QTRS May 16, 2024
Interesting content for the curious
I’m now going with QTRS for the title of these posts. It’s the trendy thing to do, right? Let me know in the comments if it is a bad or good idea.
EV sales down
From the EIA (5/14/2024)
The share of electric and hybrid vehicle sales in the United States decreased in the first quarter of 2024 as battery electric vehicle (BEV) sales declined. Hybrid vehicles, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, and BEVs fell to 18.0% of total new light-duty vehicle (LDV) sales in the United States in the first quarter of 2024 (1Q24) from 18.8% in 4Q23, according to estimates from Wards Intelligence.
Now, let’s be a little clearer here. BEV sales as a percentage of sales fell, but we should ask: did total sales decrease?
The U.S. LDV market is highly seasonal, and total sales usually level off in the first quarter after an end-of-year sales increase. BEV sales grew 7% in 1Q24 compared with 1Q23 after 13 consecutive quarters of double-digit gains. The slowdown in growth can be broken into two components:
* An uneven decline in the overall new LDV sales market, where luxury vehicle sales declined more than mass-market sales
* A decline in mass-market BEV sales
BEVs continue to be popular in the luxury vehicle segment, maintaining about one-third of luxury LDV sales from 1Q23 through 1Q24. Of all BEV sales in 1Q24, 8 out of 10 sales were luxury models, in part due to the continued wide availability of luxury BEV options and favorable within-segment pricing from Tesla, Mercedes, Rivian, Cadillac, Audi, and BMW.
Total sales did not go down. What is less interesting here is that rich people have slowed their buying of BEVs. What is important, if you think we are going to move to an electric vehicle fleet in the near future, is this:
Total U.S. sales of mass-market LDVs declined by 1.0%, and total mass-market BEV sales fell 17.9%, reducing the market share of BEV models from 2.2% in 4Q23 to 1.8% in 1Q24.
Don’t count on BEVs taking over the market anytime soon. The general public isn't all that interested yet (?), and luxury vehicles have driven sales.
2% seems about right
I always find it amusing, as well as frustrating, when articles refute their claim in their own article. The Guardian does it in the article: Caitlin Clark will earn 2% of the median NBA salary. Is that as ridiculous as it sounds? (5/13/2024) (bold mine)
Clark’s salary isn’t just tiny compared with the $55m the NBA’s top rookie, Victor Wembanyama, will earn from his first contract, it’s half the amount she’d get working in the WNBA’s events department. WNBA players’ median (rather than mean) salary of $78,000 is just 2% of their NBA counterparts.
Yes, just another example of rampant sexism in our society. Oh, wait,
It’s also worth remembering that the NBA pulls in a lot more revenue than the WNBA, which has a trickle down effect for its players, because it had a 50-year head start on its sister league, the kind of age gap you only see at birthday parties among the De Niros and the Pacinos. All told, the NBA brings in more than $10bn a year, while the WNBA has a reported $200m in annual revenue, about four times as much as LeBron James alone made this past season with the Los Angeles Lakers – paying the likes of Clark anywhere near the amounts top NBA players earn would bankrupt the league quicker than a Las Vegas Aces fast break.
It’s worth remembering how to do a little math. 200m/10bn = 200,000,000 / 10,000,000,000 = 0.02, or, in other words, wait for it, the WNBA revenues are 2% of the NBA revenues. I had to laugh when this turned out to be exactly the median WNBA salary as compared to the NBA.
There is nothing ridiculous about this. The WNBA is paying Caitlin Clark what they can afford. Go back to the early days of the NBA or MLB, and the players pay was really low. What the WNBA is doing for Caitlin is this:
Clark will earn $3m this year off the court; her Nike deal, worth a reported $28m, would trail only James and Kevin Durant’s in value.
Without the WNBA, there would be no endorsement deals, and early men’s players didn’t have these deals. Here, salary has less to do with sexism and more to do with viewership, and the WNBA is a relatively young league. Meanwhile, the average NHL salary is about a third of the average NBA salary. Why? The league's revenue is lower. What will be interesting to see is if Caitlin Clark’s fame will raise league revenues. I suspect she will have a positive impact on the WNBA.
Graph of the week
This comes from Centralized industrialization of pork in Europe and America contributes to the global spread of Salmonella enterica (5/9/2204). It is graph (d) that got my attention. Pie charts aren’t great to begin with, and areas of circles are hard for humans to compare due to the area increasing as the square of the radius. Now add in that there is meaning as you read from the center to the outer part of the overall circle. It is a neat-looking graph, but I’m not sure it should be used to relay meaningful information. I suppose it is okay for a general idea of relationships.
College enrollment rates decreasing
From the BLS (5/10/2024)
COVID is associated with an overall drop in the percentage of students going to college, but not only hasn’t it recovered, it has gone down slightly overall. Men have recovered to pre-COVID, but they were dropping for years, and Asians have recovered.
From the gardens
Mayapple, paw paw flowers (I’ve been getting flowers from one of our paw paws, but still no fruit. The flowers are neat.), azalea, a tree whose name I don’t recall, and primrose.
The mosquitoes are coming
If you live in the north, you might be persuaded that climate change is worth fighting to keep the mosquito population down. Here is a series of maps with predicted habit increase of mosquitoes from Projections of Aedes and Culex mosquitoes across North and South America in response to climate change (May 2024). Personally, I like winter without bugs.
Data center report
I feel like I almost have to do this each week now. Tell me I’m wrong. Microsoft to invest $3.3bn in Wisconsin AI data center (5/9/2024). And also this: DigitalBridge CEO: Data centers will run out of power in two years (5/10/2024)
NCAA Suicides
The results of the study Suicide in National Collegiate Athletic Association athletes: a 20-year analysis (4/4/2024) surprised me, but I suppose it shouldn’t since athletes aren’t immune to overall trends.
Does this match Haidt’s hypotheses of 2012 and the smart phone increasing mental health problems? The curve fit for women does seem to have started an upward trend around 2012. The men’s curve is represented by a linear trend over the entire time period. This could use a better analysis because a look at the data suggests suicides were flat up until around 2016, and then it looks like a jump and less of an increasing trend. Still, if you follow Haidt’s hypothesis and break the data into 2011 and earlier and 2012 and later, there does seem to be a change.
The spinning CD
This is worth a listen. Who doesn’t like a unique version of Thunderstruck?
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