LyrArc Article Gist
Cornyn is a 5 term Republican senator from Texas who was once a rival of Mitch McConnell for Senate Majority Leader. He lost in the Texas Republican primary to challenger Ken Paxton, Attorney General of Texas. Paxton got the Texas Republican base to back him with CJT's endorsement. The result Paxton wins by 64% to 36% and heads into a fight for the Senate seat with Talarico of the Democrats. Texas voted for DJT by a margin of 14%. Democrats are targeting this Senate seat with huge fundraising. Ted Cruz defended his Senate seat against Rep. Allred with ad spending reaching $210 million in 2024. Talarico has raised $27 million in 3 months, Paxton $7 million. It shows that regardless of which party, both parties spend heavily and raise enormous sums making them beholden to special interests that make it difficult to change aspects of the system such as runaway pharmaceutical costs, cost of living, or to regulate banks, social media, cyber currency, and AI. The result is that Congress has less credibility and poor approval ratings with the public than ever. US Congress has disapproval rating of 90%, only 10% approve of its conduct and performance. Among Democrats 3%, Republicans 20%, and Independents 11%. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Did you know that SUV's are the second largest source of emissions after Power. We hear a lot about aviation which is much smaller but little about SUV's in the impact on climate change. SUV's make up about 40% of cars in Britain, and higher in the U.S. at 43%, 40% worldwide an astounding sixfold increase from 32 million to 200 million since 2010. People may even be driving an SUV and talking a lot about climate change.

Any savings from electric cars expected to grow from 2 million to 20 million by 2030  will be offset by more SUV's on the road. This is the view of the International Energy Agency in its recent report. Again all the talk about electric cars as a way to address climate change misses what is really happening in automobiles. Even in China the SUV's make up 42% of sales, and in India 30%. It is more profitable to make SUV's and they are harder to electrify adding 25% to energy consumed compared to cars. 

LyrArc Article Gist
EIA says half of the benefit of higher fuel efficiency standards for Automobiles 2010-2020 in US was lost because of SUV's and the incentivizing of SUV's in the 2006 CAFE standards have made things worse. The first SUV's came in the 1980's. By 2004 SUV's made up half of car sales and by 2025 outsold cars 2 to 1. What if we took all SUV's and large cars off the roads, or even some of these SUV's by deincentivizing of SUV's in the US CAFE corporate fuel efficiency standards? What would be the savings in crude oil and in carbon footprint? Would it be about the same as releasing an additional 400 million barrels of oil into the markets in addition to the 400 million barrels that are now released through EIA and member countries? This New Yorker essay touches on this idea. During the Iran war the volatile Middle East as a source of oil supplies is a major problem for countries. Some are rationing supplies and in one country 40 million children are not going to school for 2 weeks starting this week because of the sources of oil are so precarious, government offices will only have half of the employees, the rest working from home (almost like Covid pandemic). Many other countries face that situation. The International Energy Agency recently reported that, if “SUVs were an individual country, they would rank sixth in the world for absolute emissions in 2021, emitting over 900 million tonnes of CO2.” The agency says governments must redesign their CAFE standards and their policies so that it would reduce S.U.V. sales, tax gas guzzling vehicles. EIA cites governments in the EU doing this- “Some governments have already started introducing relevant measures, such as France and Germany, which have put a tax on large and high-emissions cars.” Within SUV's also there is an opportunity to reduce the size and make more efficient space utilization designs. Small savings also add up. One has to realize that the current freedom to use energy freely in places like the US with self sufficiency in oil comes with a sense of responsibility for using it wisely so that it can be exported to cut the trade deficit, precisely what the president is doing with India, to cut a trade deficit of $58 billion before it gets to $100 billion. Section 301 is already in place for investigations by the US of 18 countries for a new basis to use tariffs after the Supreme Court decision. A similar approach is taken with EU for hundreds of billions of reductions in trade deficit that will only strengthen the US dollar and the US economy in the long run , and be good for stock markets and jobs as it reduces oil prices and increases the manufacturing capacity/cost for the Nation. Europe, India and China can do the same. Remember that in 2010 SUV's made up 17% of total world sales, and by 2025 SUV's made up 46% of world vehicle sales. This would create another 400 million barrels for the oil markets, which would triple what was released through EIA  this week to 1.2 billion barrels and this would create 120 days of supply replacement for the 10 million b/d lost from Straits of Hormuz, and effectively end the Iran War as it would be clear that prices can be kept low even in the $50's. Essentially buying time till the SU can get more production in Venezuela and other parts of the world to replace much of the Middle Eastern oil that is ending up in a quagmire. This is the best way for the US and Europe, India, China to ensure jobs growth, economic growth with low cost crude oil in the $50 range and ensure much of the poorer countries like Egypt and Indonesia, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, have access to oil at prices they can afford and eliminate poverty. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Rapid growth in SUV sales in China in 2011-2014. SUV sales increased by 49% in 2013 over 2012.

LyrArc Article Gist
Signs that the SUV based model for running car companies is cracking. A study from the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute estimates that profits from large and midsize SUV's for GM, Ford and Daimler Chrysler dropped 40% or $7 billion from 2001 to the end of 2004. These figures track a steady decline in profits from SUV's, as incentives are used to promote sales of SUV's, lowering the whole profit structure a big notch downwards. In 2001, this study found that the per vehicle profit was about $9500. In 2005 thanks to big discounts the margin on SUV's is about $6300. On midsize SUV's like the Ford Explorer or the Chevy TrailBlazer, margins are down even more to $4100 from $7200. Responding to this study GM looks at it differently, it sees declining sales as the main culprit not the margins. Its thinking goes like this- as long as we can keep sales up we can cover our fixed costs including costs to retirees which make up a big part of the picture And it looks at the variable profits which it finds to be much higher than the numbers put out by the Transportation Research Institute. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
VW's Scout Motors plans in 2026 to sell direct to buyers. A Scout Motors VP says of VW's plans- “We have heard over and over again, ‘Please give me an alternative. You see that there is very little trust in auto dealers today.”  Dealers have lobbied to have the laws in US set so that no one else but dealers can sell cars. Yet this may be becoming an outdated way to sell cars if car makers can provide good service over 10 years to buyers and make the whole process of buying and owning a car a pleasant experience for owners. It is far from that today and the experience is not one that is consistent in quality and have ease of use as the experience varies with each dealer and can change with a single dealer over time, quality is not assured.

LyrArc Article Gist
Only Honda is withstanding the the sales shock as numbers tumble from June of a year earlier. Toyota auto sales down 21%, Ford 28% and Chrysler 36%. GM 18% because of special incentives and discounts. Honda a modest 1.1 % increase in sales. The US manufacturers have their plants skewed towards making trucks and SUV's so turning out Chevy Cobalts and Focus cars is a big problem as there are huge drops in truck and SUV sales and customers are shifting to cars. Sales of Ford SUV's fell 55% and its formerly top selling truck line dropped 38%. Toyota sold about two thirds fewer light trucks than in 2007 June. Market share of domestic makers in the USA market dropped to 46% from 50%. To get some idea of capacity constraints. According to Global Insight GM can build only 250,000 Chevy Cobalts, while Honda has the capacity to build 400,000 Honda Civic small cars annually.

LyrArc Article Gist
The new iX3 will run 497 miles on a single charge and shows BMW's effort to reinvent the car from the ground up says it's CEO. Mercedes electric GLC will run for 457 miles on a single charge, competing at $80,000 with the Model Y of Tesla which does 387 miles at over $60,000. Mercedes GLC price is still to be decided. Tesla has lost a third of it's market volume in the European market. The newer versions of Mercedes and BMW join VW's own models that compete at the lower end of the price range which today is close to $30,000-$40,000. Earlier reports in WSJ show the German models are competing for dominant share in Europe.

LyrArc Article Gist
Automakers stand to lose a lot of money on their leased SUV's. Spinella, President of CNW Marketing Research estimates they could lose $4.7 billion in 2008, with losses extending into 2009 and 2010 which could cost them additional $10 billion. Why? Because many of these SUV's leased for as long as 39 months are on the road and automakers only recently started writing fewer leases, and as thes SUV's come back to the car lots they are marked way down. Automakers did not anticipate such a large markdown. According to Mannheim, the USA's largest vehicle wholesaler, between March an May the resale values of large SUV's have fallen 13%, with some pickups down 20%, as a result of $4 a gallon gasoline. Knowing the drop in resale values more lease holders are reluctant to buy or to extend their leases. Over the next 18 months GM will lose $600 million in lease related costs, and Ford will lose $1 billion, according to Chase analyst Himanshu Patel. According to Brian Johnson, Lehman Brothers analyst, GM's lending arm will lose $1.1 billion and Ford's $1.5 billion, GM's losses lower because GMAC is owned 51% by Cerberus Capital. Not just the American automakers, BMW took a charge of $400 million for losses in the first quarter on sales of off-lease SUV's and cars. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Developing monopolies in AI on Apple similar to Apple Google deal on Search on Apple devices for which Apple gets $20 billion from Google. Google pays more than $20 billion a year to be the default search provider on Safari browser. This kind of deal violates the spirit of the anti-monoply laws and the US Justice Department has taken action.

LyrArc Article Gist
VW which has failed to build market share in the US is leaving aside its appeal point of German engineering in 2023 and now selling itself as an American brand. VW has become dependent on China for half its sales and badly needs to avoid overconcentration in one country. It is trying to enter the SUV market with the Scout brand for buzz as an off road vehicle and will introduce 2 dozen models. Scout is a 4 wheel drive recreational vehicle designed in America for International Harvester, a company VW acquired in 1981 when it was called Navistar. It is a mashup of a World War II Willy Jeep and a pickup truck with its boxy shape. Half a million were sold from 1960 to 1980. With this plan VW with only 4.5%  of the American market is trying one more time, this time as a way out of overconcentration in China. Realizing that America is where the automobile entered mass production in the factories of Detroit. South Carolina's assembly has approved $1.3 billion to support VW in building a new plant near Columbia to build the Scout.   ...