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- So, going back 10-12 years, Tesla suddenly came and ate legacy ICE makers' lunches on many fronts – launching a successful EV, requisite charging network, overall UX, UI, driver assistance features, performance, sales and delivery, costs, software development, components, repair etc.

- Legacy ICE makers took a long time to figure out how to respond. At first, many of them thought all they had to do to compete was to was to throw in a large portrait screen. Then there were many abominations of them trying to fit EV components into their ICE platforms. I would say the Germans didn't get good at it until 2023-2024 (but they still have a lot to figure out).

- During the time, the legacy ICE makers were figuring things out, the EV startups had the advantage of not having the burden of legacy and figuring things out from first principles. There was a lot of money to be made here. In my estimation, this window of opportunity has now mostly passed.

It seems like a ton of them fail to make a viable base platform profitable and able to mass produce.

Automotive is essentially a volume game in the long run. This is hard and figuring this out is where the value is. Basically, if you're able to figure out this part, it's a lot less effort to figure out the other parts and control the entire thing. This is similar to how car companies make their own engines (other than in specialty, low volume cases).

Is there a market for a white-label EV platforms that are proven able to be executed well on a production line and allow the startups to actually complete on the fit and finish bits?

There is a market but it doesn't make sense for EV startups to do this because most of the value is in the previous bit, and the value add from this part is marginally less. Also, cars are complex and it takes a lot of work to integrate things made by others. Car companies do form partnerships to share these things.

Some cases:

1. Honda was late to the EV game and found it easier to form a partnership with GM. This resulted in the Honda Prologue, which is built by GM and is essentially a Chevy Blazer [1]. This model has been a success. However, Honda has cancelled the deal and will be releasing new cars built on its own platform [2].

2. Rivian is one company trying to scale on the platform side – they came out with high price-point vehicles. e.g. R1S competes with Range Rover. They're using the same platform for R1T trucks and for Amazon delivery trucks. Rivian had a partnership with Ford, where Rivian would make the platforms for Lincoln EVs, but Ford pulled out and are making Lincoln EVs on their own platform

VW Group was having major issues with its internal software and electronics tier I Cariad. So, they invested $5bn into Rivian so that they could use Rivian's expertise in this. See [3] for Rivian's perspectives on the various partnerships.

[1] https://www.motortrend.com/news/2024-honda-prologue-chevrole... [2] https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a43699034/honda-new-ev-pla... [3] https://electrek.co/2024/07/23/rivian-ceo-spills-tea-why-for...

Fully agreed. Soccer is like your esports example too – 45 minutes uninterrupted, followed by 15 minutes of some ads + analysis, following by another 45 minutes uninterrupted. I find it hard to keep attention if I try to watch NBA or NFL because of all the interruptions.

This is a conservative newspaper amplifying a conservative politician offering a sensational false choice – i.e. reduce pollution reduction targets or ban driving on weekends. If it’s not obvious, I t’s a a false choice because there are other ways to reduce pollution.

Yeah, different regimes are sensitive to different issues. All Assange did was release a video showing US bombing civilians in another country. Taters nothing inherently classified about that information. The fact that our government goes to great efforts to hide it and punishes anyone for revealing it is tyrannical.

The crazy thing is that, just like mocking Chinese politicians is not in actuality a big deal in that it’s harmless and it’s clear to us that the Chinese government is being extra sensitive; revealing of US war crimes seems to have been harmless too in that the government continues to do it, the general population doesn’t care, and the people who did it are roaming free, yet the US government continues to be extra sensitive to it.

Trading with sanctioned countries: happens all the time in support of various US wars. Too many examples during the Iraq War, but Iran Contra Scandal is a big one as the US President was directly involved.

Predatory infrastructure loans: that's what USAID, IMF and World Bank are basically set up to do.

Data privacy is linked to misinformation however in that by tricking you to give up all your data, they know you down to a t. They then sell that info on to propaganda/misinformation outfits and ad firms who can then target too much more efficiently.