Ford expands work from home for 30,000 employees

Ford realized that many of the employees work well from home. All this and more in The Morning Shift for 18 March 2021.

1st gear: offer extended to white collar not blueboard workers

The funny part of it all is that Ford calls his plan a ‘hybrid’ working model, which means I will only ever think of the old Ford Escapes when I read about it. Of the Chicago Tribune:

This is a question that is on the minds of millions of employees who have worked from home over the past year: will they still be allowed to work remotely – at least for a few days – if the pandemic has faded? On Wednesday, one of Ford’s American titans, Ford Motor Co., gave its own answer: it told about 30,000 of its employees worldwide who worked from home that they could keep it indefinitely, with flexible hours which are approved by their managers. Their schedules will become a “hybrid” of the work office: they will mainly commute to group meetings and projects that are best suited for interaction.

It seems like some of this is going to make employees happy, and it seems like it’s about corporate efficiency. Ford has stressed that it will not be the cost of stickers for stickers, soul-wrenching or no, if he talks to him Bloomberg about the switch:

“There are no more hockey farms,” Jackie Shuk, global director of Ford’s fixed unit, said in an interview. “We try to make it as easy as possible to be a Ford employee.”

Bloomberg also stressed that this applies to office workers and not factory workers:

Ford will have to manage perceptions carefully because it gives flexibility to some employees and not to others. The pandemic exposed how dependent society is on the physical presence of blue-collar workers from the country factory floor to the grocery counter. But the idea that white-collar workers report home safely, while lower-paid workers endanger their health by showing up in person, is an additional source of resentment in an already stratified U.S. economy.

I do not know if I would necessarily care if other people got stuck in hockey when I was working on the line, but that’s just me.

2nd gear: electric cars are doing well … things to share prices

EVs are still a bit of the car market, and no matter how much promise they offer for the future, what they do for car businesses now immediately? The answer is that they increase the share value, as the Wall Street Journal reports:

After years of undervaluing stocks, Ford Motor Co., General Motors Co., Volkswagen AG and other blue-chip carmakers see it sharp share price increases this year while embracing the new technology.

Ford has risen 49% so far this year, while GM’s shares have risen 48%. VW’s share rose 55% and even rose 29% in intraday trading for a short day one week this week when the company held a ‘Power Day’ event and said would build six EV battery factories in Europe alone over the next ten years. VW also claimed for this week SAP SE to become the most valuable stock on the German DAX index.

How much do car companies really value self-driving vehicles, and how much do they just appreciate what they do for stock prices? Who could even tell the difference?

3rd gear: Tesla is sued for not hiring a lawyer to stop Elon’s tweeting

Tesla thrives on having a public figure like Elon to send out endless bragging rights on Twitter, so it’s no surprise that the company has not really cashed its bill, as claimed in a new lawsuit. The case does not seem to depend on people who are generally angry at Elon’s bad memes, but that they think his bad Twitter views are hurting the company’s value, Business Insider reports:

Elon Musk was able to post “erratic” tweets about Tesla that led to government investigations because the company’s board did not control its CEO. a lawsuit filed by a Tesla investor.

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

The case against both Musk and the board focuses on how Musk’s comments on Twitter allegedly contradicted a 2018 Settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), who removed him from the company’s board of directors and determined that his tweets must be approved by the company in advance.

Shareholders earn better!

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

What’s great about EVs is their quiet operation and overall freedom of gas stations. People also talk a lot about how much they can or cannot save. We will soon see how big an attraction is in the UK, as the government has only praised Teslas from a large subsidy Bloomberg Green reports:

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

The British government was under pressure to plug a hole in the country’s finances left by the pandemic. It is claimed that buyers of cars with an expensive price, even without help, can afford to switch from internal combustion engines, and that the number of models costing less than 35,000 pounds on batteries has increased by almost 50% since 2019.

I have a feeling that people for budget reasons never really buy a Tesla, but it will be interesting to watch.

5th gear: Nikola Partner sells half of its stake

How about Nikola after the whole head of the company was exposed to fraud? Not good. Its strategic partner Hanwha, which is intended to offer solar farms, sold half of its stake in the company, about $ 180 million, as Bloomberg reports:

Hanwha, who describes Nikola as a key partner and strategic investor, plans to sell 11.05 million shares, or 50% of its current stake in the company in Phoenix, according to a security filed Wednesday. Hanwha Corp. is the group’s exchange – traded holder, a conglomerate that spans financial services, chemicals and solar energy.

The amount to be sold is worth about $ 180 million, based on Nikola’s closing price of $ 16.39. Nikola shares fell 3.5% to $ 15.82 in market trading.

[…]

The company said Hanwha will supply third-party solar farms with panels needed to generate electricity for the production of “clean energy” hydrogen for a planned network of filling stations in the United States. Hanwha bought its stake in 2018, two years before Nikola acquired a public stock. listing in June through a reverse merger with a special purpose acquisition company.

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

Conversely: We have turned away from God’s light