November 2023

Artificial Intelligence: Disrupting the EV Industry

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming the electric vehicle (EV) industry. From design and manufacturing to autonomous driving and charging infrastructure, AI is poised to revolutionize the way we develop, build, and use EVs.

This article will explore some of the key ways that AI is disrupting the EV industry, and discuss the potential implications of these changes for consumers, businesses, and the environment.

Design and Manufacturing

AI is already being used to design and manufacture EVs more efficiently and effectively. For example, AI-powered algorithms can be used to:

Optimize battery design for energy density, range, and cost.
Reduce production costs by automating tasks and optimizing supply chains.
Improve vehicle performance by designing more efficient motors, powertrains, and aerodynamics.

For example, Tesla uses AI to design and manufacture its batteries. AI helps Tesla to optimize the battery chemistry and structure to get the most energy density and range out of its batteries. AI also helps Tesla to automate the battery manufacturing process, which reduces costs and improves quality.

Another example is the company Waymo, which is developing self-driving cars. Waymo uses AI to design and manufacture its own self-driving hardware and software. This allows Waymo to have greater control over the development and deployment of its self-driving cars.

Autonomous Driving

AI is also playing a major role in the development of autonomous EVs. Self-driving cars rely on AI to perceive their surroundings, make decisions, and control the vehicle.

AI-powered self-driving car systems use a variety of sensors, such as cameras, radar, and ultrasonic sensors, to create a real-time 3D model of the car's surroundings. This model is used to identify other vehicles, pedestrians, and objects on the road. AI then uses this information to make decisions about how to safely navigate the vehicle.

Several companies are developing autonomous EVs, including Tesla, Waymo, and Cruise. These companies are using AI to develop self-driving cars that can operate safely and reliably in a variety of environments.

Charging Infrastructure

AI is also being used to improve EV charging infrastructure. For example, AI can be used to:

Optimize the placement of charging stations based on traffic patterns and population density.
Predict demand for charging and allocate resources accordingly.
Manage the charging grid to ensure that there is enough power to meet demand.

For example, the company ChargePoint uses AI to optimize the placement of its charging stations. ChargePoint uses AI to analyze data on traffic patterns, population density, and vehicle registrations to identify the best locations for new charging stations. This helps to ensure that charging stations are placed where they are most needed.

Another example is the company GridX, which provides AI-powered software solutions for managing the electric grid. GridX's software helps utilities to optimize power generation and distribution, integrate renewable energy sources, and manage demand response programs. This can help to make the electric grid more efficient and reliable, which is essential for supporting the growth of EVs.

Other Applications of AI in the EV Industry

In addition to the key areas discussed above, AI is also being used in a variety of other ways to disrupt the EV industry. For example, AI is being used to:

Develop new battery technologies with higher energy density and longer lifespans.
Improve the efficiency of EV motors and powertrains.
Develop new EV charging systems that are faster and more convenient to use.
Develop new EV safety features, such as collision avoidance systems and driver monitoring systems.
Create new EV insurance products and services that are tailored to the unique needs of EV owners.

Implications of AI for the EV Industry

The widespread adoption of AI in the EV industry is expected to have a number of significant implications for consumers, businesses, and the environment.

For consumers, AI is expected to make EVs more affordable, accessible, and user-friendly. For example, AI-powered battery technologies and EV charging systems could help to reduce the cost of EVs and make them more convenient to charge. AI-powered self-driving cars could also make EVs more accessible to people with disabilities and other mobility challenges.

For businesses, AI is expected to create new opportunities for innovation and growth. For example, companies that develop AI-powered EV technologies and services could position themselves well to capitalize on the growing EV market.

For the environment, AI is expected to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve air quality. For example, AI-powered EV charging systems could help to make the electric grid more efficient and reliable, which could support the integration of more renewable energy sources. AI-powered EV safety features could also help to reduce traffic accidents and fatalities.

Overall, the widespread adoption of AI in the EV industry is expected to have a number of positive implications for consumers, businesses, and the environment.

Challenges and Opportunities

While AI has the potential to transform the EV industry in many positive ways, there are also some challenges that need to be addressed. One challenge is the development of ethical guidelines for the use of AI in EVs. For example, it is important to ensure that AI-powered self-driving cars are programmed to make decisions that are consistent with human values, such as protecting life and minimizing harm.

Another challenge is the need to ensure that AI-powered EV technologies and services are accessible to everyone. For example, it is important to develop affordable AI-powered EV charging systems and self-driving cars. It is also important to ensure that AI-powered EV technologies and services are designed to meet the needs of people with disabilities and other minority groups.

Despite the challenges, AI presents a number of significant opportunities for the EV industry. By embracing AI, the EV industry can become more innovative, efficient, and sustainable. AI can also help to make EVs more affordable and accessible to everyone, which could accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy.

Conclusion

The EV industry is at a crossroads. AI has the potential to transform the EV industry in many positive ways, but it is important to address the challenges and opportunities associated with AI adoption. By working together, consumers, businesses, and policymakers can ensure that AI is used to create a more sustainable and equitable EV industry.

Trade Alert - (CRM) November 10, 2023 - BUY

Tech Alert

When John identifies a strategic exit point, he will send you an alert with specific trade information as to what security to sell, when to sell it, and at what price. Most often, it will be to TAKE PROFITS, but, on rare occasions, it will be to exercise a STOP LOSS at a predetermined price to adhere to strict risk management discipline. Read more

November 10, 2023

Tech Letter

Mad Hedge Technology Letter
November 10, 2023
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(ARTISANAL TECH FEELS THE HEAT)
(BMBL), (PTON), (MTCH)

Artisanal Tech Feels The Heat

Tech Letter

Bumble (BMBL) is a dating app in which women initiate communication first and their CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd deciding to quit offers deep insight into the state of tech firms.

Remember that Wolfe Herd is the person who established this app and presided over an 83% decline in share price since an initial public offering over two years ago.

Clearly, the writing was on the wall for Wolfe Herd, but she shouldn’t receive all the blame.

There is an industry-wide malaise occurring in some sub-sectors of technology and smartphone dating apps are one of them.

Some investors have started to gain a sense that these apps don’t have enough bang for the buck and these business models are gaining in popularity.

In the past few weeks, the popular dating app Tinder announced a new feature rolling out a new subscription tier for $500 per month boasting it would unlock premium profiles at that price point.

Asking for $6,000 per year is a serious overreach for a dating app and I believe that type of ask will alienate some of the core users.

These apps are supposed to scale but not at $6,000 per year.

What else is the big challenge for Bumble?

How to get consumers to commit money to a dating app when the economy is so uncertain?

That’s the conundrum.

In the months after the pandemic, online dating apps became the hottest ticket in town as the only way to not sacrifice a dating life.

Bumble, which currently has 40 million active monthly users across its portfolio of apps, is now fiercely fighting for users with its competitor Match (MTCH).

As with some of these niche tech businesses, opening up the economy from the lockdowns has been a tough pill to swallow as it relates to the knock-on effect on future sales.

In terms of pure market sentiment, investors have determined a strong likelihood that the lockdowns were the high water mark for these artisanal apps.

Unfortunately, these sub-sector stocks are labeled as a time and place stock and not one that is worth holding in times of chaos and upheaval.

We are far from the start-up frenzy peak where entrepreneurs could make hopes based on fantasies into an app and concoct a targeted addressable market.

It’s not going to cut it anymore, because the bar is so much higher.

In the era of cheap money, funding niche sub-sectors of technology was still quite fashionable and mainstream.

I would even say it caught fire.

Then there is the issue of artificial intelligence concerning how this type of technology delivers poison to the innards of the business model.

How?

Dating apps could easily turn into bots chatting to bots to monetize users with no real value. This would constitute a fake business. Ad sponsors could be paying for this to happen. AI integrates into online dating apps quite poorly because it strips away the authenticity of the end user which undermines communication and the underlying asset.

A fake business would mean a crash in the underlying equity value. Of course, we are not even close to that possibility right now, but keep in mind that force-feeding management to one-up AI capabilities could unearth some bizarre unintended consequences.

Ultimately, the end of 2023 is a dynamic time in technology because the trajectory of companies has never been so uncertain, fluid, and challenging at the same time.

Expect quite a few of these artisanal apps to get swept into the dustbin of history.

Readers need to stay away from sub-sector technology stocks like Peloton (PTON) and instead go for stocks that have broader exposure to more wallets where artificial intelligence will act as a tailwind.

Plus, many people use Instagram, X, or Facebook for dating anyway. No need to overcomplicate life.

November 10, 2023 - Quote of the Day

Tech Letter

“Move fast and break things.” – Said Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg

Trade Alert - (CCJ) November 10, 2023 - BUY

Trade Alert

When John identifies a strategic exit point, he will send you an alert with specific trade information as to what security to sell, when to sell it, and at what price. Most often, it will be to TAKE PROFITS, but, on rare occasions, it will be to exercise a STOP LOSS at a predetermined price to adhere to strict risk management discipline. Read more

November 10, 2023

Jacque's Post

(THE OPIOID CRISIS AND ITS EFFECT ON THE ECONOMY)

November 10, 2023

Hello everyone,

While the market is dancing along nicely to year-end, I’m going to focus on an issue that can affect anyone at any time in their life.

Drugs.

Am I worried about my son, Alex, ever taking drugs? No. He crosses the road when he sees a person walking toward him, who is smoking a cigarette because he can’t stand the smell of the smoke.

Alex’s first semester at college has been unremarkable. He has done the work, received good grades, and has joined the Chess Club. He sometimes even tells me he is bored. But I never think that is a bad thing. After all, boredom can stimulate and inspire us to get lost in new ventures and hobbies that might otherwise have never been explored.

I had an interesting conversation with him the other day. His major is tech, while his roommate’s major is business. Alex is quiet and conservative, while his roommate is a party boy and often stays out until 4 a.m. Furthermore, sometimes, he just never comes back to the room at all over the weekend. But that is not surprising behaviour for a young adult teenager. What is a bit concerning is his roommate’s pill-popping, which Alex tells me has an impact on the way he behaves.

Alex did not tell me what he was taking, only that they were illegal.

The opioid crisis is a scourge on our society. Is life so confronting that some people have to get a buzz from a pill to make it to the end of the day?

The statistics are alarming!

Worldwide, about 296 million people (or 5.8% of the global population aged 15-64 years) used drugs at least once in 2021. Among them, about 60 million people used opioids. About 39.5 million people lived with drug use disorders in 2021. Most people dependent on opioids use illicitly cultivated and manufactured heroin, but the proportion of those using prescription opioids is growing.

More than 100 people die every day from opioid overdoses.

Overall life expectancy in the U.S. has declined for three years in a row due in large part to the opioid epidemic, reversing a half-century trend.

Overdoses kill more Americans than car crashes or gun violence.

Addiction contributes to incarceration. In 2010, 85% of the U.S. population was incarcerated for substance-related reasons, with over half of all inmates diagnosed with substance use disorder.

In economic costs

Reduced labor force participation

Decreased employment

Productively loss.

Extra health costs.

Permanent injury & chronic health conditions.

Reported opioid overdose deaths:

2010 – 21,089

2017 – 47,600

2020 – 68, 630

2021 – 80, 411

Opioids have analgesic and sedative effects, and such medicines as morphine, codeine, and fentanyl are commonly used for the management of pain. Opioid medicines methadone and buprenorphine are used for maintenance treatment of opioid dependence. After intake, opioids can cause euphoria, which is one of the main reasons why they are taken for non-medical reasons. Opioids include heroin, morphine, codeine, fentanyl, methadone, tramadol, and other similar substances. Due to their pharmacological effects, they can cause difficulties with breathing, and opioid overdose can lead to death.

In the 1980s and 1990s, I worked in the Drug and Alcohol Unit and the Psychiatric Unit of the Toowoomba Hospital. I was the Administration Manager for those units. I learned a lot about the effects of drugs and alcohol on individuals, and the impact on families and the wider community. White-collar workers, blue-collar workers, male and female, young and old – all are at risk of being a statistic in the opioid epidemic. Those people who took drugs for non-medical reasons were in emotional pain, except the panacea turned into an additional crisis which exacerbated the person’s despair and feelings of hopelessness. A truly sad situation.

We can point to the pharmaceutical industry and its aggressive promotion of prescription drugs as one of the main elements contributing to the opioid epidemic in the U.S. Advertising of drugs is at saturation point on free-to-air T.V. in the U.S. Conversely, in Australia, promotion of drugs in television or print media is at a minimum. There are restrictions on the direct advertising of pharmaceuticals to patients, as well as regulatory and professional actions, which have resulted in different patterns of prescribing and outcomes in Australia.

Nonetheless, opioid prescribing has increased gradually in Australia over the last three decades. Each time a new opioid formulation becomes available, it is enthusiastically prescribed. That brings us to look at the relationship between the drug representative and the G.P. The payoffs for the G.P. when s/he promotes the drug are usually quite attractive. Surely, lack of remuneration would lessen the likelihood of G.P.’s being so eager to prescribe these drugs, knowing the tendency for some patients with non-medical conditions to abuse these drugs.

Take care.

Cheers,

Jacquie

November 10, 2023

Diary, Newsletter, Summary

Global Market Comments
November 10, 2023
Fiat Lux

SPECIAL VETERANS DAY ISSUE

Featured Trade:
(A TRIBUTE TO A TRUE VETERAN)

A Tribute to a True Veteran

Diary, Newsletter, Research

A few years ago, I found myself on an obscure, deserted mountain ridge in the Solomon Islands in a remote corner of the South Pacific. The jungle was lush and malarial mosquitos alighted in clouds. I was looking over the capital city of Honiara on the main island whose name is honored by all Marine Corps. veterans:

Guadalcanal.

I had to hold back the tears as I dug through the foxhole on Hanekin’s Ridge occupied by my Uncle Mitch during one of the most violent hand-to-hand battles of WWII. I found dozens of 6.5 mm Japanese Arisaka copper jacketed bullets, along with an assortment of unexploded hand grenades, mortar shells, and 30 caliber machine gun casings.

I repeated the same at the base of Hill 27, where my then 19-year-old father fought a similar pitched battle. The battle was later chronicled in the 1998 movie The Thin Red Line. His suffering had to be immense. The reason he stayed in California is that visits to his native Brooklyn, NY home triggered his malaria. He never talked about the war.

Gingerly Handing a Live Japanese Grenade

Today is Veterans Day in the United States.

I’ll be putting on my faded Marine Corps fatigues, with gold railroad track bars on my shoulders, and leading the hometown’s parade.

Since job prospects for high school graduates in rural Pennsylvania were poor in 1936, Mitch walked 200 miles to the nearest Marine Corps recruiting station in Baltimore.

After basic training, he spent five years rotating between duty in China and the Philippines, manning the fabled gunboats up the Yangtze River.

When WWII broke out, he was a seasoned sergeant in charge of a machine gun platoon. That put him with the seventh regiment of the First Marine Division at Guadalcanal in October 1942. He missed the notorious Bataan Death March by weeks.

When the Japanese counterattacked, Mitch was put in charge of four Browning .30 caliber water-cooled machine guns and 33 men, dug in at trenches on a ridge above Henderson Field.

A Zero Fighter Wing

The Japanese launched massive waves of suicide attackers in a pouring tropical rainstorm all night long, frequently breaking through the lines and engaging in fierce hand-to-hand combat.

If the position fell, the line would have been broken, leading to a loss of the airfield, and possibly the entire battle. WWII in the Pacific would have lasted two more years.

After the first hour, all of Mitch’s men were either dead or severely wounded, shot or slashed with samurai swords. So, Mitch fired one gun until it was empty, then scurried over to the next, and then the next. In between human waves of banzai attackers, he ran back and reloaded all the guns.

To more easily pitch hand grenades, he cut the arms off his green herringbone fatigues. When the Japanese launched their final assault and then retreated, he picked up a 50-pound Browning, cradled it in his arms, and ran down the hill after them, firing all the way, and burning all the skin off his left forearm.

Mitch’s commanding officer, Col. Herman H. Hanneken, heard the guns firing all night from the field below. He was shocked when he visited the position the next morning, finding Mitch alone in front of a twisted sea of 2,000 Japanese bodies.

Mitch was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor by General “Chesty” Puller at the Melbourne Cricket Grounds in Australia a few months later.

The Medal of Honor

After the war, Mitch, now a captain, was handed the plum of all Marine Corp jobs, acting as the liaison officer with Hollywood. He provided the planes, ships, Marines, and beaches needed to make the great classic war films.

He got to know stars like John Wayne, Lee Marvin, and yes, even Elvis Presley. The iconic fictional hero in the 1949 film, Sands of Iwo Jima, the quiet, but strong Sergeant John M. Striker, was modeled after him.

Tradition dictated that all military officers saluted Mitch, even five-star generals, and he was given a seat to attend every presidential inauguration from FDR on. When Mitch became too old to attend, I took that seat. Pacific countries issued stamps with his image, and Mattel sold a special GI Joe in his likeness.

When Mitch got older and infirm, I used my captain’s rank to escort him on diplomatic missions overseas to attend important events, like the D-Day 40th anniversary in Normandy.

The Top of Hill 27

Whenever Mitch was in town, he would join me for lunch with some of my history-oriented hedge fund clients and a more humble and self-effacing guy you never met. He occasionally scratched the massive scars on his forearm, which still bothered him after a half-century.

I used to confess to my fellow traders present, “It makes what we do for a living look pretty feeble, doesn’t it?”

What’s Left of a Marine Corsair Shot Down

Mitch passed away in 2003 while he was working as a technical consultant to the pre-production of the HBO series, The Pacific, an absolute must-see for all armchair historians.

The principal character in the series is an amalgam of Mitch and John Basilone, another Medal of Honor winner at Guadalcanal. Basilone later died leading a charge on Iwo Jima, so his name was used in the film for dramatic effect.

The funeral in Riverside, California was marked by a lone eagle, which continuously circled overhead. According to the Indian shaman present, this only occurs at the services for great warriors.

A dozen living Medal of Honor winners accompanied the casket. Boy, the Marines can sure put on a great funeral, perhaps because they have had so much practice.

When I get back from my parade, I’ll take out the samurai sword Mitch captured on that fateful day, a 1692 Muneshige, the hilt still scarred with 30 caliber slugs, and give it a ritual polishing in sesame oil and powdered deer horn, as samurai have done for millennia.

While in Guadalcanal, I managed to dig up several dog tags from Marines missing in action that were still legible after 78 years in the ground. The Marine Historical Division in Quantico Station Virginia is tracing them so I can return them to the families.

To read more about the First Marine Division’s campaign during the war, please read the excellent paperback, The Island: A History of the First Marine Division on Guadalcanal by Herbert Laing Merillat, which you can buy by clicking here.

To buy the DVD, The Pacific, click here.

Mitchel Paige

Hanneken's Ridge in 1942

Hanneken's Ridge Today

A 30 Caliber Machine Gun

A US Wildcat Fighter Crash Landed

Marines Who Didn’t Make It Back

Trade Alert - (TLT) November 9, 2023 - BUY

Trade Alert

When John identifies a strategic exit point, he will send you an alert with specific trade information as to what security to sell, when to sell it, and at what price. Most often, it will be to TAKE PROFITS, but, on rare occasions, it will be to exercise a STOP LOSS at a predetermined price to adhere to strict risk management discipline. Read more