Any investment by GM in Rivian should be blocked and no way GM should get a board position for any investment or even be able to attend closed board meetings. Fine if GM wants to license or buy product but not acceptable at all if it wants to exert control as it would be anti-competitive. That GM money would come presumably come with unacceptable strings. GM's whole history with electrics has been to fail convincingly it shouldn't be allowed to mess with Rivian. Nor should it be allow to acquire or hostile take over Rivian. The SEC has to be more than useless sometimes. The public needs Rivian to succeed. Any deal with GM should benefit Rivian more than it does GM. Given GMs real history of total hostility to electrics and status as a direct competitor it should not be able to wave the tax payer money that funds its structural bankruptcy around in ways that undermine the public and undermine competition.
Easy, buy enough GM stock to change the board of directors. Regardless, my understanding: https://venturebeat.com/2019/02/15/amazon-leads-700-million-investment-into-electric-pickup-truck-startup-rivian/ Bob Wilson
10 I know you probably means well, but the present investors listed in the article a Saudi interest and a well knowing international banking interest? And amazon by my read is into this for one reason to help with their shipping. They already have initiated a jet fleet which they are expanding. And they are applying as much AI into things as possible. Hard to say how this plays out but fleets of electric pickups remotely directed in the same fashion as drones may be I think is, the playbook. Electric and AI they will cut shipping costs in half. The threat to not seeing this thing in common use for citizens is actually more so amazon. Why would they not intend to keep it to themselves, I expect they would. Keeps out other competition.
You'd be buying a lot of shares of a bad company. We need a regulatory block and some push back from the Rivian people. They don't need the dangerous strings that would come with GM money. GM is another idiot organization that does everything with the primary aim of enriching its rent seeker owners, it even has an outrageous dividend. Its primary product is rent seeking, its tangible products are only incidental byproducts. Don't kid yourself its not a public entity paying for a micro fraction of grandma's mutual fund derived pension- no that is only the outer Ponzi scheme cover. Its about rents for parasites just like the Kaiser HMO which tax evades by claiming to be non profit but if if you look at its books closely there will be some for parasite private vendors that are getting for example something like 180 million a year to wax floors when the real contract should be for 180 thousand a year and that type of thing will be repeated all over the place. Instead of giving its rent seeking parasites 25 billion recently it could have given each of the 15000 people its laying off about 170K severance, but no it laid them off so it could give that money to the useless rent seekers. But that is what it has been doing all along on way or another. Even GE's neutron Jack understood that every other stake holder comes before the free loader owners, Jobs definitely understood it, I think Warren Buffet gets it. Tim Cook is clueless and GM is off the scale with depravity on this with stupid comments like "a car is an inefficient use of capital" you see the only efficient effective use of capital for the idiots that run GM is fattening rent seekers with ill gotten gain. Their meetings are all about profit, profit, profit when profit is irrelevant, its just an overhead. The idea that honest capex or development costs and profit could ever be conflated is beyond insane- and a function messing with tax policy- not every 'savings' can be construed as profit unless business is just theft. A real firm in every transaction provides fair value but a something-for-nothing free loader firm, one that should just be replaced by a GAI for the people that make it up is all about extraction, everything it does is just an avenue to overcharge to get more than fair value to create margin for disconnected entitled parasites.
Its a good question especially in retrospect with the what happened with Tesla. I think Musk totally had the money with the Saudis but presumably the US because of a certain other Mid East state threatened the wealth fund over this. Someday he'll get vindication on this. Saudis have been trying to fully sell of their petrol assets through their wealth fund, even cut their populations stipend which was surely brutally hard. Current prince has most of his family member quarantined to a luxury hotel per the media. But SA surely wants to be part of the solution now so it doesn't get caught up in the retribution that is coming of fossil fuels. To be charitable to Ford and GM on the dividend they have to cover the inflationary zero rate just to get people to park their money give the bankruptcy risk they face. And even though they would presumably have some US intervention in hostile take over attempts and attempts by liquidators to seize control (and protection from the fossil fuel industry) without their dividends their stock could go to zero which would make them vulnerable to loss of control and unwanted partners. Still I hate their model. I believe they should be wholly employee owned. I am aware of the arguments made against such arrangements (they are super weak in my opinion) and I also think real democracy in the work place (which unions don't provide- its still slavery) is the most pressing issue. They can keep their union but go full employee ownership. Some people are probably rolling their eyes thinking you think they would help with going full electric? I actually do think that, employee fully vested in the survival of the firm instead of just trying to be extractive by flogging employees would retrain themselves and shift out of self interest and better ethics that the extractive parasites not running things. When the big three plants start going under and they predictably start trying to blame Tesla and claim its anti union as away of flogging their own employees and unions for their own mistake- the employees and the public and maybe even Tesla should retort that Exxon and Chevron and Shell and BP should the factors that supply their failing demand. But we should be barring Shell and BP crew from buying green assets unless they are going to keep them fully green (no NG ever) and retail at the true much lower cost of actual green even if its canabalizes their non competitive fosil fuels and stranded asset empires.
Let us look at this way. We need more serious and stable competitors in the market. Tesla, has done great job, but they cannot satisfy the market (about 18 million vehicles were sold in 2018 and even if 60% of them become EV's it is a very large number) and we do not want a monopoly. GM has not been successful on their own, so they want to buy the know how and the technology. There is a symbiotic relationship, GM has skills that Rivian can use and Rivian has technology that would GM leapfrog others. I think it is good. More competitors, larger the market. Once Microsoft rebranded PC-DOS (IBM specific) to the non IBM Specific MS-DOS (not as simple as it may look, ), where other manufacturers could get everything shrink wrapped, the market took off as more manufacturers did not have to be 100% IBM compatible. This allowed more people to enter the market and the whole market grew due to customization. We need the market to grow and we need viable competitors. This helps.
10 I am actually rolling my eyes. For reason. Back in the day of the first go round of drilling in the artic national wildlife preserve firmly behind the idea to drill was the UAW. Of course that is not even a thing now, to win support of their senator it was given away and the dems did not a thing about it. Once it was a big bid dem issue. They sided with the industry on virtually every antienvironment stance the industry had which includes Café standards. Why that, they said it was as they had to represent their base. I am Nordic socialist not communist nor following that form of socialism. But really communism is control of means of production by workers, and the soviets Chinese did not back in the day, have any concern for environment. They were worse or equal tothat than the corporate masters we endeavor. We had our three mile they had their Chernobyl. Coal workers firmly do support their industry. And their support amounts to despoiling the environment killing peoples in mines of no good reason at times and producing great vast amounts of carbon. Truth is they want the jobs and to buy stuff way more than the care of the environment. GM it is the same. Big products will no regulation bring more profit. That is what they want as profit they can use for salary.
“Let me tell you how all this works: you see, Team America is funded by the corporations, so they fight for the corporations... while they sit in their corporation buildings... and they're all corporation-y... and they make lots of money!” Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Me personally? Well yes if you mean me personally I generally agree. The idea unions/workers will act differently in the concern of the environment as opposed to jobs and salary is my point of contention to 10. I find they act about the same with personal interest as decider in things. I have shown with the UAW how this is so, in the past context. In present the coal industry and workers unions would suffice. Clean coal is the term they use the workers and the coal unions use, which is a made up term that has no real application. I add this part from their web site, the united mine workers, statement to this... "We opposed the CPP because it was illegal and overstepped the boundaries Congress gave EPA under the Clean Air Act. But it was also clear to us that the primary effect the CPP would have was not a dramatic reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions, but instead it would virtually eliminate U.S. coal production within a decade and devastate employment in the coal industry where our members work. Again, no one should be surprised by our opposition to that." It is a bit nuanced their positions a bit difficult to express in any one quote. It is perhaps best to go to their union internet site and quary clean coal. Various articles and opinion pieces show up. It is quite clear they favor the continuance of coal use in any manner found by power plants.
