Morning Brew Daily - Tesla Investor Day Underwhelms, TikTok Time Limit, Tequila & High Noons?

Episode Date: March 2, 2023

Episode 8: Neal and Toby discuss why Elon's Master plan fell flat at Investor Day. They'll examine TikTok's new time limit for teens and why Eli Lilly is slashing insulin prices. Neal tells us why stick-shift is back and in the canned cocktail world - a merging of powers; Tequila and High Noons. Learn more about our sponsor, Huel: https://huel.com/dailyshow Listen Here: https://www.mbdailyshow.com/ Watch Here: https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow Sources: Tesla Investor Day Underwhelms: https://www.morningbrew.com/daily/stories/2023/03/01/elon-musk-master-plan-tesla TikTok Teen Time Limit: https://www.morningbrew.com/daily/stories/tiktok-screen-time-limit-teens Eli Lily Cuts Insulin Prices: https://www.morningbrew.com/daily/stories/eli-lilly-gives-into-insulin-price-cut-pressure High Noons take on Tequila: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/tequila-lovers-rejoice-high-noons-sun-will-shine-even-brighter-with-the-release-of-high-noon-tequila-seltzer-301758804.html Reflecting Sunlight Could Curb Global Warming: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/27/sunlight-reflection-solar-geoengineering-must-be-studied-scientists.html   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Good morning for daily show. I am Neil Prime. And I'm Toby Howell. And Neil, we got a special show ahead of us today. But first, I just want to call out that a lot of people noticed our brand new mugs that we kind of debuted on the show yesterday. So I decided to give one away on Twitter. If you want to get involved in that giveaway, follow us at MB Daily Show. And the way I structured it was basically, I said, whoever has the best reply to this tweet wins a mug.

So there's been a lot of funny mug puns. A lot of some people making fun of our mugs logo, which, will not get you a mug. And then one person said, go birds. So they might be in the lead right now. For me, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So go get a mug at MB Daily Show if you're interested in, yeah, drinking out of some MB swag.

Let's talk about today's show. Yesterday was really newsy. There was a lot of really interesting stuff that happened. So we are going to talk about, among other things, time limits on TikTok for teens, Eli Lilly, finally slashing the price of its insulin products, and a last gasp chance to save the Earth from climate annihilation. Should probably start with that one, but we're actually ending. I can't believe we're ending the show.

I know, it's like... But I'm excited. Okay, we are going to start in Tejas because Elon Musk and Tesla held their Investor Day yesterday, which was really highly anticipated. And, yeah, so he unveiled what he calls his Master Plan 3. Meanwhile, he hasn't fulfilled much of his master plan. Master Plan Duh, which was unveiled in 2016. Yeah.

I remember Master Plan 1, he actually executed on very well. Master Plan D, there's still some outstanding questions. But yeah, take us through what was involved in Master Plan 3. Well, there wasn't many specifics, but the overarching theme is to create a sustainable energy earth. And a lack of specifics was really the theme of yesterday's presentation. Right. And a lot of investors were a little disappointed coming away from this investor day. It was over three hours long, but again, not a lot of specifics.

The one thing they were really looking for was if they were going to unveil their supposed affordable Tesla, affordable electric vehicle, that never came out. It was alluded to. It was hinted at, but we didn't see any specifics around that. Right. I think they said we'll have a separate product event for those vehicles. Did they show a slide with a car with something draped over it? That's a classic move.

It's a classic. Yeah. I mean, again, it's a Tesla day. there's tons of theatrics. One of the themes that we both noted, though, was it looked like Tesla was kind of consciously saying that we are not just Elon. So they paraded out a ton of executives from different parts of the business, almost as a subtle way or not so subtle way of saying, hey, we realize Elon is kind of stretched a little thin right now. Tesla is all right. We have enough adults in the room. We have a deep bench. Yeah, exactly. There's a deep bench, a great

six man in the year. Yeah, to just show that Tesla is still on a good spot. For sure. And it was the focus on Elon Musk as the sole leadership guy that was really hurt their stock last year when he was focused on buying Twitter, not really focused on Tesla. And last year, I think it stock cratered more like 65%. And Elon was not the richest person in the world anymore, which is obviously just a massive deal that we all need to care about. But its stock has rallied a ton this year. It's added more than $300 billion in the first two months of the year, and it is now, Elon Musk is now, once again, the world's richest person. Thank goodness. I can sleep at night again. Yeah. So, yeah, we're, like, Tesla itself seems to be

doing really well. Right. It's smashing the competition. Rivian and Lucid, some rivals are, you know, flailing. So, you know, I think Tesla is in a really good spot to ramp up stuff. It's in a really high-growth industry. Yeah. One of the things that stood out to me from the Investor Day is that Tesla wants to produce 20 million EVs by the year 2030, that is up from, they've currently in their lifetime produced just 4 million vehicles. So that is a massive, massive increase in production. First of all, I do think that efficiency is the real takeaway that we can take from this investor day, is that they really, really want to scale up their factories, scale up their

battery manufacturing especially so they can hit that target. I think they might be able to do it, because here's a couple of stats that they cited in the event. It took Tesla 12 years to build its first million cars, and it took just four months to build its latest million. So if you take that growth curve, we could see 20 million cars by 2030. It'll be all about execution, and perhaps the biggest announcement on that note is that they're going to open a factory in Monterey, Mexico, which was confirmed by the president of Mexico this week.

Yeah. I'm excited. I'm excited for Mexico. I'm excited for Tesla. And congrats, Elon, on recapturing your title as richest in the world. Okay, now I'm going to take us to the world of social media, as I often do. The headline news is TikTok has set a new default screen limit for teen users. So anyone who's scrolled TikTok long enough has no doubt run into the hold up. You've been scrolling way too long guy. And if you haven't seen that person, you have not. You have really healthy social social immediate habits. It comes up if you've gone over like two and a half hours or something,

and TikTok will send you a video in your feed saying like, stop scrolling, basically. I feel so good about myself right now. I'm actually really jealous of you because I've seen it. It's always at like 1 a.m. and you're like, oh, no, this is bad. But so TikTok is focusing on teens with this. If you're under 18, they will now automatically have a 60-minute daily screen time limit. And basically what that looks like is it pops up, kind of like the Netflix, are you still watching thing, where you have to manually click, enter a passcode, actually, to say, yes, I'm still watching. So it's just a little triggered to say, okay, take a step back.

I've been scrolling TikTok for too long. So, yeah, Neil, what do you think about this, like manual? I mean, it seems like it's a play to earn goodwill with parents and with the U.S. government at a time when a lot of people are really worried about, you know, teen mental health. There's been a lot new reports recently that come out early this year that show just a really alarming rise in, you know, teen mental health, you know, getting so much worse. So it seems like TikTok wants to help alleviate that. We don't know whether it's social media. That's the big question.

People are like, why is this happening? And some folks are like, this is the only thing that's changed is the phones. So TikTok seems to be like wanting to say, look, whatever's happening, it's not going to be us because we are doing this. Right. I do think it's a good PR move. I also just think it is good for users, because, yeah, you can get lost in a TikTok rabbit hole. And I'm actually really bullish on users under 13 have a 60-minute daily limit, and then their parents or guardians have to come over and enter the passcode for them to watch another 30 minutes. That is probably a good thing. You probably shouldn't be spending over an hour and a half if you're under 13. And this is actually, people are going to run into this limit. we have the stats in front of us, TikTok users spend an average of 95 minutes per day on the platform. So that's not all continuous, but people are spending hours of time on TikTok. So you're going to see that limit. I have a couple questions for you.

Do you think 60 minutes is the right number and how do you even pick that number? And, you know, will this work? Do you think that a barrier, like entering a passcode is actually going to make people say, you know what, maybe I should put away the phone? Honestly, I think I'm going to answer the second party question. I don't think so because I actually have a limit usage on some of my apps, and it worked in the beginning, but then it's so easy to just click-le-click away from it. So I don't actually think it's going to do that much, but again, it's lip service for TikTok to say.

Just real quickly before we move on for TikTok, there is some macro-governmental stuff going on. Right now there's a bill kind of making its way through Congress. that could reintroduce a ban on TikTok, like a wholesale ban. It's probably unlikely, but there is still movement on this front that we've been seeing for the last two and a half writers. And then also, officials in EU and Canada aren't allowed to have TikTok on their phones, government officials, and then the U.S. has 30 days to delete it from their devices.

So there is still this anti-Tick-Ticot sentiment bubbling in the highest levels of government. For sure. It doesn't seem like that's related to people. spending too much time on it, but more Chinese interference and national security concerns. Or maybe the government officials are just as a big thing. I know productivity has to come down. All right, well, I leave this conversation feeling really good about my social media habits. I've never seen that dude. Good.

Let's talk about Eli Lilly, the two first names company. They're a drug maker, and the big news is that they finally are cutting their list prices for their most popular insulin products by 75% taking a whack to it, and capping out-of-pocket costs for $35 a month. And this is a super hot-button issue because insulin prices have skyrocketed. Over the past three decades, Lilly has raised its list price for the most widely used insulin drug by more than 1,000%. And this has prompted outcry and calls for regulation. So this has been a long time coming. Right. No, absolutely one of the more hot-button issues you can have in modern discourse today.

because, one, so many people have diabetes in the U.S. I think the last count is around 37 million people, which is about one in 10 Americans, have some form of diabetes. So, one, it affects tons of people. And then, two, it sparks this question about overbearing government because in the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden pushed for, and his state of union pushed for this $35 cap. And a lot of people kind of pushed back and said,

no, we should not cap like free enterprise. This is pretty much anti-American in certain ways. And so now you have these two major, major things colliding. But Eli Lilly kind of bit the bull and said, like, yes, we are doing it. We are capping our prices. So it is interesting to see a drug company limit their profits in order to potentially help consumers. Yeah. I'm a little skeptical of that.

I mean, first of all, Biden already has capped for Medicaid. For $35. Yes. But this seems sort of like they saw the writing on the wall thing with regulation, and they're just trying to get ahead of it and force their competitors. I like to call it the Robin Hood effect because remember when Robin Hood dropped all trading fees to zero? And then literally everyone else across the industry had to do it. But there's a lot of competition that we've seen.

Like Mark Cuban is coming out with an insulin. Through his cost plus drug company, California is making its own insulin. So there is like heated competition in this space. and I don't think, Eli Lilly thinks it can get way with charging. Way more than... Way more. Just like this one stat I have to share because it really stands out to me about how much this costs.

So 14% of people, this is a Yale study, 14% of people who use insulin say they spend 40% of their income post-food and housing on the drug. So that is a crazy, crazy stat. And it really does go to show you how much of an impact this drug. has on people's lives because you literally can't live without it. For sure. It is life-saving. So Biden kind of took a victory lap yesterday and said, look, every other drug maker is going

to do this, too, thanks to Eli Lilly setting the pace. So we will see what happens there. Yeah. Okay. Before we get into the next story, we're going to take a quick break. It's time to refresh your yard during spring backyard days at the Home Depot. Get low prices guaranteed on propane grills starting at $179, like the next grill three burner or get $50 off the select Weber Spirit Grill and bring big flavor to your backyard.

Then set the scene with Hampton Bay string lights that bring it all together. Shop spring backyard days for seven days at the Home Depot. Now through May 6th. Exclusion supplies to homedipo.com slash price match for details. Okay, let's get into Neals and Numbers, which has been called by some, the world's best podcast segment. It was me. I called it out.

Because I love these. I don't know these numbers before you say them, so I'm excited to learn something. Basically, the gist is that I read a lot of news and I see a lot of interesting stats, and I just compile them away for this segment in which I tell Toby who's never heard of them before and get his take. And also all of you who may not have seen them before, if you have, congrats. So the first one is that work from home is a uniquely American phenomenon. Super interesting.

So this Wall Street Journal article showed that U.S. office occupancy is about 40 to 60% of pre-pandemic levels. But in Europe and the Middle East, it's 70 to 90%. And in Asia, it's 80 to 110%. Which means in some Asian cities, there are more people going to work after the pandemic than before it. Oh, interesting. Okay. So I want you to put on your economist geographer hat and kind of like give your best hypothesis as to why there's way more work from home in America than the rest of the world. I mean, two things come to mind is one.

This isn't necessarily based on any economy data, but Americans are. like individualistic. So it's cultural. It's a cultural thing where if you say you can decide, of course, they're going to like exercise the right to decide. So that was the first thing I kind of. But then... Hard to prove.

Potentially, it's the industries and sectors that dominate American work life and that a lot of them don't need to be done in person. So we have a lot of remote, like, white collar and just work from a laptop. So those are the first things. Okay. Very brave guesses. I don't know if there is like a higher share of white-collar workers in U.S. than Western Europe or something like that. Is there a correct answer to you?

Well, they put forth three guesses or hypotheses in the article. One is that our homes are bigger. Oh, interesting. Which is just we, you know, there's more real estate. We like prefer bigger homes. Our commutes are longer. Okay. Because we rely on the car and we don't have great public transit to say the least.

And then the third one is that we have a tighter labor market. So employees have greater leverage over their work. return-to-work policies. Dang, I wish I'd come on with any of those three. You were on the spot, and you did pretty good. I'm impressed. Let's talk about my next number, which is that Gen Z and millennials are saving the stick shift in cars.

Okay. What? This is not going to be a big number. There has been a rebound in manual cars. So they accounted for 1.7% of new vehicle sales in 2023, up from 1.2% last year and 0.9% in 2021. So this isn't like a banana-shaped graph north, but there has been a rebound. And some people say it is kind of like the vinyl effect.

Right, right. I was literally about to say that, like records. Oh, I should have let you. Yeah. I think it's the meme of reject modernity and embrace tradition. There probably is some nostalgia. Neil, can you drive a stick shift? No.

Either can I? I feel like you're the kind of guy who could, though. I know. I've tried. Your dad shouldn't tell you. I feel like your dad would tie. My mom knows how to drive stick shift, and she just tried. My friend had an old truck called, we called it Masey, and it was the worst truck ever.

And I spent hours trying to do it. I'm just not good at it. You could, though. You can do anything you set your mind to you. Me, on the other hand. I'm never going to. I'm waiting for driverless cars. The final meal's number here is that the average student loan debt has increased more than 2,800% since the Supreme Court Justice graduated college.

Oh, my gosh. So, obviously, you have to factor in inflation. We're not dumb here. But that's still a rise of 500%. Oh, my God. The average debt went from $1,070 in 1970 to 31, over $31,000 in 2021. And the reason I'm bringing this up, or this is even a report, is that Supreme Court is currently deciding the fate of President Biden's student loan program.

Every time I see a number like that, it is crazy. I mean, obviously, inflation is a factor, but, yeah, higher education, man. Totally running out of control. It's almost like- I'm sending my kids to freaking YouTube school. Khan Academy, Mr. Beast. You'll learn more from YouTube and Twitter than you will from any university. We do not endorse that.

Okay, Neil, thank you for those numbers. I am going to impress all my friends with them who don't listen to this podcast already. Shame on them. So, yeah, thank you for those. I'm going to take us now to the kind of liquor. and a seltzer market. High Noon, which is the top-selling canned cocktail, is kind of spreading its wings beyond vodka.

This week, it released its first ever tequila seltzer. It hit shelves yesterday, and it will be sold in an eight-pack containing four flavors, lime, grapefruit, passion fruit, and strawberry. Neil, are you excited for Nooners to kind of push into the tequila market? This is getting me excited for summer. I know. That green color.

It does look very summery. Yeah. It looks really summery. So I'm just excited to be on a boat, which I never am, but I'm excited to be on a boat drinking these. Yeah. Yeah, so it's super interesting to see that high noon has really taken off at a time when Seltzer has sort of stabilized or plateaued. Do you mind? You're sort of an expert in this space.

Do you mind walking us through sort of this? This is a little murky what's going on. Like, what's the difference between High No-Noon, Seltzer, vodka, tequila, and the spike seltzer is that we all, you know, no laws, white claws kind of thing? Yeah. So High Noon is kind of the big player in the space now. Sales rose nearly 100%. So it's the top-selling spirit-based canned cocktail. And that part, spirit-based is important because seltzers, like Trulley and White Claw, are malt-based. So if we are, if we are looking, if we want to break down the landscape, hard-seltzers encompasses everything from spirits to malt. but then it divides into malt-based and then spirit-based. All right. So, but actually, canned drinks are exploding right now, and it's not just true.

I mean, High Noon is definitely leading the charge, but they were the fastest-growing spirits category of any last year, even more than, you know, Mezcal or whatever. Yeah. Or espresso martinis. They grew 42% year-over-year. So this is a booming category. But we should talk about the collapse, not really collapse,

but the plateauing of hard-celter at 2019. I don't know if you remember that summer. Everybody came out with that hard and salter. That was my summer of last spring of college. So I remember the No Laws, White Clause era for sure. So there was a lot, there's a lot of discussion about what happened to seltzers because I see people drinking seltzers all the time. I'm like, what the hell is going on?

So it turns out that truly is the anchor. Right. Like, truly Boston Beer Company's hard seltzer is absolutely being a huge drag because apparently, I don't think I've had it, but it tastes terrible. Yeah, I don't know. It really rose in prominence, and then I think everyone kind of realized, wait a second, this isn't very good. Yeah. And just kind of fell off a cliff.

I think it fell 24% last year in sales. So it is kind of the black sheep on the seltzer market, even though at large, the seltzer market is still doing pretty much. I think it'll be fine. This reminds me of Froyo 15 years ago when there was all this Froyo. Like, every block had a Froyo place. We don't need every Froyo block, a Froyo place, every block. We need one every 10 blocks. Speak for yourself, you know.

Some of the Frolio lovers. Really? Well, I'm just saying the market got way oversaturated, and now I think there's a little bit of a shakeout. And I think Seltzer, like, White Claw will be fine. High noon will be fine. Yeah. So I'm just- Keep a lookout for the MBD Seltzer dropping this. Yes.

Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Finally, we've arrived at climate annihilation. Okay. This is really wild, actually. and I think you watched a movie. You may have seen a movie about this very thing. But things have gone so bad with climate change

that we may need to start spewing the atmosphere with particles that reflect the sun. This is not me saying it, though I would probably have a similar idea, to be honest, with more than 60 scientists led by former NASA climate researcher James Hansen, who has credibility because he warned about global warming in 1980, said that we should at least look at what's called solar geoengineering, which means we send planes up to the atmosphere. They unload sulfur all over the atmosphere to block the sun,

and that basically cools the Earth, and we don't even have to cut any greenhouse gas emissions from it. I know. This group of scientists, it was really funny to read their paper because they were kind of both promoting this and hedging their bets, saying, like, listen, this is not option one. Like, option one is reducing greenhouse gas emissions, But option two, maybe if we need it, here are some of the ways we could do it.

And yeah, so stratospheric aerosol injection, which is, yeah, putting sulfur in the atmosphere to reflect sunlight. There's marine cloud brightening, which involves putting sea salt aerosols into low-hanging marine clouds. So that's a little lower in the atmosphere. And then there's Cirrus cloud thinning, which involves putting aerosols into serious clouds to reduce the amount of infrared radiation that the Earth retains. This sounds like putting the ingredients of an impossible burger into the earth. The clouds, yeah. So there is a lot of most, there are more scientists who say that we should consider these landmines and bio-weapons. Like, don't even touch it because we don't know the second order effects.

But I think this group of scientists is saying, look, things are going to get so bad that some government somewhere is going to start doing this. So we have to actually be prepared. Like some rogue state is like, you know, North Korea is going to start doing this. and we have to be prepared. Anyway, I would love to talk about that a zillion times longer, but that's all the time we have for today. We want to be mindful of your time. Great show, Toby.

We want to hear from you, our viewers, and listeners. So make sure to email us at Morning Brew Daily at Morningbrew.com and follow us on Twitter and do all that good stuff. A few shout-outs to our amazing crew in the back. Shows producer and editor is Emily Milliron. Shows technical director is Justin Orlando. Our supervising producer is Bryce Belloff, Our audio ambassador is Dan Bousa,

hair and makeup, moved to Canada. Devin Emery is our chief content officer. Our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow. Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment destination for today's superstars.

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