Category: Corporate Wokism

Update On Big Auto’s Duracell Drive

Corporate Fuckery, Corporate Wokism, Drive Time

Following on from yesterday’s post on VW, Mercedes and Stellantis (the bastards), there’s this:

Car makers slash EV prices, suspend production and extend petrol model availability as electric demand wanes

The global downturn in sales of EVs has been triggered by a cocktail of diverging policies on green incentives, range and charge anxiety among drivers and the fact prices haven’t come down as much as experts had forecast.

As such, 2024 has been awash with a wave of U-turns by legacy car firms in response to a lower-than-expected appetite for electric vehicles.

‘Appetite for EVs among consumers is quickly diminishing. There are many factors contributing to this, including the lack of clarity around incentives, high prices and concerns around the low residual value of EVs.’

Yeah, not to mention the paucity of charging points when your Duracell phuts out, the cost of replacing said Duracell when it becomes as worn out as Madonna’s box at a P Diddy White Party, and those pesky spontaneous combustion episodes — to name but some “consumer concerns”.

Looks like corporate obeisance to the great Global Cooling Climate Warming Change© is losing its luster, especially when that pesky cold hard cash is involved.  (Also see:  Germany restarting coal-fired electricity generating plants.)

This is especially rich:

‘The new pricing structure on Corsa Electric and Astra Electric is the latest in a number of measures we have taken to democratise access to electric vehicles.’\

“Democratize access”, my aching African-American white ass.  That’s just a fancy term for “getting rid of unwanted stock”.

But when it comes to weaselly corporate-speak, it’s hard to top this:

Volvo Cars chief executive Jim Rowan said: ‘We are resolute in our belief that our future is electric. An electric car provides a superior driving experience [nazzo fast, Guido] and increases possibilities for using advanced technologies that improve the overall customer experience [like having their every move tracked and sent to insurance companies and ad agencies].

‘However, it is clear that the transition to electrification will not be linear [ya think?], and customers and markets are moving at different speeds of adoption [or not moving at all, see above].

‘We are pragmatic and flexible [except of course when we try to coerce people into buying our Duracell cars by eliminating the ICE option completely], while retaining an industry-leading position on electrification and sustainability.’ [and I hope you’re the first to go out of business, Mr. Leader]

Wait… what’s this I’m experiencing?

Oh, and one more thing, speaking of Duracell cars:

…not that any of my Readers would be affected, of course, being Sensible Chaps.

Ummm Okay, Maybe Not

Corporate Wokism, Drive Time, Management

One has to laugh at this latest development:

Volvo has confirmed it has backtracked on its promise to sell only fully electric cars by 2030 due to a fall in demand for battery vehicles.

The Swedish company announced today it is now aiming for 90 to 100 per cent of its global sales to be either pure electric or plug-in hybrid by the end of the decade.

It comes in response to a decline in appetite for EVs across major markets, including a slowing uptake of battery cars among private buyers in the UK. 

Volvo executives said the delay to its EV schedule will ‘allow for a limited number of mild hybrid models to be sold, if needed’.

Let me be the first to say that “if needed” is going to become “vital to the company’s survival”, and the “limited number” will become most if not all of the entire product line.

In marketing terms, this is known as a “soft retraction” — note the shift from “all-electric” to “okay, we meant hybrids” — thus leaving space to keep using a normal internal combustion engine (ICE) instead of Duracell-only.

Gosh… let me see.  The original plan can be characterized as follows:

“We’re going to refocus our company’s entire product line into a technology that is unreliable, unsupportable and ultimately unsustainable, relying on a support system that doesn’t yet exist, all while hiding behind the twin figleaves of government mandate/coercion and feelgood eco-friendship”.

…because in cold hard business terms, that’s exactly what the “all-electric” policy came down to.

Were I a major shareholder in such a corporation, I would demand the resignation of the entire management group that initiated such stupidity.

Not for the first time, the oh-so politically-correct Swedes are getting their noses rubbed in the hard reality of their silliness (see also:  liberal immigration policy).

Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of well-intentioned wokist assholes.

So Much For Mickey

Corporate Wokism, Management

Here’s a tale of how to screw up a franchise, perhaps the greatest franchise of them all:

Back in 2021, the bottom began dropping out of Disney stock, which had been worth around $175 a share before Disney decided to hyper-politicize its movies and TV shows. Disney specifically targeted little kids for grooming with gay-themed propaganda aimed at sexualizing them and encouraging them to question their gender.

Additionally, Disney destroyed some of its most beloved and profitable Golden Geese franchises—Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars, Willow, Indiana Jones, etc.—by turning them into left-wing propaganda videos obsessed with sexuality, race, and gender.

And the result?

In April the stock rallied to $123 per share, up from $91 per share at the beginning of the year. In Early May, Disney stock reached as high as $116. But all this year’s gains are now gone. Currently, the stock sits at just $90 per share.

It will probably sink still lower — perhaps as low as $70.

Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of wokist, child-grooming assholes.  No corporation is too big to fail, and I hope this one perishes utterly.

So Much For That Diversity Thing

Business, Corporate Wokism, The Gun Thing

I remember once attending a board meeting of a company I worked at, and one of the agenda items was replacing a deceased board member.  One of the nominations for the replacement was some woman I’d never heard of, but as the nominator stated, “It’s time we had a little diversity on this board.”  And that’s all he said;  no mention of her qualifications, experience, nothing.

As the most junior executive in the room, I wasn’t going to say anything, but I couldn’t help wondering why nobody else had either.

Anyway, a vote was held and the nomination passed unanimously, albeit with one abstention (guess who).

This was back in the mid-1990s.

Anyway, it appears that one company has recently followed the same route — one assumes for the same reasons, only it backfired horribly on them.

Here’s the story:

On December 5, 2023, Breitbart News noted that shareholders disgruntled over Smith & Wesson’s continued manufacture of AR-15 platform rifles had filed a lawsuit. The suit claims that the defendants, who are Smith & Wesson board members and the company’s senior management team, “knowingly allowed the Company to become exposed to significant liability for intentionally violating federal, state, and local laws through its manufacturing, marketing, and sales of AR-15 style rifles and similar semiautomatic firearms.” . 

And who were these “disgruntled shareholders”?

Plaintiffs in the case included the Adrian Dominican Sisters, Sisters of Bon Secours USA, Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia, and Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus & Mary.

…making me wonder:  what the fuck were Our Ladies Of The Blessed Disarmament doing anywhere near S&W’s management?

Anyway, they failed, the rotten rosary-swingers, and a jolly good thing it was too.

On March 13, 2024, Breitbart News reported that Nevada’s Clark County District Court signaled no “substantial likelihood” Smith & Wesson would be found liable, saying the activist shareholders appear not to be aligned with the company’s best interest and requiring them to post a half-million-dollar bond to continue their suit.

The plaintiffs were instructed to post the bond by April 23, 2024, but they did not.

On May 6, 2024, Judge Joe Hardy pointed to their failure to post the bond as ordered and dismissed the lawsuit against Smith & Wesson.

Errrrr “the activist shareholders appear not to be aligned with the company’s best interest” — I’ll say they aren’t.  They tried to get into the company to subvert its business — kinda like the Commies do in our school system — but it didn’t work.

If I were on the S&W board, I would file suit against these BoCs for compensatory damages for the legal fees, at least.

I know, I know:  something about “Vengeance is mine,”  saith the Lord.

Bollocks.

Alternatives

Corporate Wokism, Drive Time

Everyone’s always talking about concepts like “plant-based” or “knowledge-based” (A.I.) nowadays.

How about “reality-based”?  Here’s one company who thought they had it all worked out, until reality stepped up and said, “Nazzo fast, Guido” (actually, “Noch langsamer, Fritz” ):

Mercedes-Benz has backtracked on their plan to transition to selling only electric vehicles after 2030, with company officials saying that “market conditions” have not allowed that to happen.

Ah, those pesky “market conditions”, wherein customers tell their supplier companies to take a hike after said corporations make unbelievably stupid decisions (Bud Lite, coff coff).

The background:

The company said it would commit $47 billion to electrifying its fleet, with CEO and board chair Ola Källenius saying, “We are convinced, we can do it with strong profitability, and we believe that focus on electrical is the right way to build a successful future and to enhance the value of Mercedes Benz.”

In other words:  we’ve bought into the whole Green New Deal, hook, line and sinker, and we’ll just force customers to adapt to the New World Order by giving them no option to do otherwise.

And then came Q4 ’23 results.  Oh, and a few other things which might have made potential (and existing) customers reevaluate their options:

The business model change comes after multiple highly-publicized instances of Mercedes-Benz electric vehicles catching on fire and causing massive damage.

Yeah.  Imagine that.

My question is quite simple:  other car companies have also declared their intention to be all-electric by x date (e.g. Jaguar, Volvo).  Does anyone think they’re going to have a change of heart too?

Or will they just do the Lemming Thing and plunge off the reality-based cliff, secure in their own virtuousness?