AUTO

How to Overhaul an Industry in Less Than a Decade

American roads are about to get a whole lot quieter. 

Half of new cars sold in the US by 2030 should be all-electric, plug-in hybrid, or hydrogen-powered, President Biden announced yesterday via a non-binding executive order. At the same time, the EPA proposed tougher fuel-efficiency standards for automakers, which would reverse a Trump-era order that relaxed them.

Why it matters: This is like the government telling McDonald’s and Chick-fil-A they need to convert half their sales to veggie burgers in nine years. Producing electric vehicles requires seismic investments and buy-in from automakers, which must replace the guts of their cars with entirely new technology. 

In total, the industry will spend $330 billion on electrification by 2025, per estimates from the consulting firm AlixPartners.

But they’re not doing it reluctantly

Case in point: The CEOs of the country’s three largest automakers were in attendance as Biden gave his speech. 

In a show of solidarity with the White House, the automakers pledged to make electric vehicle sales 40%–50% of their total by 2030...provided the government helps them out with consumer incentives, and by establishing a nationwide charging network.

Still, the US is behind the global EV curve:

• Electric cars currently make up just 2% of new auto sales in the US, compared to 6% in China and 10% in Europe. 
• And Biden’s order isn’t as tough as those laid out by other governments. The EU has effectively banned sales of new gas-powered vehicles by 2035.  

What’s the point of all this? Just that existential threat scientists like to call climate change. Biden’s goal is to cut emissions by 50% below 2005 levels by the end of the decade, and to do that he’s targeting transportation, the industry accounting for 29% of all US emissions.

WORK

Every Company Memo Yesterday

BlackRock and Wells Fargo pushed back return-to-office plans to early October, while Amazon told corporate employees they wouldn’t be back until January of next year.

Big picture: With average Covid case counts hitting their highest levels since February, it might be a hot minute before employees are back to cutting smaller and smaller slices of office donuts.

• Google and Apple moved their office return to October and Google said that all employees who want to come in will need to be vaccinated.
• After reopening at 50% capacity last month, Twitter closed its doors faster than you can say, “Why does Jack Dorsey look like he brews his own kombucha?” The company paused its office reopening indefinitely.
• Lyft wants folks to invest in a good WFH setup, because employees won’t be back in the office until February 2022. Uber delayed its return to late October.

On the other hand...JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs are taking a different approach to handling Delta concerns: blinders. Both banks brought employees back to the office earlier this summer and said this week that they haven’t changed their return-to-work policies.

TOYS

Covid Heroes Are Now Barbie Dolls

What does Covid-19 vaccine developer Sarah Gilbert have in common with Beyoncé and Marilyn Monroe? They all have Barbie dolls in their likenesses.

Toy company Mattel debuted Barbie dolls modeled after six female health workers fighting on the frontlines during the pandemic.

Why it matters: Mattel had been criticized for depicting an unrealistic portrait of womanhood with its original white, blonde doll, which turned 60 in 2019. It now offers dolls themed around careers such as firefighter, doctor, and astronaut—in a range of skin tones. 

• “My wish is that my doll will show children careers they may not be aware of, like a vaccinologist,” Gilbert, who works at the University of Oxford, told BBC.

Some other female role models across industries Mattel has honored include:

• Civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks 
• Mexican feminist artist Frida Kahlo 
• Tennis player Naomi Osaka

Zoom out: Sales of Barbie dolls rose to a six-year high last year as parents tried to distract their kids from interrupting important Zoom calls.

SPONSORED BY MONOGRAM

Knee-Jerk Reaction: Good Investment

Knee and hip replacements keep joints functioning for lots of peeps. The problem? Complications will cause 10-15% of knee and hip replacements to fail this year. But the solution’s coming.

Wait for it.

Monogram Orthopedics. They combine 3D printing, specially crafted surgical robotics, and AI to facilitate custom implants unique to individuals. And right now, you can invest in Monogram.

The joint replacement market is about $19.6 billion right now, with over a million knee replacements per year. Monogram is poised to help overhaul the industry. 

It’s not every day that a company comes along with this sort of a leg up on the competition. Learn more about Monogram and don’t miss your chance to invest here.

GRAB BAG

Key Performance Indicators

Stat: More journalists were in jail last year than ever before, and the number of media workers killed increased by a third over 2019, Bloomberg reports. China is the biggest jailer of journalists, followed by Turkey.

Quote: “If it rains, it rains. If it doesn't, it doesn't. If it's hot, it's hot. If it's not, then that's what it is.”

New England Patriots Head Coach Bill Belichick unintentionally dished some profound life advice after a wet practice yesterday.

Read: The three-or-four-hours rule for getting creative work done. (Oliver Burkeman)

QUIZ

The All-Electric Quiz

The feeling of getting a 5/5 on the Brew’s Weekly News Quiz has been compared to perfectly filling every waffle square with syrup. 

It’s that satisfying. Ace the quiz.

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• CNN fired three employees who came to work unvaccinated, violating company policy.
• Lionel Messi is leaving soccer club Barcelona after the two sides faced “financial and structural problems” in moving forward with a new contract, shocking the soccer world but leaving us with epic videos like this that recap his legendary tenure at Barca.
• Apple plans to scan iPhones for images of child sexual abuse, raising alarms from some privacy experts.
• South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker signed a mammoth $900 million deal with ViacomCBS to extend the series through 2027 and produce 14 movies.
• Richard Trumka, longtime president of the 12.5-million-member labor union AFL-CIO, died of a heart attack at age 72 yesterday.
• Dr. Bronner's is leveraging its expertise in soap to make...chocolate? 

Olympics links

• The US will face France in the men's basketball gold medal game at 10:30pm ET tonight.
• Watch a 14-year-old Chinese diver score a bunch of perfect 10s.
• Helluva photo.

SPONSORED BY ALLY

Getcha head in the game. Investing is a mental game; don’t let your brain get in the way of your strategy. Ally Invest’s senior investment strategist, Callie Cox, is here to help prep you for a lively fall investing season. To read her five fall-focused mental hacks to help you tame your feelings and level up your investing game, click here.

FROM THE CREW

Crypto Investing 101

Investing in crypto is a lot like ordering from a menu at a New Jersey diner—where to even start? And should you even be there in the first place? 

To help, we’ve launched a Crash Course on Crypto to give you the context, tools, and resources to help you figure out where crypto fits in your investment portfolio.

Because it’s a lot more complicated than scraping Elon’s tweets for mentions of dogecoin. Give it a read here.

BREW'S BETS

Follow Friday: You’ll learn that Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t bother including subject lines on his emails, among other things, by following Internal Tech Emails on Twitter. 

Cool visualizations: What’s inside the infrastructure bill, what makes people happy, and what’s inside pro bowling balls. 

GAMES

Friday Puzzle

Change one letter in each of the following words to make new words that are all linked by a common theme.

Flat
Scab
Lord
Lodge
Mine
Kit
Quick
Keep

ANSWER

They're all car brands:

Fiat
Saab
Ford
Dodge
Mini
Kia
Buick
Jeep