress of previous generations that experienced a recession during their young adult years.

For example, Gen Xers' real wealth grew by only 4% in the four years following 2007's Great Recession. Baby boomers' real wealth grew by 46% in the four years after the 1990 recession. Millennials outpaced them all and then some.

One game changer for millennials was the student-loan payment pause and the subsequent relief programs President Joe Biden has been rolling out. Millennials holding debt had, on average, $40,614 as of 2023. The Biden administration has been chipping away at some of America's student debt load, forgiving nearly $160 billion so far through account adjustments, fraud restitution, and clearing a backlog of applications to major debt forgiveness programs like one for people who work in public service.

Amanda, a millennial parent in Texas who works in tech, never made any payments on her loans at all. Since she didn't go straight into college after graduating from high school, she graduated from college during the pandemic pause.

The break alleviated some concerns over her financial prospects after graduation. She said she felt her degree was completely useless. Her school also didn't offer any of the job assistance it had promised. But, it all ended up working out for Amanda; just two weeks after she and her husband bought a house together in 2023, she found out her $80,000 loan balance was forgiven. In total, Amanda and her family have more than doubled their income since the start of the pandemic; she's making just around $100,000 now.

"I came from very poor circumstances and I was determined that my kid would not live the same way I did," she said.

Some anxiety — but more stability

The pandemic didn't turn around every millennial's financial position. The rise in wealth has added fuel to the generation's class divide because it left some behind — after all, many millennials still live paycheck to paycheck.

"A lot of millennials are doing worse than their parents," Rob Gruijters, a university lecturer at the University of Cambridge and the coauthor of a recent paper on the growing millennial wealth gap, told BI.

"The narrative is increasing inequality, and that has losers and winners," he said. "So there's people who are on the top side of the distribution, they benefit from the increase in inequality, and then there's quite a substantial number of people who are losing in that situation."

One way the top end is getting richer while lower-income millennials still struggle is through stock market investments. Stock values have skyrocketed over the last few years, with the S&P 500 soaring after the initial pandemic shock and still hitting record highs; however, the top 10% of Americans own around 93% of stocks.

Still, lower-income Americans were the ones most likely to have benefited from the post-pandemic wage gains pushed by labor shortages in some industries. Research has found that wage growth at the bottom of the income distribution helped counteract the effects of decades of wage inequality and even pared down the college wage premium.

Still, even some millennials who have seen their lots improve fret about the future. They're hyperaware of just how quickly things can take a turn.

"I know that I'm doing a lot better than other people my age, but there's still a lot of anxiety that if there's another pandemic, if anything crazy happens, if we lose our jobs, how do we pay the bills?" Amanda said.

For Caitlin de Oliveira, 34, the pandemic boost hasn't meant anything as radical as doubling her household's income or buying a new home. Instead, stimulus measures — including monthly child tax credit checks in 2021 — meant that her family was able to gain a financial foothold.

Between upping their savings and gains from a robust stock market, their 401(k) has grown to a little under $85,000 — up from around $20,000 in 2019. That's meant she's been able to feel confident that they are on their way to being able to retire in a good spot.

"Just knowing that is so comforting," she said. She said that she doesn't think millennials are as "dumb" financially as people say — "a lot of us are really trying — it's just been hard."

In the past, Khary said, millennials had dealt with crises and just complained. But not this time.

"As millennials, I think we felt ready and it proved that we had been through quite a bit and we kind of learned from it," he said. "It kind of built up a sense of confidence in us that we can actually handle sort of what's coming down the road if there's any more crises."

Are you a millennial whose finances have improved substantially over the last few years? Contact this reporter at jkaplan@businessinsider.com.

• Alphabet's earnings blew past expectations in Q1 of 2024 and sent stocks soaring.
• Google Search, YouTube, Google Cloud, and AI technology like Gemini have performed strongly.
• The Q1 earnings came after a tumultuous 2023 that saw large-scale layoffs.

Alphabet, Google's parent company, releases its earnings data every quarter.

Sundar Pichai, who is the CEO of Google and Alphabet, joins the earnings calls to deliver updates and answer questions.

Here's a breakdown of Alphabet's most recent earnings and financial history.

Alphabet Q1 earnings 2024

Alphabet's earnings report in April of 2024 far outstripped analysts' projections, sending stocks skyrocketing.

The company reported a 15% revenue bump year over year, revenues of $80.5 billion, and also issued its first-ever $0.20 per share dividend.

On the earnings call, Pichai touted "strong" performances from Google Search, YouTube, and Google Cloud. He also spoke glowingly of the company's inroads in artificial intelligence, and declared Alphabet to be in its "Gemini era," a reference to Google's Gemini AI chatbot.

Google has been gradually incorporating AI into its core products, such as YouTube and Workspace, the suite of productivity programs like Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Drive.

"Our leadership in AI research and infrastructure, and our global product footprint, position us well for the next wave of AI innovation," Pichai said.

Alphabet Q4 earnings 2023

Alphabet beat expectations in its fourth quarter of 2023, though Google's advertising sales fell slightly below analyst projections, causing shares to dip. 

Alphabet's revenue swelled to $86.3 billion, up 13%, and the company reported a net income of $20.28 billion with $1.64 per diluted share.

In the earnings call, Pichai noted that Google had just launched its new AI model Gemini, and remarked that "the best is yet to come."

Alphabet Q3 earnings 2023

Alphabet's third-quarter earnings surpassed analysts' estimates, beating revenue and profit projections. But Google's stock fell 10% after its Cloud business fell short of Wall Street's expectations.

Google Cloud's revenue was up 22% at $8.4 billion, but down from 28% growth in the previous quarter.

On the earnings call, Pichai noted that the company was expanding and deploying new AI services, and said the company was "excited and confident" for its future prospects.

Alphabet earnings history

Alphabet — made up of Google and a collection of other companies known as Other Bets — had a tumultuous 2023, unveiling its most ambitious artificial intelligence technology and boasting an annual revenue of $307.39 billion, but also axing approximately 6% of the company.

Like many tech companies in the post-pandemic era, Alphabet has sought to cut costs and implement layoffs. Alphabet laid off some 12,000 employees in 2023, and by the end of the fourth quarter, the company reported having about 182,500 employees in total. 

Executives have also warned that layoffs aren't over — Pichai has anticipated more job cuts throughout 2024. Pichai explained that Google's layoffs have been intentionally slow because the company is "taking the time to do it correctly and well."

Still, Alphabet's market cap hit $2 trillion in spring 2024, a new milestone that made Google the world's fourth-most valuable public company.

The majority of Alphabet's revenue has come from Google, ever since the parent company was first formed in 2015. Other Bets — which includes businesses like Waymo, Verily, equity investment fund Capital G, and research and development unit Google X — generates most of its revenue from healthcare-related services but also reports large operating losses. 

In Q1 of 2024, Other Bets posted revenues of $495 million but reported an operating loss of $1 billion.

A Russian infantry vehicle darts across a war-torn field, trying to outrun a small Ukrainian drone. But there's no escaping this peculiar weapon: a high-speed, highly maneuverable flying IED.

The drone strikes the armor, setting off an explosion. Soldiers inside rush to ditch their wounded vehicle, knowing well what's coming next. A second drone swoops in and devastates it with an even larger blast, a killing blow.

This scene from a drone attack in April, footage of which was shared by the Ukrainian defense ministry, is one of many that have shown the world that the long-awaited unmanned future of war has arrived, and it's terrifying.

In Ukraine, these often simple machines are not only watching soldiers at all times but also killing them. Explosive-laden drones are destroying vehicles on the run, flying into the open hatches of tanks, hunting down troops in trenches, and dropping bombs on unsuspecting enemies.

Troops on the ground are scrambling, trying to meet this emerging threat with whatever is available. They're welding increasingly elaborate cages on tanks and armored vehicles, turning to electronic-warfare systems such as frequency jammers with mixed results, and even attempting to get their hands on pump-action shotguns to kill the machines at close range.

But drones are still dominating the battlefield, prowling around the front lines and taking out troops and equipment.

The evolution of drone warfare, thrust into the global spotlight by the war in Ukraine, has compelled the US military to take a hard look at its capabilities to counter drones.

In Ukraine, these systems have derailed battlefield maneuvers, forcing both sides into deadly attritional, positional battles — a kind of fighting ill-suited to Western armies. Troops are hiding in trenches and moving at night just to avoid the drone threat, but even then, there are unmanned aircraft with thermal sights and ominous nicknames from Slavic folklore that hunt in the dark.

The Department of Defense is working on initiatives to face the drone threat, but the US military doesn't yet appear ready to confront this ever-evolving challenge, especially on the scale seen in Ukraine.

Just this year, three American troops were killed in Jordan by a single exploding drone. According to some estimates, thousands of these unmanned systems are buzzing over battlefields in Ukraine.

The US military's next major armed conflict could easily involve an enemy armed with hundreds of thousands of drones, potentially in autonomous swarms as machine learning and artificial intelligence take further hold in modern military systems.

The US certainly has the capacity to build suitable defenses against drones, Mick Ryan, a retired Australian Army major general and strategist, told Business Insider. But he doesn't "know that anyone who hasn't fought in Ukraine is fully ready," he added.

"You can't understand that environment unless you've actually fought in it," he said. The US just hasn't had that kind of experience, leaving it with a lot to learn.

Drones bolster weaker armies with low-cost airpower

The US military has long used large, sophisticated drones — such as the Predator, the Reaper, and the Global Hawk — to carry out strikes and surveil adversaries during combat. It wasn't until about a decade ago that the US began to face crude attack drones in battle.

In the mid-2010s, the Islamic State began weaponizing small, cheap, and commercially available drones by attaching explosives to them or modifying them to drop munitions on enemy targets. That threat has become more pervasive, and the US now routinely sees one-way attack drones in the Middle East, particularly in attacks by Iranian proxies.

Drones have been part of other conflicts as well. For instance, they played a prominent role during the weekslong war between Armenia and Azerbaijan in 2020.

But drone warfare soared to a new level in the Ukraine war. Both sides are using unmanned systems of varying size and lethality to perform all sorts of tasks and missions — and just generally wreak havoc on the battlefield — both on land and on sea. They can be difficult to adequately defend against, making them effective in attacking vehicles, fortifications, and personnel.

Ukraine and Russia publish videos from their drones day in and day out. They flood social media, giving the world an uninterrupted window into how deadly this conflict is. It has become common to see, often from first-person view, a small quadcopter drone carrying plastic explosives or an RPG warhead slam into an enemy tank and detonate, or hover above unsuspecting troops and drop grenades.

This footage has reinforced a harsh, new reality: It's nearly impossible to hide or conduct surprise attacks, as soldiers are always being watched in the field.

Samuel Bendett, an unmanned-systems researcher, previously described the emerging drone threat to BI, saying that "anything that moves, anyone that moves, can be observed, tracked, and potentially slammed with an FPV drone" in Ukraine.

With attack and recon drones ever-present over the battlefield, "it's more difficult now to mass forces to conduct an assault on the ground because it's just hard to not be detected," Paul Scharre, who helped establish policies on autonomous systems at the Pentagon, told BI, adding that drones "have given both sides an element of low-cost airpower, particularly right at the front lines."

In Ukraine, he said, "that's been incredibly effective and valuable in the conflict."

How the US is adapting to an evolving enemy

The surging use of small drones over the past decade has pushed the US military — which went decades without really having to worry about attacks from the air — to attempt to adapt.

The US Army established the Joint Counter-small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office in early 2020 to coordinate the Pentagon's response, which included developing anti-drone technologies and training soldiers to engage them in battle.

Since then, the office has been working closely with the defense industry and has held events to demonstrate various systems that could counter small airborne drones, also referred to as unmanned aerial systems. Solutions include missiles and high-powered microwaves.

There are several counter-drone options, some better than others. Powerful electronic-warfare systems, for instance, are an area defense capability that can render many drones useless by flooding their control frequencies with electronic noise or confusing their satellite-based navigation.

American armed forces have also explored directed energy, testing laser weapons against drones from ships and ground-combat vehicles.

The US military has also, at least once, engaged a small quadcopter drone with a Patriot surface-to-air missile, but that's overkill — something the Army has acknowledged. Counter-drone solutions have to be cost-effective, rather than a trade of a $3 million interceptor missile for a drone worth a few hundred bucks.

At closer range, drones could be targeted by radar-guided antiaircraft guns, such as the Flakpanzer Gepard used by Ukraine, or man-portable guided missiles, including the Stinger. But those may be less suited for engaging the small, fast, and highly maneuverable first-person-view drones. Last-ditch defenses may include handheld drone stun guns or even shotguns.

US military leaders have repeatedly stressed there's no silver bullet to defeat small drones in battle. Col. Mike Parent, the Joint Counter-small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office's acquisition-and-resources division chief, said that a layered "system of systems approach" was necessary to provide the best defense possible against uncertain threats.

Protecting a military base can be a bit easier because it's equipped with fixed defenses, he told BI.

"You see that a lot in the Middle East," he added. "When you're not as static, however, and soldiers are out on the battlefield moving around, you definitely need that full system-of-systems approach because you really don't know what the adversary will throw against you."

The US has learned a lot from observing drone activity in the Middle East and Ukraine. One of the lessons is that hostile forces are "evolving very quickly," Parent said. Technology, he said, is getting faster and more autonomous, and if an enemy "can identify you either through passive or active means, you're very easy to target."

"Every soldier is going to have to have some kind of ability or capability to conduct counter-small UAS activities," he added, but the US military isn't there yet.

Last fall, the Army launched another drone initiative: the Joint C-sUAS University. In Oklahoma's Fort Sill, the JCU consolidates counter-drone training for service members across all branches of the military.

Students there spend several weeks learning how to identify, engage, and defeat small drones. The training involves working with early-warning radars to detect the aircraft and using handheld devices, including electronic-warfare and smart-shooting systems, to neutralize the unmanned aircraft.

Trainees practice by firing at balloons with rifles that have a drone-tracking scope, but there's a concern that these efforts and US Army field exercises do not sufficiently reflect the scale of the threat, which may be a large mass of flying bombs.

The Army has also incorporated the drone threat into certain training exercises. Soldiers at the National Training Center in California, for example, have practiced defending against drone swarms multiple times in a single day.

The US, meanwhile, continues to invest in new and existing technologies to defeat this growing challenge.

Doug Bush, the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics, and technology, told reporters in early May that in the proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year, the service planned to allocate $447 million for spending on counter-UAS programs of record, which are systems that are available or in the works.

Lt. Col. Moseph Sauda, the director of the JCU, doesn't believe the US is lagging behind with its counter-drone training. "The issue is you could be so successful that you fail to continue to develop," he told BI during a visit to Fort Sill earlier this year, emphasizing the importance of remaining agile and flexible.

"If you look at the future of warfare, if we had to fight and win today in this current environment with what's going on in flying, we would still win," Sauda said. "But the enemy is still going to evolve."

What comes next, such as autonomous swarms or some other threat, likely at a scale not previously seen, could be vastly more daunting.

The US isn't yet ready to face drones in combat

America's next war may not look exactly like Ukraine and instead be a unique horror. Conflict with China, which some officials have warned is possible, would likely unfold predominantly across a vast maritime domain. But unmanned systems, including small drones, could be a factor, nonetheless.

The US military recognizes this and is now looking at building out its own drone force. Last year, the Department of Defense unveiled the Replicator initiative, a monthslong plan to field thousands of autonomous systems to counter China.

The US military could also face this kind of threat in a war with Russia in Europe, a possibility should Russia emerge victorious in Ukraine, or in a conflict with Iran, which regularly engages in malign activity, such as producing one-way attack drones for Russia and arming proxy forces throughout the Middle East.

But the US military is not as ready for a large-scale drone conflict "as many people would like it to be," Scharre, now the executive vice president and director of studies at the Center for a New American Security think tank, said.

The drone threat draws certain parallels to fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, where hidden bombs posed a tremendous threat. Even though Washington had options to counter the problem, insurgents often adapted and changed their tactics.

Improvised explosive devices are well known threats that, over the years, have killed and maimed countless US service members. The danger is that exploding drones, the flying equivalent, are now similarly cheap and accessible, even for militant groups.

"The US military has often struggled to counter these sort of cheap tools of harassment that are widely available to state and nonstate groups alike," Scharre said. "That might not stop the US military's ability to go into an area, but it can slow them down and cause casualties."

Scharre added: "These technologies kind of create this environment that I think is much more transparent and lethal, and is one that the US military hasn't really fully adapted to yet."

Preparing for the drone fight is not just important — but also critical, Justin Bronk and Jack Watling, war experts and senior fellows at London's Royal United Services Institute think tank, wrote last month in an analysis.

Armies that are unprepared to face this threat on the battlefield risk handing an enemy force highly valuable battlefield awareness and making themselves vulnerable to devastating precision strikes, they said.

The US appears to be in the early stages of absorbing lessons from overseas and training its soldiers on how to prepare. But experts say the military still needs to significantly boost its procurement of counter-drone defenses.

Countering the drone threat means "scaling up things like electronic warfare in a way that we just haven't done before, not even in the counter-IED battle in Iraq and Afghanistan," Ryan, the retired Australian major general, said, adding: "We've kind of done it, but we need to do it at a whole new scale."

The US will also have to incorporate key systems into the training regimens of every unit on the battlefield, he said. And the US military will need far more drone-defense units, which could mean paring back on tanks, artillery, infantry, or logistics engineers.

"There will be some trade-offs that are required, and when you're trading off between those kinds of military occupational specialties, it's always difficult," Ryan said. "We don't have unlimited personnel resources." What will have to go remains to be seen.

• Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas spoke at a judicial conference in Alabama on Friday.
• Thomas told US District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle he and his wife have endured "lies."
• His wife, Ginni Thomas, faced scrutiny for her belief that the 2020 election was stolen.

Clarence Thomas made it clear on Friday that he's not been happy with some of the conversations about him over the past few years.

During the 11th Circuit Judicial Conference in Point Clear, Alabama, Thomas expressed dismay at critics of him and his wife, though the Supreme Court Justice kept vague about what criticisms he was referring to, the Associated Press reported.

Per the AP, Thomas was asked about "working in a world that seems meanspirited" by US District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle — a Donald Trump appointee who moderated the conversation.

"I think there's challenges to that," Thomas said, per the AP. "We're in a world and we — certainly my wife and I the last two or three years it's been — just the nastiness and the lies, it's just incredible."

Thomas has been criticized for failing to disclose luxury trips and donations from his billionaire friend Harlan Crow. The subsequent uproar resulted in Thomas updating financial disclosures to indicate his ties to the conservative donor.

In light of the controversy, the Supreme Court adopted a code of conduct that advises justices to recuse themselves from cases where they may have a conflict of interest— though it was criticized as toothless for its lack of an enforcement mechanism.

His wife, Ginni Thomas' previous assertions that the 2020 election was stolen and her presence at the rally before the January 6 Capitol riot are also a constant source of criticism for the Supreme Court justice.

Thomas has heard some cases regarding the capitol riot regardless, including Trump's presidential immunity case.

In his Friday remarks, Thomas also described Washington as a place where "reckless" people will "bomb your reputation or your good name or your honor" and said that he preferred "RVing" to being in the US capital, per the AP.

Notably, Thomas' RV, which he uses to travel around the country, became controversial when The New York Times reported that he purchased the luxury vehicle with a loan from a former UnitedHealthcare executive and did not disclose it. The Senate Finance Committee later revealed that Thomas never paid the loan back.

"I think what you are going to find and especially in Washington, people pride themselves on being awful. It is a hideous place as far as I'm concerned," Thomas told his Friday audience, per the AP.

Representatives for Thomas and the Supreme Court did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

• Hybrid sales are booming in the US. 
• Once dismissed as a "phase," many drivers are now choosing them over EVs.
• One Toyota exec told BI there are "no compromises" to buying a hybrid anymore. 

Hybrids are having a moment.

Sales of partially battery-powered vehicles, once ridiculed as a "phase" by the likes of Elon Musk, are increasing even as EVs stutter, with hybrid sales growing by 50% in the first two months of the year, while EV sales grew 13% in that time, according to research site Edmunds.

The booming popularity of hybrids has benefited companies like Toyota who have hedged their bets on EVs and continued to invest in their hybrid lineups.

Other auto companies are following Toyota's lead, with General Motors pledging to sell hybrids again in North America and Ford delaying its latest electric SUV to focus on its own hybrid lineup.

Even Tesla, which famously doesn't sell hybrids and is unlikely to do so anytime soon, is taking notice. In his latest earnings report, the company blamed demand for hybrid vehicles for depressing global EV sales.

"The EV adoption rate globally is under pressure, and a lot of other auto manufacturers are pulling back on EVs and pursuing plug-in hybrids instead," said CEO Elon Musk in an earnings call.

"We believe this is not the right strategy, and electric vehicles will ultimately dominate the market," he added.

Business Insider spoke to hybrid owners, experts and industry execs to discover why hybrids are gaining popularity.

Lack of affordable EVs

Nick O'Brien, who teaches auto tech at Jefferson Community College in Kentucky, took delivery of a hybrid 2024 Ford Maverick in February, and told Business Insider he was more than happy with his purchase.

He said the hybrid perfectly balanced excellent fuel economy with a reduced environmental impact.

"I love it — it's very quiet, very smooth, and more than double the fuel economy of my previous vehicle," he said.

O'Brien told BI that he believes EVs are the future, but the lack of affordable options meant that he decided to buy a hybrid instead for his next vehicle.

"The biggest barrier for me personally is the cost of a new EV," he said. "I think there just aren't many EV options yet that regular people (as opposed to rich people) can afford."

The lack of affordable EVs has been cited as one of the biggest reasons why drivers are reluctant to go electric.

Hybrids, which tend to be more affordable than pure EVs, appear to be reaping the benefits.

Buyers paid $42,500 for hybrids in November 2023 on average compared with $60,500 for electric vehicles and $47,500 for gas cars, according to data from Edmunds reported by the New York Times.

"The additional costs associated with fully electric vehicles is definitely higher than hybrids," Mark Singer, a senior transportation analyst at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, told BI.

"A lot of hybrid electric vehicles now are not far off from their internal combustion engine alternatives. So I think that the lower incremental costs associated with hybrids at this point are driving some interest towards hybrid versus fully electric vehicles," he added.

Soaring gas prices

Singer said that gas prices, which have remained high since the pandemic in the US, could also be having an impact on consumers' decision to opt for more fuel-efficient vehicles versus gas versions.

"What we've seen historically is that when gas prices rise, hybrid electric vehicle price or acquisitions rise as well," he told BI.

"Since we came out of the pandemic period, gas prices have seen an increase and I think that's probably a significant reason why hybrid electric vehicles have grown in popularity over the last couple of years," he added.

Charging hurdles

One of the big winners of the latest hybrid craze is Toyota, which has taken a more skeptical approach to EVs than many of its rivals.

The Japanese carmaker beat out Tesla in a recent survey charting most the brands most considered by EV shoppers, despite releasing only one battery electric car in the US.

Toyota vice president of sales, Jeff Buchanan, told Business Insider that customers are now looking for a choice between hybrids, EVs, and combustion engines, and that Toyota was reaping the benefits of having options in "virtually every segment."

"With hybrids now that there's no compromises anymore — they're super efficient, they're powerful, the styling is great," he said.

Toyota is expecting around 40% of its total US sales to be in hybrids this year, Buchanan said, with sales of partially and fully electrified vehicles up 70% in the first four months of the year.

He described the relative affordability of hybrids as a "huge" factor swaying consumers towards hybrids, especially as interest rates have risen over the past few years — but added that lingering concerns over charging were also putting customers off from going fully electric.

"There's no doubt that for some people a concern," Buchanan said.

"There's just not enough public charging out there to make all customers comfortable with it, and I do think that probably is driving more customers back towards hybrids and plug-in hybrids," he added.

Singer agreed, pointing to affordability and charging as the biggest factors swaying consumers from taking the plunge and buying a pure EV.

"Those are the two issues that are proving the biggest barriers to adoption," he said.

With neither barrier an issue for hybrids, it seems that the hybrid boom is unlikely to die down anytime soon.

• David DePape is facing a 40-year sentence for his attack on Rep. Nancy Pelosi's husband, Paul.
• Prosecutors have included a terrorism enhancement in their sentencing request.
• DePape was found guilty in November of assaulting Paul Pelosi and attempting to kidnap Nancy Pelosi.

David DePape is facing a possible 40-year sentence for his 2022 attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of Rep. Nancy Pelosi.

In a sentencing memo filed Friday and reviewed by Business Insider, prosecutors requested a terrorism enhancement be added to DePape's sentence.

DePape still faces additional charges related to the attack, including attempted murder, that carry a potential sentence of 13 years to life in prison. He has pleaded not guilty.

Paul Pelosi suffered two skull fractures that required surgery to fix after DePape struck him in the head with a hammer in October 2022.

The attack occurred after DePape broke into Pelosi's San Francisco home, seeking to kidnap then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and break her kneecaps to teach her that her "lies and corruption had a price," according to the memo.

DePape was found guilty of the attack in November after about eight hours of jury deliberation. His sentencing is set for May 17.

"The nature and circumstances of the offense warrant statutory maximums on each count," prosecutors argued in the sentencing memo. "The core of both crimes — the attempted kidnapping of a public official and the assault on the family member of a public official — is violence aimed at punishing the former Speaker of the House of Representatives. Both crimes are an assault on our democracy and fundamental values."

While it is unclear exactly how often a terrorism enhancement is added to criminal cases, research published by the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism indicates prosecutors are about four times more likely to pursue the enhancement in international cases than they are in cases involving domestic extremists. Of the more than 1,200 people who have been charged in connection with the January 6 attack on the Capitol, only a handful had a terrorism enhancement applied to their case, the research notes.

Lawyers for DePape and the prosecutors in this case did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider. A spokesperson for Rep. Pelosi also did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• Since October, Donald Trump has attended — as a defendant — three Manhattan trials.
• During these trials, judges have repeatedly threatened him with jail or removal from the courtroom.
• His 4 worst judicial rebukes were all prompted by his attacks on women connected to his cases.

Since last fall, Donald Trump has sat at the defense tables of three Manhattan courtrooms. But Trump has shown less-than-ideal table manners.

During all three trials, Trump's judges have been so angered by his outbursts that they threatened to fine him, to remove him from the courtroom, and even to throw him in jail.

Trump earned the worst of these judicial rebukes in the same way, by attacking people connected to his trials in statements he made inside or, in one case, just outside, the courtroom.

Trump's top targets — the people who triggered his four most severe reprimands from the bench — differ widely from each other. They include a law clerk, an advice columnist, a high-school teacher, and a porn star. But they share much in common.

Each made Trump look bad in front of an international trial press corps. Each so riled Trump that he lashed out at them despite the known risk of consequences.

And each of the four is a woman.

"Women are his go-to target, whether it's for sexual assault or if he thinks they're trying to intimidate him," said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics.

A lawyer for Trump did not immediately return a request for comment on this story.

"This is his modus operandi," Walsh added.

Trump's top four rebukes

Allison Greenfield was the principal law clerk at Trump's civil fraud trial.

Trump attacked her so persistently last October, including in the hallway outside court, that the judge called Trump up to the witness stand, grilled him about it on the record, then fined him $10,000.

It was a "blatant, dangerous, disobeyal of a judicial order," state Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron said of Trump targeting his law clerk during a hallway press gaggle.

Trump risked jail had he continued to attack the clerk, who'd been vocal in reining in defense lawyers during pre-trial hearings.

Greenfield declined to comment on this story.

E. Jean Carroll

We turn next to E. Jean Carroll, the advice columnist who won more than $90 million in judgments from Trump when he was found liable for sexually abusing and defaming her.

At a federal civil trial in January, Judge Lewis Kaplan threatened to kick Trump out of the courtroom after he repeatedly — and audibly — heckled Carroll as she accused him of defamation during her testimony.

"You just can't control yourself in this circumstance, apparently," the federal judge chided Trump.

Carroll declined to comment on this story through her attorney, Roberta Kaplan, who is not related to the judge.

Cowbells herald a third Trump outburst

Fast forward to Trump's hush-money trial, where prosecutors predict they'll wrap their fourth and final week of witness testimony next week, with star witness Michael Cohen set to testify Monday.

Trump is accused of falsifying 34 invoices, checks, and ledger entries in 2017. The cooked books hid a $130,000 hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniel and illegally influenced the 2016 election, prosecutors allege.

As a criminal defendant, Trump has no choice but to attend this trial. He made his displeasure apparent out of the gate, during jury selection in mid-April.

One prospective juror, a middle-aged high-school teacher, was questioned about videos she had posted online showing people dancing in the streets of her Manhattan neighborhood after Joe Biden's election in 2020.

"It seemed like a celebratory moment in New York City," the school teacher told the judge of uploading the footage to her Facebook account.

Trump lost his cool as he was forced to watch the clips, which included at least one person clanging a cowbell, merrily sounding the death knell for his hopes of reelection.

"He was gesturing and muttering something. He was audible. He was speaking in the direction of the juror. I will not tolerate that," state Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan complained of Trump to defense lawyer Todd Blanche, his voice raised.

"I will not have any jurors intimidated in this courtroom. I want to make that crystal clear," the judge added.

The woman, whose name was not revealed, was not selected for the jury.

Then there was Stormy Daniels

Trump's most recent severe judicial rebuke came this week, when he began heckling Daniels as she testified against him on Tuesday.

Daniels had just finished telling jurors about playfully swatting Trump "in the butt" with a rolled-up magazine — and about his fascination with the porn business.

"Do you all hate each other?" she testified Trump asked her, describing a two-hour chat in his hotel suite during a 2006 celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe.

"Do you sleep with each other off camera?" she said Trump asked.

Daniels had yet to even bring up her raciest allegations when Merchan called the defense lawyers up to the bench, and, in the presence of prosecutors, let Trump have it.

"I understand that your client is upset at this point, but he is cursing audibly, and he is shaking his head visually, and that's contemptuous," the judge told Trump's lawyers during a break in Daniels' testimony.

"It has the potential to intimidate the witness, and the jury can see that," the judge warned.

"You need to speak to him," he told the defense team. "I won't tolerate that."

"One time I noticed when Ms. Daniels was testifying about rolling up the magazine, and presumably smacking your client, and after that point he shook his head and he looked down," the judge said.

"And later, I think he was looking at you, Mr. Blanche, later when we were talking about The Apprentice, at that point he again uttered a vulgarity."

Why women?

What is it about the thought of a woman publicly opposing him that makes Trump so unable — or unwilling — to restrain himself that he risks getting thrown out of court or thrown into jail?

Does he helplessly lose his temper? Does he lash out intentionally, perhaps thinking it can't hurt his poll numbers, even among women?

Walsh, from the Center for American Women and Politics, thinks the latter's more likely.

"He prides himself on being a strong, macho guy," she said.

"Listen, we know he defended himself for the Access Hollywood tape by saying it was locker-room talk, and boys will be boys," she said.

''But he really walks around thinking that he can grab women because he is who he is," she said.

An honorable mention for Michael Cohen

Cohen — Trump's one-time company and personal lawyer, and now in the hush-money trial, the top witness against him — has clearly been Trump's most frequent target of online and spoken attacks.

Trump has also been sanctioned for attacking the impartiality of the hush-money trial jury, on which men hold a 7-5 majority.

Trump is barred under an April 1 gag order from making statements attacking jurors, witnesses, and certain trial and prosecution staffers or their families.

But despite fining Trump a total of $10,000 for violating this gag, Merchan has noted that Cohen, who gives as good as he gets, is the one witness least in need of the order's protection.

"As recently as, I believe, Wednesday night, he was on TikTok," Blanche, the defense lawyer, complained to Merchan before court broke for the week on Friday.

"He was wearing a white T-shirt with a picture of President Trump behind bars, wearing an orange jumpsuit, and discussing about how he's now announcing he's running for Congress," the defense lawyer complained.

"He has stated on social media that he's going to stop talking a couple of different times, and he doesn't," Blanche complained.

Agreeing that Cohen needed to be reined in, Merchan ordered prosecutors to instruct him yet again to stop making public statements about Trump and the case.

"Does he go after men, yes," Walsh said of Trump.

"But women hold a special place for him. He clearly feels entitled to exert this kind of power of intimidating and bullying over women," she said.

"He is in some ways like a petulant teenager. He doesn't even understand or respect — 'hey, I'm in court.'"

Trump may well be playing to his base, "those MAGA men and even some of the MAGA women," Walsh said.

"He is sort of the defender in their minds of white men who are in charge and don't take guff from anybody," she added.

"It's hard to explain the women who are supportive of this kind of behavior, but there are women who will never leave him."