🍪 Tesla’s finally getting beat

Happy Thursday, friends. Hope you managed to get through the holidays without us yammering in your ears these last few weeks. 

It’s a new year, and we’ve got a few surprises in store for ya this year ;) Buckle up, compadres! 

For now, let’s get to the good stuff: 

In the oven this week:

  • 🚗 Tesla’s getting outsold by.. China? 

  • 🗳️ Poll of the week: is your next car an EV?

  • 🍪 Cookie crumbs: 5 bite-sized headlines 

  • 🍫 Chocolate chips: our 3 favorite finds this week

  • 😂 Snickerdoodles: January memes

FRESHLY BAKED

TESLA’S FINALLY GETTING BEAT

Business - it’s one big ‘ol game. 

And you know what’s worse than losing? 

Almost winning.

Like Tesla, our EV darling, who sold a record 485K electric vehicles in Q4 of 2023, only to get outsold by China EV maker BYD, who sold 526K and took the #1 spot.

You know what they say, second place is the first loser.

BYD has been crushing it in China, mostly due to how cheap it is.

They first started out by copying Toyota products, then became so good at cutting costs that Toyota’s then-Chief Exec Akio Toyoda went over to visit to learn its secrets 😂

Ahhh, the student becomes the master.

Now, the BYD Seagull only costs $11K, compared to Tesla’s most affordable Model 3, which starts at $40K. 

To make things worse, the US is now setting limits on the set of electric cars that qualify for the full $7,500 tax credit. This week, the Biden administration disqualified cars with EV batteries made from a “foreign entity of concern.” *cough* China *cough * *cough*. 

Tesla’s Model Y still qualifies, but the Cybertruck and some versions of the Model 3, S, and X now don’t. 

Bad news for Tesla, but great for China, which has the world’s biggest auto market and also makes up 90% of global EV-battery supply chain. 

We’ll have to keep our eyes on this battle 👀

POLL OF THE WEEK: IS YOUR NEXT CAR AN EV?

With all this hubbub and EVs selling more slowly than gas cars now, we wanna know - will your next car be an EV?

Sound off 👇🏽

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BITE SIZED HEADLINES

The New York Times is suing OpenAI for copyright infringement, claiming that OpenAI used NYT articles in its training data and essentially built a competing product, since users can now go to ChatGPT for news instead. It’s a pretty strong case for the NYT - they already have a bunch of examples of ChatGPT directly reciting NYT excerpts. If they win, OpenAI could be on the hook for millions. Looks like 2024 might just be the year of AI lawsuits. 

Speaking of not getting a hot start to the year, Harvard’s president is resigning after only 6 months due to plagiarism charges and an insufficient response to antisemitism on campus after she evaded a question about whether students should get punished for antisemitism. It’s the shortest tenure of any Harvard president in history.

SpaceX has launched its first batch of six Starlink satellites that allow for direct-to-cell internet service from space. It’s currently 7MB per beam, which isn’t great when compared to current cell networks, but it’s a start to eliminate dead zones.

CHOCOLATE CHIPS

OUR FAVORITE FINDS

SNICKERDOODLES

THURSDAY MEMES

 😂 

 

That's all we got for ya this week, folks. See ya next Thursday!

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