Ford expands home working for 30,000 employees

Ford has realized that many of its employees are fine working from home. All that and more in it The morning shift before March 18, 2021.

1st gear: Offer extended to white collar workers and not blue-collar workers

The funny thing about all of this is that Ford calls its plan a ‘hybrid’ working model, which means I’ll only think about old Ford Escapes when I read about it. Of the Chicago Tribune

It’s a question that occupies the minds of millions of workers who have worked from home in the past year: Will they still be allowed to work remotely – at least for a few days – once the pandemic is gone? Co., gave its own answer: It told about 30,000 of its employees worldwide who have worked from home that they can continue to do so indefinitely, with flexible hours approved by their managers. Their schedules will become a “hybrid” work-office: they will commute primarily to work for group meetings and projects best suited for face-to-face interaction.

Some of this seems to be about making employees happy and some of it seems to be about business efficiency. Ford insisted it doesn’t need the cost of cubicle farms, crushing or not, when it spoke Bloomberg about the switch:

“No more cubicle farms” Jackie Shuk, general manager of Ford’s real estate division, said in an interview. “We try to make it as easy as possible to be a Ford employee.”

Bloomberg also stressed that this will be for office workers and not factory workers:

Ford will have to handle the perceptions carefully as it gives flexibility to some employees and not others. The pandemic has highlighted how dependent society is on the physical presence of workers from the factory floor to the grocery store. But the idea that white-collar workers log in safely at home while lower-paid workers risk their health to show up in person is an additional source resentment in an already stratified US economy.

I don’t know if I necessarily care if other people are stuck in boxes when I worked on the line, but I just am.

2nd gear: electric cars are doing a great job … things to share prices

EVs are still a slice of the automotive market, and no matter how much promise they hold for the future, what are they doing for car companies? nowThe answer is that they increase stock values ​​such as the Wall Street Journal reports:

After years of complaining that their shares were undervalued, Ford Motor Co., Co. from General Motors, Volkswagen AG and other blue-chip automakers are seeing it sharp price gains this year while embracing the new technology.

Ford is up 49% so far this year, while GM shares are up 48%. VW’s stock is up 55%, and is even up 29% this week in intraday trading on a day when the company held a “Power Day” event. building six EV battery factories in Europe alone in the next 10 years. VW has also eked ahead this week SAP SE to become the most valuable stock on the German DAX index.

How much do car companies themselves value electric cars and how much do they value what they do for stock prices? Who could tell the difference?

3rd Gear: Tesla is being sued for not appointing a lawyer to stop Elon’s tweeting

Tesla thrives on having a public figurehead like Elon bragging endlessly on Twitter, so it’s no surprise that the company didn’t actually curb its account, as a new lawsuit claims. The case doesn’t seem to hinge on people who are generally mad at Elon’s bad memes, but who think his bad Twitter operations are hurting the value of the company, like Business insider reports:

Elon Musk was able to post ‘erratic’ tweets about Tesla that led to government investigations because the company’s board had no control over the CEO, claims a lawsuit by a Tesla investor

The board had “consistently failed” to appoint an independent general counsel, investor Chase Gharrity said in his lawsuit. The company lost three general advisers in 2019, he added.

The lawsuit against both Musk and the board focuses on how Musk’s comments on Twitter are reportedly one 2018 settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), who removed him from the board of the company and required his tweets to be pre-approved by the company.

Shareholders deserve better!

4th gear: Teslas now too expensive for UK EV subsidy

What’s great about EVs is their quiet operation and complete freedom from gas stations. People also talk a lot about how much money they can or cannot save with them. We’ll quickly see just how big an attraction that really is in the UK is as the government has just priced Teslas out of a large grant, such as Bloomberg Green reports:

British transport authorities on Thursday cut a purchase bonus for electric cars, vans and trucks of up to £ 2,500 ($ 3,491) from £ 3,000, and reduced the price of eligible models to less than £ 35,000. While the previous ceiling of less than £ 50,000 meant the most Model 3 variants received the aid, no one is eligible under the new rule.

The British government is under pressure to stop a hole in the country’s finances left by the pandemic. It states that buyers of more expensive electric vehicles can afford to switch from combustion-powered cars even without the aid, and that the number of battery-powered models costing less than £ 35,000 has risen nearly 50% since 2019.

I feel like people never actually buy a Tesla for budget reasons, but this is going to be interesting to keep an eye on.

5th gear: Nikola partner sells half of its stake

How is Nikola doing after the whole “head of the company was exposed as a fraud”? Not good. Its strategic partner Hanwha, who intended to provide solar farms, has sold half of its stake in the company for approximately $ 180 million, such as Bloomberg reports:

Hanwha, who has described Nikola as a key partner and strategic investor, plans to sell 11.05 million shares, or 50% of its current stake in the Phoenix-based company, according to a securities filing Wednesday. Hanwha Corp. is the listed holding arm of the group, a conglomerate active in financial services, chemicals and solar energy.

The amount to be sold is worth approximately $ 180 million based on Nikola’s closing price of $ 16.39. Nikola shares fell 3.5 percent to $ 15.82 in premarket trading.

[…]

It has said Hanwha will provide third-party solar panels with panels needed to generate electricity to produce ‘clean energy’ hydrogen for a planned network of gas stations in the US. Hanwha bought its stake in 2018, two years before Nikola acquired public stock. listing in June via a reverse merger with a special purpose acquisition company.

I’m starting to wonder if this Nikola thing is going to work!

Downside: we turned away from God’s light