2PM - Musk 👾 Read

Excerpt: The last time that I wrote about Tesla was in 2018 and in the shallow context of luxury, consumer psychographics, and DTC mechanics. I explained:

American manufacturers who are competing in the luxury space may not realize it yet. Despite Tesla’s many flaws in logistics and leadership, Tesla’s eCommerce operations have laid the groundwork to become a top of mind luxury product.

I believe Tesla’s core problem is less about Elon Musk’s scattered attention and perceived persona. I do believe that the car brand is no longer aspirational, the technologies once considered luxurious are more commonplace, and the novelty of well-engineered electric vehicles has gone down-market, cross-market, and up-market – each at Tesla’s expense.

Continue Reading: Four More Graphs and an In-Depth Essay

What if no one wants a cheap Tesla?

Brand / Business Insider: Tesla investors are celebrating news of cheaper vehicles on the horizon. That assumes lots of people want to buy a Tesla but can't afford one.

Tesla's in its flop era

Brand / The Verge: Tesla is in trouble. Sales are down, its stock is tumbling, and the company's future appears to be in doubt. Can Elon Musk turn it around during the upcoming earnings call?

Editor's Note: I agreed with this take, initially, and then I did not. You will see the conventional take above and the Muskian take in the Member Brief previewed at the base of this week's issue. I had to understand the basic theories of inference computing for Musk's earnings call explanations to make sense to me. But, full circle, he will still need to succeed in selling hundreds of thousands of cheap Teslas for his futuristic vision to succeed.

Musk's master plan: giving Tesla the Uber, Airbnb treatment

App-Based / PYMNTS: Elon Musk wants to start a robotaxi ride-hailing platform based on a fleet of self-driving Teslas, but some observers are skeptical.

Nike reverses course as innovation stalls and rivals gain ground

Excerpt / WSJ: "Since the pandemic, Nike has lost ground in its critical running category while it focused on pumping out old hits and preparing for an e-commerce revolution that never came. The moves, current and former employees say, have eroded a culture of innovation and edginess that made Nike one of the world’s best-known brands."

The world's most innovative retailers, according to Vogue editors

Retail / Vogue: From Japan's Hender Scheme to McMullen in Oakland, California, these are the stores mapping the future of retail.

New Update (4/20), presented by Bold Metrics. All brands are updated with the secondary interest poll. The sixth update of 2024 sees some major movers: Caraway (+348 spots), Care / Of (+256 spots), Prima (+122), Bloom & Wild (+100), Cowboy (+100), Lane Eight (+96), Partake Foods (+92), and Larq (+91).

800+ Brands Measured

Inside Amazon’s secret operation to gather intel on rivals

Data / Excerpt: "The story of Big River offers new insight into Amazon’s elaborate efforts to stay ahead of rivals. Team members attended their rivals’ seller conferences and met with competitors identifying themselves only as employees of Big River Services, instead of disclosing that they worked for Amazon."

Editor's Note: This includes Trader Joes, by the way. 

TikTok's Chinese counterpart, Douyin, is courting American designers

NATSEC / BOF: The app, owned by TikTok parent company ByteDance, has been promising to help emerging US labels get started selling in China at the same time that TikTok faces a potential ban by the US for its ties to China.

The man who killed Google search

Data / Where's Your Ed At? This is the story of how Google Search died, and the people responsible for killing it. The story begins on February 5th 2019, when Ben Gomes, Google's head of search, had a problem. Jerry Dischler, then the VP and General Manager of Ads at Google, and Shiv Venkataraman, then

Question: What happens when I have to teach myself the very basics of computing to understand Musk's alternate vision for Tesla's future?

This explains in 1,200 words 🔓: Tesla, the trailblazing automaker, recently shook up the industry with an unexpected announcement: it’s hitting the gas on launching new models sooner than anticipated.

This shift in strategy has captured attention, especially in light of Tesla’s previous hints at prioritizing self-driving technology. As Tesla navigates through rough waters, its ability to achieve traditional manufacturing metrics (achieving its 2020 velocity) while developing this inference computing model (its likely 2030 velocity) will determine the present and future of the company.

Despite facing headwinds like falling vehicle sales and financial hiccups, the company is revving up its engines to bring forth a new model by early 2025, if not sooner, according to CEO Elon Musk. This bold move comes as a surprise amidst Tesla’s recent struggles, including a significant cash burn of over $2.5 billion in a single quarter and disappointing revenue and profit figures. Yet, investors seem to have found a glimmer of hope in Tesla’s accelerated plans, with the company’s shares soaring 14% shortly after the announcement that Tesla is more of an AI / computing company than a car manufacturer. Here is Musk on the matter:

There’s a potential… when the car is not moving to actually run distributed inference. If you imagine the future perhaps where there’s a fleet of 100 million Teslas and on average, they’ve got like maybe a kilowatt of inference compute. That’s 100 gigawatts of inference compute, distributed all around the world.

Let me explain based on what I have learned about “distributed inference computing." Elon Musk’s vision of harnessing the aggregate computing power of “100 million Teslas” to solve complex problems parallels the principles of MapReduce, a framework designed for processing large datasets across many computers in parallel. MapReduce works by breaking down tasks into smaller subtasks, distributed across numerous nodes to process data simultaneously, then combining the results. This approach is highly scalable and fault-tolerant, ideal for managing vast amounts of data efficiently...
 

Continue @ 2PM

America generates 40 million tons of plastic waste a year - and it can't be recycled

A. Supply Chain / Excerpt: "The refinement of plastic alone emits up to 235 million tons of greenhouse gases a year. Most of that plastic breaks down into microplastics that make their way into the air, rain, and our bodies. Almost 95% of America's water supply contains plastic fibers."

The Next Concern (Microplastics), Archives (9/2023): "By 2028, retail brands heavily reliant on microplastics will face pushback and declining approval. The apparel industry is notorious for its use of plastic-derived fibers from petroleum. Approximately 70% of materials found in most garments – including yoga pants, jackets and others – contain nylon, polyester, and similar non-biodegradable textiles."

How greenwashing became the fashion marketer's biggest concern

B. Marketing / Glossy: For example, Action Speak Louder came out with a report on April 18 on the discrepancies between Lululemon’s production practices and the eco-conscious messaging the brand puts out. And in February, climate advocacy group Stand.earth filed a greenwashing complaint against Lululemon with Canada’s Competition Bureau. Lawsuits of this kind are expected to multiply.

The End of Synthetic Fabrics, Archives (9/2023): Brands must pivot, embracing genuine sustainability, transparency, and accountability. The shift towards cleaner, renewable practices in fashion is not just desired – it’s imperative. For those brands that fail to heed the warning signs, they might find themselves relegated to the annals of history, much like the American muscle cars on today’s roads.

The Chinese site that rewired online shopping

A. Excerpt / NYT: "Pinduoduo has successfully capitalized on one of China’s biggest economic challenges: sluggish consumer spending and falling prices for food and other items. As the country’s growth has slowed, consumers are embracing a lifestyle of so-called downgraded spending centered on Pinduoduo purchases."

Temu's ad blitz exposes DTC turmoil

B. Advertising / Digiday: DTC marketers are pointing fingers at Temu, attributing the sharp surge in advertising costs across Meta's ad platforms to its ad dollars.