WSJ What’s News - Ferrari’s First EV, the $640,000 Luce, Fails to Impress

Episode Date: May 26, 2026

P.M. Edition for May 26. Ferrari’s first all-electric vehicle fails to rev up fans–and investors. WSJ reporter Ben Katz breaks down the fallout, and why Ferrari says it’s unfazed. Plus, British oil giant BP removes its chairman after bullying concerns. And it’s getting more expensive to build a house. WSJ commodities reporter Ryan Dezember explains how the conflict in Iran and AI frenzy is rippling through the housing sector. Imani Moise hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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British Energy Company BP removes its chairman after concerns about bullying. Plus, the housing market's latest problem, soaring costs from materials like copper. Data centers, the EV makers, the electrification build-out is colliding with home builders. And Ferrari launched its first electric car, the $640,000 luce, failed to impress investors. It's Tuesday, March 26. I'm Imani Moise for the Wall Street Journal, filling in for Alex O'Sula. This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today. We start today's show with leadership turmoil at BP.

The British energy giant has removed its chairman, Albert Manifold. WSJ has learned that the board was told he was verbally abusive to both junior and senior employees. The board also believes that he shared privileged information with people who weren't supposed to have it. Manifold didn't respond to request for comment. The company has now had three chief executives and three chairman since 2023. BP shares today dropped 4% in London. And in Spain, Jonathan Andick, the vice president of Fashion Chain Mango, is temporarily leaving his role.

Last week, a judge accused him of being criminally responsible for his billionaire father's fatal fall during a hiking trip near Barcelona. Andick said today that he was stepping aside to focus his energy on proving his innocence. Mango Chief Executive Tony Ruiz says he supports Jonathan Andick. He said that he expects that the traditional process will be resolved quickly and favorably. Turning to aviation, Delta Airlines is scrambling to hire more pilots. A jump in flight cancellations is jeopardizing its reputation for reliability. Data from aviation analytics firm, Sirium, showed Delta's domestic cancellation rate has been running above the industry average. And the airline's senior vice president of flight operations,

Ryan Gum said in an April memo that cancellations tied to pilot availability are happening at more than 10 times historical levels. Delta is now trying to shore up operations ahead of the busy summer travel season. Stock markets were mixed today, with gains in chip and memory stocks helping the NASDAQ close up 1.2%. The S&P also climbed, while the Dow slipped 0.2%. In the housing market, high prices for materials are making it more expensive for companies to build homes. WSJ reporter Ryan DeSember joins us now to discuss how the run-up in commodities is making an affordability crisis even worse. So Ryan, we've been feeling the burn of inflation

for a while now, but the latest data is pretty staggering. In your story, one economist says that prices for materials using homes like copper and wood rose more in the first four months of 2026 than they did over the entire previous three years combined. So how's that impacting the housing market? You know, it takes a while for this stuff to flow through, But what we're seeing now is some of the builder's biggest cost after the land and the construction labor are the materials, lumber, copper. The average American home has more than 400 pounds of copper. You know, at record prices for copper, that adds up. Aluminum is nearing record prices.

You also, of course, have the fuel cost. Diesel's up roughly 50% from before the war started. And so you have a lot of that being passed on. So it's all adding up and really adding to the price tag for building. a home. Does that mean that the price tag for home buyers is also going to go up? Pulte, one of the big home builders, talked about this on their last earnings call where, you know, they're very careful to say the cost of building a home is going up. They haven't necessarily committed to passing all that on. For the past really two years or so with high interest rates,

we've had builders giving a lot of concessions to buyers to get home sold and keep their crews moving and building. We could see more of that. So it's sort of to be determined on whether that will balloon the price tag that homebuyers pay later this year, or if builders will absorb some of that. The war and tariffs have pushed prices for some materials higher, but also the AI boom. Can you connect the dots between AI and housing? Well, it's a copper wire, basically. Data centers consume a huge amount of copper, and there's only so much copper in a given year that's produced. You also have a big disruption going on right now.

The world's second largest mine, it's in Indonesia. There was a fatal mudslide last year. While the mine has been restarted on time, the full output will take longer because of some additional problems. So that's a big chunk of copper that the world won't have. So that's an example of a building product where data centers, the EV makers, the electrification build out is colliding with home builders. That was W.S.J. Reporter, Ryan DeSember. Thanks, Ryan. Thank you.

Turning to the war, Iran is staying at the negotiating table with the U.S. despite fresh military clashes. Tehran is pushing for access to frozen assets to ease pressure on its battered economy and to access world oil markets. Iranian officials and Arab mediators say the country is trying to strike a delicate balance, securing economic relief without giving President Trump a clear diplomatic win. A White House official says President Trump has scheduled a cabinet. meeting at Camp David tomorrow. The agenda will include the economy and an anti-fraud task force as well as foreign policy. Coming up, weight loss drugs are blowing holes in city budgets across the country. Plus, the latest reality TV star hoping to turn ratings into votes.

That's after the break. Some of the best lessons don't come from a classroom. They come from experience. On The Power of Advice, a new podcast series. from Capital Group, you'll hear from CEOs, investors, and founders about how they built careers, took risks, and reinvented themselves. If you're starting your own journey, this is the kind of advice you won't want to miss. Available wherever you get your podcast.

Published by Capital Client Group, Inc. Breakthrough weight loss drugs are helping people drop pounds across the country. But at what cost? Public employers, that is, cities and towns, from New York to Texas, say GLP1 medications like Ozzympic and Wigovi are putting enormous pressure on already stretched budgets, squeezing money for local needs like roads and schools. WSJ reporter Owen Tucker Smith spoke with officials in Belchertown, Massachusetts, where this issue recently came to a head. Beltertown gets this health care through this kind of regional trust where a lot of towns pooled together their resources,

but their health care costs were going out of control. And they realized that a big part of it was the surging cost of GLP-1s. And it got so bad that the trust reserves were starting to run out. And last year, they sent out these notices to towns like Beltertown telling them this is unsustainable and we're needing everyone to basically chip it in the middle of the year. So they imposed a mid-year rate increase, which crippled a lot of these town's finances. Belchertown got hit with roughly $900,000 of expenses. And this is a town of just $15,000. So $900,000 is a lot of money for them to find and they're already stretched thin budget. Owen says when health care costs jump this fast, there are consequences for the towns. You often have to dip into your reserves,

and so it's harder for a city to say, let's, you know, do that big bridge repair that we've been talking about, or let's increase hiring. So even if you personally aren't using GLP-1s, you might feel the impact if you have a child in the school district and they're going to in some way feel the impact of these budget cuts. In many cases, these towns are starting to cut coverage or say you can only use these drugs and get them covered by us if you are diabetic, not just for weight loss. While the direct-to-consumer prices can be lower than they were once, they, as employers, and their health insurance plans are still paying these higher prices. But they are optimistic that as these prices come down, A, it'll be less of a burden on a city, but B, if they do cut

coverage, their employees might be more able to access the drugs on their own. As you heard this morning, voters in Texas are headed to the polls today. There's a closely watched Republican Senate runoff between incumbent Senator John Cornyn and Attorney General Ken Paxton, who won Trump's endorsement. The winner will face Democrat James Telerico in November. And WSJ reporter Elizabeth Vendell says the race is giving Republicans some headaches. It is seen as significant that Texas is even being viewed as somewhat in play this year. Democrats have not won a statewide seat in Texas since 1994. So the prospect of Paxton as a nominee has been concerning to a lot of national Republican groups

because he has a history of past controversies. And so it's possible he could make them more vulnerable in Texas or they could just have to spend a heck of a lot of money for him to win, which could affect how they are able to defend other states. Polls close tonight at 7 p.m. Texas time. Go to whishj.com for results and more analysis. And now we look at California, where a former reality TV star, Spencer Pratt,

known as the guy everyone loved to hate on the hills, is shaking up the Los Angeles mayor's race. Since losing his home in last year's Palisades Fire, Pratt has launched an attention-grabbing campaign focused on issues like homelessness, public safety, and frustration with current city leadership. Pratt, a Republican, is running a flood-the-zone campaign heavy on social media moments.

So, I know about how my life got to turn upside down and I had to take a minute to run for mayor. I'll tell you how I became the prince of a town called Bel Air. And podcast appearances, including the Joe Rogan experience. So if you're just like a young, 20-year-old looking around, you're like, oh my God, there's zombies everywhere, rents so much, all the restaurants are closing. This system doesn't work. But what they're not looking at is who's breaking the system that did work, the one that I grew

The city hasn't elected a Republican mayor in nearly three decades. And today, fewer than 15% of Los Angeles city voters are registered Republicans. The current mayor, Karen Bass, is running for re-election. The latest polling shows she's leading the field. Pratt and city council member Nithia Rahman are battling for second place ahead of next week's primary. The top two finishers will advance to a November election if no candidate wins a majority of votes. And finally, are ultra-wealthy car buyers ready to trade horse? power for kilowatts, Ferrari's first all-electric vehicle, the luce, is a $640,000 car designed

with former Apple designer Johnny Ive. And it sparked an uproar. Ferrari shares tumbled 8% today, wiping out more than $5 billion from the market cap of Europe's most valuable automaker. W.HJ reporter Ben Katz explains. A lot of that slump has really been driven by the backlash. We've seen a lot of, you know, the trolling that you might expect to see online, but we've also had conversations with owners, seen some posts from people who are collectors, who are really skeptical

about specifically the exterior design of this Ferrari. Ferrari is saying, you know what, we did an SUV. We once said we'd never do an SUV. That also, you know, was criticized and it ends up being one of their best selling vehicles. They see a similar opportunity. An electric car, something they said 15 years ago they would never do. It's being slown from kind of all sides. They're saying, once that all calms down, we think we've got a winner on our house. hands. But of course the initial reaction I think is kind of spooked in vests a little bit, thinking, you know what, maybe this isn't the Ferrari of old, maybe there's something new here that we aren't quite aligned with. Ferrari stands for sports cars that you can hear before

you actually see them. But Ferrari's new UV doesn't have a combustion engine to rev. Ferrari describes this car as having an external amplification system, which it describes as kind of akin to an electric guitar. They don't want to manufacture the sound of a combustion engine, you know, when it doesn't have a combustion engine, but it wants people to be able to hear the electric motorist at work. And that's what's news for this Tuesday afternoon. Today's show was produced by Anthony Bansy, with supervising producer Tali Arbel. I'm Imani Moise for the Wall Street Journal. We'll be back with the new show tomorrow morning. Thanks for listening. The Madamy Holmes Bike for Brain Health

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