Author: openjargon

• Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson said Chinese automakers are still "years behind" Tesla on EV technology. 
• He told a Financial Times conference that car companies should not "underestimate" Chinese firms.
• Companies such as BYD are now challenging Tesla in China after years of rapid growth.

Chinese EV makers are challenging Tesla — but one of the company's rivals still thinks they're years away from overtaking Elon Musk's firm in one respect.

Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson said that despite their success, Chinese automakers are still some distance behind Tesla when it comes to the underlying technology that powers EVs — but warned that they could catch up quickly.

"If you look at the advance in core EV technology, they're still years and years behind Tesla," said Rawlinson told the Financial Times' Future of the Car Summit in London this week.

The former Tesla engineer said that Chinese EVs had progressed "immeasurably" in recent years, and were now superior to their western counterparts "in terms of fit and finish quality." However, Rawlinson thought their engineering was still lacking.

"In terms of the elegance of their drive train technology, the batteries, the way things are integrated … it's not even close," he said.

"I was looking at a number of the units on display at the Geneva Motor Show and the engineering was very disappointing."

However, Rawlinson warned that Western car makers must not "underestimate" the ability of their Chinese rivals to quickly catch up on core EV technology.

"We underestimated the Chinese ability to make good cars. They're shockingly good. They're a lot better than they've been. They're just not quite there yet," he said.

Western automakers have come under increasing pressure in China from domestic manufacturers that have grown rapidly in recent years. Warren Buffett-backed BYD overtook Tesla as the world's largest EV manufacturer in the last three months of 2023.

After once laughing off Tesla's Chinese rivals, Musk now seems a lot more worried, telling investors that Chinese EVs are likely to "demolish" the competition if trade barriers aren't put in place.

Like other EV startups such as Fisker and Rivian, Lucid has borne the brunt of stuttering demand for electric vehicles in the US.

The company has slashed prices on its high-end Lucid Air sedan to compete with Tesla, and produced less than 10,000 vehicles last year.

However, its backing from the Saudi Public Investment Fund means there is little risk of Lucid running out of money anytime soon, unlike some of its rivals.

The company is also preparing for the launch of its Gravity SUV that boasts a Tesla-beating range of 440 miles and is expected to cost less than $80,000.

Lucid did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.

• A cruise ship worker was accused of stabbing a passenger and attacking crew members.
• The incident occurred on the Norwegian Encore on its voyage to Alaska from Seattle, AP reported.
• The worker was arrested and faces assault charges, the district attorney's office said.

A cruise ship employee was arrested after he allegedly used scissors to stab three people aboard a ship that was traveling to Alaska.

The employee, identified as Ntando Sogoni from South Africa, had recently started working on Norwegian Encore, a ship operated by Norwegian Cruise Line, according to an affidavit from FBI Special Agent Matthew Judy cited by AP News.

According to the outlet, the ship disembarked from Seattle on Sunday and was scheduled to stop in Alaskan ports, including Junea, during the weeklong voyage.

Sogoni, 35, was on duty on Monday when he was caught trying to deploy a lifeboat from the ship, according to a press release issued by the district attorney's office.

According to the FBI, Sogoni was taken to the ship's medical center for examination, where he then "physically attacked" a security guard and a nurse before using a pair of scissors to stab a passenger who was being examined.

Sogoni allegedly stabbed the passenger several times in her arm, hand, and face. A security guard who intervened was stabbed in the head, while a second security guard was stabbed in the back and shoulders, authorities said.

The conditions of the passenger and staff are unknown, though AP News reported that none of the injuries were life-threatening.

The ship was traveling west of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, when the alleged incident took place, the publication added.

Sogoni was held in the ship's jail before being arrested in Juneau on Tuesday.

Sogoni is facing charges of assault with a dangerous weapon. He could face up to 10 years in prison in addition to a $250,000 fine for each count if convicted, they added.

The cruise industry made $19 billion in revenue in 2022, according to the online data platform Statista.

The US Department of Transportation keeps a record of reported crimes on cruise ships through quarterly reports. According to a recent cruise line incident report, 47 alleged incidents were reported to the FBI between January and March of this year.

Of the incidents reported, eight were recorded as assault with serious bodily injury, one was recorded as a missing US national, and six alleged thefts of under $10,000 were reported. There were also 16 cases categorized as "sexual assault," and a further 16 were categorized as "sexual assault — rape."

The district attorney's office, Juneau's police department, Sogoni's lawyer, and Norwegian Cruise Line did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

• The union for French air traffic controllers reached a deal to avoid a strike.
• Les Echos reported it includes authorization to turn up to work three hours late, and leave early.
• Paris is hosting the 2024 Olympics, and there are fears strikes could disrupt the event.

French air traffic controllers have been given the legal right to turn up three hours late for work, and leave three hours early, Les Echos reported.

That's because the National Union for Air Traffic Controllers (SNCTA) reached an agreement that includes ending a practice called "clearances" — where staff could leave work during quiet periods, according to the French newspaper.

Because ending "clearances" led to more working hours, the controllers are now authorized to arrive three hours late or leave three hours early, when traffic permits.

It means French air traffic controllers have a mandatory minimum time on the clock of five hours, according to Les Echos.

The details of the agreement were kept quiet after the SNCTA reached a deal with the government to avoid a strike on April 25. With the Olympics taking place in France this year, politicians were eager to avoid any potential disruption at airports.

It's a big win for the SNCTA and highlights the strength of labor unions in France.

Air traffic controllers also won several other benefits as part of the deal, according to Les Echos. That includes an additional 18 days off work, and retirement at age 59.

Plus, Les Echos reported their salaries are set to go up by an average of 1,500 euros a month, spread over four years. That's around an extra $19,400 a year.

Agence France-Press reported in 2022 that the average French air traffic controller earned $59,820 a year — putting the recent pay increase at around a third.

The report added that the deal will be entirely financed by airlines. As a further three days of strikes were planned for this month, a person familiar with the matter told Les Echos that for Air France, the cost of further strike action could have outweighed the compensation given to the air traffic controllers.

• Sanction-hit Russian airlines are getting plane parts delivered in hand luggage, per the Financial Times.
• A Middle East company has sent $1.5 million of goods to Russia's S7 airline, the FT reported.
• Flight safety incidents involving Russian planes have shot up, according to estimates.

Passengers are carrying plane parts in their luggage to get them to sanction-hit Russian airlines, according to the Financial Times.

Russian airlines are obtaining plane parts through a vast network of small suppliers, many of which are based in the United Arab Emirates, the FT reported.

The outlet highlighted one incident from mid-2022 when staff at a Moscow airport found a $40,000 plane part in a passenger's luggage. 

The equipment was destined for Russia's second-largest airline, S7, the FT reported, and was one of 11 similar parts sent in passenger bags to Moscow that year, all of them reported in customs forms.

In the wake of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Western countries imposed heavy sanctions and export controls on Russia's aviation sector.

The sanctions have made it difficult for the country's airlines to get their hands on new planes or parts to maintain their existing aircraft.

They have also opened up more unorthodox supply routes.

The FT cited Turboshaft, a UAE-based provider and exporter of aircraft parts run by a Russian-born businessman.

According to customs data seen by the outlet, Turboshaft has shipped $1.5 million of goods to S7 since the start of the war.

Turboshaft didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, but a spokesperson for company boss Timur Badr told the FT that it had stopped providing plane parts to Russia in February 2022 and that it was "aware of, and respectful of, the international sanctions regime."

According to data collected by the FT from various sources, S7 and its subsidiaries saw their imports of plane parts drop from over $100 million a month in December 2021 to less than $25 million a month in April 2022.

Meanwhile, the number of flight safety incidents involving Russian planes has more than doubled, from 37 in 2022 to 81 in 2023, according to the Jet Airliner Crash Data Evaluation Centre.

Those figures also only reflect known cases, the center's founder and CEO, Jan-Arwed Richter, told The Telegraph earlier this year, adding: "There is still a dark figure of unreported incidents."

• Elon Musk isn't done with Superchargers yet.
• Despite firing Tesla's Supercharger team last week, the CEO committed to the network on Friday.
• "Tesla will spend well over $500m expanding our Supercharger network," Musk wrote on X.

Apparently, Elon Musk really is still game for Superchargers.

On Friday, the billionaire Tesla chief took to X to clarify that he was, in fact, still very committed to building out Tesla's Supercharger business.

"Just to reiterate: Tesla will spend well over $500m expanding our Supercharger network to create thousands of NEW chargers this year," Musk wrote. "That's just on new sites and expansions, not counting operations costs, which are much higher."

You may recall that just a week ago, Musk suddenly decided to fire nearly all the 500 employees on Telsa's Supercharger team.

Tesla's Supercharger network, a collection of fast-charging plug-in stations spread over more than 50,000 sites globally, was seen by investors as a vital cornerstone in the company's ambitions to lead the EV market.

Rivals like Ford and GM have been scrambling to gain access to it. The spread of chargers was also seen as a key strategy to offset concerns potential EV buyers might have around range anxiety too.

So as news broke that Musk was axing the Supercharger team, it's safe to say Tesla investors were left more than a little puzzled. As Tesla investor Ross Gerber put it: "Any retreat from this part of the business will have a negative impact on the EV industry."

At the time, Musk tried to offset some concerns by saying Tesla still "plans to grow" the network, just "at a slower pace for new locations and more focus on 100% uptime and expansion of existing locations."

But with his comments on Friday, it looks like Musk has set out to shake off any lingering doubts about his commitment to a business that analysts have estimated could generate almost $7.5 billion in revenue and $730 million in profit a year for Tesla by 2030.

The thing is, with Tesla still without a functioning Supercharger team, the logistics of implementing Musk's plans remain a bit of a mystery.

Musk, who has driven a big shake-up at Tesla recently following the decision to cut more than 10% of the company's workforce in March, seems to be focusing on robotaxis as he looks to boost Tesla's AI and autonomous driving capabilities.

Two days before firing the Supercharger team, the billionaire wrote on X: "Tesla will spend around $10B this year in combined training and inference AI, the latter being primarily in car. Any company not spending at this level, and doing so efficiently, cannot compete."

At a time when companies are plowing billions of dollars into AI, there seems to be some logic here. But Musk also has a stated goal of selling 20 million Teslas a year by 2030.

He'll definitely want to amp up his Supercharger network too if he plans on achieving that.

• Sir Jim Ratcliffe, Manchester United co-owner, is banning remote work for the club's staff.
• The policy shift was prompted after email traffic declined at one of his companies on work-from-home Fridays.
• His hard-line RTO approach falls in line with many big companies like Apple, Dell, and Meta.

The billionaire co-owner of Manchester United, Sir Jim Ratcliffe, has told staff that he's banning work from home after key metrics were missed at one of his companies.

In an all-hands video call last week, Ratcliffe told staff that they would need to start coming into the office or "seek alternative employment," The Guardian reported.

Ratcliffe, the 103rd richest person on earth, bought a 27.7% stake in the soccer club in February, and his company, Ineos, took over the management of football operations. The billionaire is coming in strong by shaking off the company's post-COVID flexible work policy to boost productivity.

The policy shift was largely spurred by a dip in email traffic, per The Guardian.

Ratcliffe told Manchester United employees that traffic dropped 20% after one of his companies trialed work-from-home Fridays.

Staff are also under fire after Ratcliffe called out the untidiness of the club's premises last week. The billionaire told staff that the state of the club's IT department was a "disgrace," and other areas of the training ground weren't much better, The Athletic reported.

However, the strict policy change has some challenges. The company premises in Manchester and London don't actually have enough space to accommodate all staff coming into the office full time, per The Athletic.

Plenty of other businesses have taken the same hard-line approach to bringing employees back to the office. Dell delivered a similar ultimatum to its employees earlier this year: return to the office, or you won't be promoted. Other companies enforcing strict return-to-office mandates include Apple, Meta, and Google.

However, not everyone agrees that RTO mandates are the best way to boost productivity. Globant, a software company with 30,000 employees, is allowing all its employees to stay fully remote.

Some research has also called the effectiveness of RTO mandates into question. A recent study on S&P 500 firms by researchers at the Katz Graduate School of Business found that companies with strict RTO mandates weren't more profitable, and workers weren't necessarily more productive.

• Malcolm Aw said he pulled out of a Neom contract because of alleged Saudi human rights abuses. 
• The CEO of Solar Water told BI that he had planned to build solar desalination plants. 
• Human rights campaigners say tribe members are being forcibly evicted to make way for the megacity. 

A green energy founder pulled out of a $100 million Neom contract after he realized that the Saudis were bulldozing villages to make way for the megacity.

Malcolm Aw, the CEO and founder of Solar Water, told Business Insider that he initially got involved with Neom to help realize its ambitions as a pioneering green energy "eco-city."

Neom is the centerpiece of Saudi ruler Mohammed bin Salman's Vision 2030 project to diversify the Saudi economy away from fossil fuels and transform it into a luxury tourism destination and innovation hub.

However, Aw said he was so appalled at reports of human rights abuses that he canceled the Neom contract in 2022, despite having already built some of his desalination plants there.

"They just, they bulldoze their way right through villages and everything, which is just unbelievable," said Aw.

Aw spoke to BI after BBC News reported that an exiled Saudi colonel said Saudi Arabia authorized the use of lethal force to clear the way for its Neom desert megacity.

Col Rabih Alenezi said he was ordered to evict people living on the land to make way for a part of the project called The Line. The area was mostly populated by the Huwaitat tribe.

The BBC said it was not able to independently verify Alenezi's comments about lethal force.

however, satellite images analyzed by the BBC showed three villages, including schools and hospitals, were destroyed to make way for Neom.

One of the villagers, Abdul Rahim al-Huwaiti, was later reportedly killed by Saudi authorities, said the UN.

"What it tried to do is turn the whole province into Dubai or Qatar or something, but in doing so, they are clearing the people who have been there for years out of the area," said Aw.

"These people could be such a contribution to this whole development. You know the villages have all been removed."

Aw, who is a descendant of Tiger Balm founder Aw Boon Haw, told BI that he had initially been drawn to work on the Neom project because of its commitment to green energy and ecology.

Aw's company uses solar energy for desalination, while most desalination plants burn fossil fuels and have been found to pollute oceans. Neom had offered Aw's company, Solar Water, $100m for exclusive rights to use his technology.

Neom's planners say they want to be an"eco-city," with the signature project "The Line" — a vertical mirrored skyscraper cutting through the desert — running on 100% renewable energy and 95% of the land preserved for nature. They claim to be committed to "respecting existing communities and cultural heritage within our region."

But Aw believes the promises are not being fulfilled, and planners are performing a U-turn on their original vision for the city.

"What they're doing is not ethical and what they're doing is they're creating an exclusivity to house wealthy people in a wealthy touristic area. But that wasn't the original idea. The idea was to develop a green scenario," he said.

"The whole idea we came in is to make the place green, and for the people, the local people, the indigenous who have been there for ages, for yonks, to be able to share into development," said Aw. "But then they change course. Suddenly, they are totally different from what we expect to do, and in doing so, they have done a lot of damage."

Neom declined to comment on Aw's claims. The Saudi embassy in the UK did not respond to a request for comment.

Saudi Arabia has been trying to quell public criticism about its Vision 2030 plans.

Last year, BI reported that the crackdown extended to those criticizing the evictions on social media, with Fatima al-Shawarbi sentenced to 30 years in prison for speaking out.

The project has been beset by problems in recent months, with costs spiraling to an estimated $1 trillion and key projects delayed or cut back. In April, Bloomberg reported that Saudi officials were reducing the number of people expected to be living in Neom from around one million to 300,000 by 2030. The report also said the length of The Line could be cut from around 100 miles to one mile.

Aw urged planners to stand by their original ethical and ecological vision.

"You know, we have the technology to solve the [green energy] problem that people are complaining about today. Absolutely. Absolutely. But there's just not the vision or the ethical commitment," he said.

• Target plans to stock Pride merch in about half its stores this year, sources told Bloomberg.
• The full range will be available online, it reported.
• Last year, Target's Pride range faced a massive backlash from conservatives, contributing to a fall in sales.

Target plans to stock Pride merch in just half its stores after it faced an intense backlash and even calls for a boycott last year, Bloomberg reported.

The retailer is looking at data for each store to decide where to stock the products, and is likely to sell them in about half of its locations for Pride Month in June, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. It plans to sell its full Pride range online, the people said.

A Target spokesperson told Bloomberg that the company was committed to supporting the LGBTQ+ community "during Pride Month and year-round." The company would have internal programs and a presence at Pride events across the county, the spokesperson said.

Last year Target faced a massive backlash from vocal conservatives over its Pride range, which included slogan tote bags and sweaters as well as transgender-friendly swimsuits. The retailer said some people had made "threats" impacting workers' safety and CEO Brian Cornell said its call centers had received "high volumes of angry, abusive and threatening calls."

In some stores, Pride displays were moved to quieter areas. Some workers in Florida and Texas told Business Insider that products related to transgender Pride had been removed from their stores.

Some LGBTQ+ Target workers said that the company's response to the backlash left them feeling alienated.

Target CFO Michael Fiddleke told investors last summer that the reaction to its Pride range had contributed to the retailer's first quarterly sales decline in six years.

Bud Light was also targeted by conservatives last year after partnering with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, and some Starbucks workers said the coffee chain had banned them from displaying Pride decor, including flags. A Starbucks spokesperson told Business Insider at the time that there had been no changes to its LGBTQ+ policies.

• Warren Buffett slashed his Apple stake then found himself forced to work from his iPhone.
• The investor turned to the device after phone lines went down this week at Berkshire Hathaway HQ.
• "I'm glad we didn't sell all of our Apple," Buffett joked to The Omaha World-Herald.

Warren Buffett may be cursing the universe for its wicked sense of humor.

The famed investor revealed during Berkshire Hathaway's annual shareholder meeting on Saturday that he'd slashed his Apple stake. Two days later, he walked into his company's headquarters to find the phone lines were down, forcing him to work from his iPhone.

"I don't know how to do much with it, but I do know how to answer calls," Buffett, 93, told The Omaha World-Herald on Wednesday when the local outage had not yet been resolved.

"I'm glad we didn't sell all of our Apple," he quipped.

Buffett famously spends his days analyzing companies and conversing on the phone, so the outage was a major headache for him — especially as he left his cellphone at home on Monday.

"We had this meeting that went over very well all weekend, and now to anybody who has phoned us in the last three days, they think we have gone out of business," Buffett joked to his hometown newspaper.

He was nodding to Berkshire cashing in 13% of its Apple stake for roughly $20 billion last quarter. At the end of December, the position was worth $174 billion and made up nearly half of Berkshire's $353 billion portfolio.

Berkshire's disposals, and an 11% drop in Apple's stock price, cut the holding's value to $135 billion, or 40% of the portfolio at the end of March.

Buffett is unabashedly old school and proudly frugal. Berkshire follows suit despite commanding a near-$900 billion valuation and ranking among the nation's 10 largest public companies.

For example, Berkshire's corporate homepage is a list of hyperlinks straight out of the 1990s:

Buffett's tech skepticism made his massive bet on Apple a surprise to many people. But the investor has pointed to the iPhone's immense appeal and how indispensable it is to users. He got a taste of just how much people rely on it this week.

• A think tank hid a free bottle of wine in its website's terms and conditions.
• They aimed to see if anyone actually reads privacy policies. It took three months to be claimed.
• Tax Policy Associates founder Dan Neidle said it was a "childish protest" at the need for privacy policies.

It might just be worth reading those T&Cs after all.

In February, UK think tank Tax Policy Associates snuck a tempting offer into one of the clauses on its website's terms and conditions, to see if anybody would actually notice.

"This website uses cookies so it remembers your name if you leave a comment. You can reject them if you like," the privacy policy read. "We will send a bottle of good wine to the first person to read this."

The think tank's founder, Dan Neidle, said on X on Thursday that someone had finally claimed the bottle.

"Our ongoing experiment into whether anyone reads website T&Cs continues," he wrote, adding that the wine "just got claimed."

Neidle told the BBC that the T&Cs stunt was "my childish protest that all businesses have to have a privacy policy and no-one reads it."

The website's privacy policy has since been updated to say: "We know nobody reads this."

Amusingly, the person who claimed the bottle was only reading it because they were writing their own T&Cs and needed examples to follow, Neidle told the BBC.

The wine he sent out, per the BBC, was a 2013-2014 bottle of Château de Sales, which retails for about $44.

So-called "gotcha clauses" have been around for a while, highlighting a seemingly intractable problem in digital life.

In 2014, a security firm added what it called a "Herod clause" into a public wi-fi network's terms and conditions.

Six people signed up to "assign their first born child to us for the duration of eternity," in order to access the wi-fi, as The Guardian reported at the time.

The authors of one 2017 study found that 98% of participants signed up to similarly onerous terms.

Neidle said he was inspired by the legendary clause that Van Halen buried in their tour rider, according to the BBC.

At each stop, the group demanded a bowl of M&Ms with all the brown ones taken out — not because they were pampered, but because it would prove that the host venue was paying attention to more crucial safety and technical aspects of their show.

"It was a brilliant strategy to see if people were paying attention," Neidle told the BBC.

There are many reasons why few people read T&Cs, marketing experts Jeff Rotman and Paul Harrison wrote in The Conversation last year.

People tend to trust that large companies won't screw them over and that any problems would have already been spotted and dealt with before, they said.

They also said that evidence suggests that people are slightly more likely to read them if they're perceived as short, if they're spending a lot of money, or if they think they'll have a chance to influence the terms of the contract.