Uber, Lyft, Postmates, Instacart and Doordash were successful in their nearly $200M effort to pass California’s Proposition 22 in November – to allow gig operators to avoid treating their drivers as full-time employees with all of the associated employee benefits and legal protections. In the midst of a devastating pandemic… Read More
Author: Roger C. Lanctot
Uber v Alto Ride Hail Streetfight
Car Wars 2021
A strange narrative took hold in the U.S. at the end of 2020 that vehicle sales were in decline, that cars weren’t selling. The reality is something quite different. In spite of nearly two solid months of auto factory and dealership shutdowns, automotive sales surged back in 2020 – a phenomenon that manifested globally with regional
Tesla’s Musk Mocks Marketing
The Automotive News had a standout year in 2020 – thriving at a time when many publishers suffered. With factories and dealerships shuttered in the spring due to the pandemic, the outlook was bleak but the Automotive News dug in amplifying its reporting with multiple podcasts and video content documenting the ups and downs
Amazon Tesla Uber and DoorDash
As the death toll in the U.S. from COVID-19 approaches 300,000 I am impressed by the resilience of pandemic doubters and deniers. I’m talking about the point-three-percent-ers* who have shifted from calling COVID-19 a hoax to encouraging as many people as possible to get the virus to “get it over with.”
Maybe “impressed” isn’t… Read More
Tesla: The Eyes Have It
David Zipper of Harvard’s Kennedy School writes in Slate that the incoming Biden Administration should “bring the hammer down” on Tesla Motors for its mis-labeled and therefore misleading Autopilot application and the recently updated Full Self-Driving software beta in the interest of the general public. Zipper’s plan,
The Future of Connected Car Advertising
“Ads definitely work, but we can’t tell you how or why or give you any evidence,” – Tim Hwang, research fellow, Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technology
Two recent episodes of the Freakonomics Radio podcast tackle the question “Does advertising actually work?” and they coincided with a presentation… Read More
DoorDash IPO Spins COVID-19 Impact
The outlook for DoorDash’s highly anticipated public offering announced last week is inextricably bound up in the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. It seems that the worse the COVID-19 pandemic becomes, the better the IPO circumstances look for DoorDash, but that’s not exactly how DoorDash tells the tale.
DoorDash filed… Read More
Time to Listen to GM’s Mark Reuss
General Motors President Mark Reuss told Reuters last week that he is worried about the COVID-19 pandemic currently running rampant in the U.S. and globally. “I’m so worried about it because it’s accelerating and it’s not being contained,” he said during a “fireside chat” at the Reuters Automotive Summit which concludes Monday.… Read More
What the Hell is C-V2X and Should I Care?
Automotive innovations have the greatest impact when they create what can only be described as magical experiences. The most magical experience of all is the car that avoids hitting things, or the car that parks itself.
I feel pretty strongly that cars should not hit things – that this is a product defect. The introduction… Read More
Elon Musk’s Aspirational Automation
Tesla Motors kicked off the release of its latest earnings with news of record results and the release of the company’s Full Self Driving beta. Leading up to the earnings, most attention was focused on whether Tesla will meet its original target of 500,000 vehicle shipments this year in spite of the negative impact of the pandemic.
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Podcast EP3: Tomorrow’s Semiconductors with Jim Hogan