Thrown for a Hyperloop

Plus: Welcome to the (shorter) working week ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

February 22, 2023

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TOGETHER WITH

Good morning.

The war over return-to-office policies continues. This week’s battleground: Amazon, where CEO Andy Jassy last week demanded employees physically report for duty thrice weekly starting May 1, after making plain in October 2021 that in-person work requirements will be left up to individual managers and their teams. By Tuesday morning, roughly 14,000 employees joined a Slack channel railing against the decision, CNBC reports.

Jassy made the decision after discussions with Amazon’s senior leaders, which may or may not have taken place on Zoom.

Morning Brief

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The price of polluting is going up in Europe.

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Hyperloop looks like a pipe dream.

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Long weekends 4ever.

Environment

EU Carbon Prices Hit a Record High at €100 per Tonne

Give a hoot! And 100 euros.

The price of carbon credits that European Union companies are required to buy in exchange for releasing pollutants hit a record €101 per ton of carbon dioxide Tuesday.

The Cost of Going Green

The EU launched its Emissions Trading System in 2005 as a way to bill industries like energy, industrial manufacturing, and aviation that are responsible for large amounts of pollution. In turn, credits are supposed to promote and fund renewable energies and clean manufacturing. As recently as 2018, a carbon credit was worth less than €10 per ton, but in a few short years it has now jumped nearly 1,000%.

Vladamir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has created tension with pretty much all of the western world, and Russia has since cut off much of its gas supply to most of Europe. As a result, the coal industry has been given new life thanks to the EU increasing its power generation from the black sedimentary rock by 7%. But coal is the dirtiest way to produce energy, releasing roughly twice as much carbon as burning gas, so the need to buy more credits has skyrocketed:

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In addition to carbon credit prices going up, EU lawmakers are also trying to make the ETS tougher for polluters to operate under. Some sectors like the airline industry have been given carbon credits at no cost to remain competitive internationally, but now legislators want to cut back on freebies and limit the number of credits businesses can buy.

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A 2022 report from the UN said upping the cost of carbon credits to at least $100 could reduce greenhouse gas emissions to at least half the 2019 level by 2030.

Of course, not everyone is down with the green initiative and price hikes. Last year, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez proposed a cap on the price of carbon, and Jori Ringman, director-general of the Confederation of European Paper Industries, told the Financial Times the price jumps “came as a surprise to many, and will affect the competitiveness of the EU’s manufacturing sector.”

Let Me Out, Please: Speaking of greener pastures, to quell fears of downsizing and prepare 22,000 employees for the shift to EVs, Volkswagen is making workers participate in what has usually been relegated to a cringey off-the-clock office outing: escape rooms. Bloomberg reported VW employees will solve electricity and battery-themed riddles, moving from the dawn of the battery in the 1800s to present day and finally the future.

-Griffin Kelly

Transportation

Hyperloop Startups are Dying a Quiet Death

(Photo Credit: Kevin Krejci/Flickr)

Hyperloop bullet trains are firing blanks.

This year marks a decade since a crop of companies hopped on the hyperloop, and they haven’t traveled very far. A hyperloop startup called Hyperloop Transportation Technologies that wanted to go public via a merger with a SPAC backed by none other than Shaquille O’Neal has recently shelved the idea, casting a pall over the technology’s future.

More of a Shelbyville Idea…

The public appetite for hyperloop projects was whetted in 2013 when Elon Musk announced his interest in building one via his side venture The Boring Company. The basic idea behind a hyperloop is you build a tunnel engineered to contain a partial vacuum and inside that tunnel are pods that hover magnetically above rails. With air resistance greatly reduced, these pods will zoom along the tunnel at phenomenal speeds.

Sounds simple enough, right? Certainly, it was attractive enough for Virgin to build its own prototype. Unfortunately, as you may have already guessed, there are a couple of problems:

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Vacuum tubes present unique (and potentially gruesome) safety concerns — vacuums are hard to maintain over long distances and if a tube is compromised… let’s just say it’s not pretty.

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Hyperloop systems also typically only take a maximum of a few dozen passengers per pod, which is not super scalable for mass transit systems.

Hyperloop TT’s CMO wrote in an email after the company abandoned its SPAC merger that its goal is to “aggressively move forward towards commercialization,” according to Bloomberg. Craig Hodgetts, a retired architecture professor who worked with Hyperloop TT gave a more tempered view of how Sisyphean the hyperloop dream has been. “We spent a lot of time convincing ourselves that all the parameters of the project were within grasp, that it was not a fantasy,” he told Bloomberg.

Ghosted Towns: The Wall Street Journal reported in December that The Boring Company has deserted numerous pitches it made to cities including Chicago and Los Angeles. It did build a tunnel in Las Vegas — but that’s literally all it is. Musk originally said Tesla cars would zip around the tunnel at over 100 mph on tracks. What actually exists is a tunnel where drivers ferry passengers around in Teslas at around 30 mph. The future really is now.

– Isobel Asher Hamilton

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Workplace

UK Study Participants Overwhelmingly Prefer to Work Less

They may escape the la paresse reputation of their frenemies in France, but make no mistake: the Brits don’t exactly love to work either.

Case in point: the world’s largest-ever four-day-work week trial conducted in the UK has concluded that the vast majority of trial subjects favored a permanent long weekend. Then again, between tea breaks, dipping out early to meet mates at the pub, and mourning dead monarchs, were Brits even working a full 40 hours to begin with?

Laissez Faire or Lazy Faire?

While employees favoring a short work-week isn’t shocking, the study also showed that companies — as in, company leaders — seemed to like the 100-80-100 tradeoff, too (that’s 100% of the salary, for 80% of the time commitment, while maintaining 100% of the output). Of the 61 British businesses that participated in the six-month study, ranging from healthcare to construction to retail, 56 are deciding to continue with the practice.

And it’s easy to see why: revenue effectively remained unchanged on average (actually increasing 1.4%), staff departures fell by 57%, and nearly 3 in 4 workers reported greater satisfaction with their time. It’s far from the only data point showing where work-life may be heading:

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Following a successful 18-month pilot among its New Zealand employees, Unilever in November expanded its 100-80-100 trial to its employees in Australia. In 2021, the Spanish government began paying companies to trial the four-day workweek.

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Four Day Week Global, the organization behind the UK study, has found similar results in previous tests across the US and Canada, with more trials now planned for Brazil. Australia, and elsewhere.

The French Dispatch: Believe it or not, the French aren’t just behind on the 4-day trend — they’re some of the world’s leading workaholics. Or, at least, their executives are. A recent survey from health insurer Bupa Global found French business leaders are the world’s top “binge workers.” Then again, they may just be covering for their more relaxed underlings.

– Brian Boyle

Extra Upside

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NFTs are not as attractive as they once were. Go figure.

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A sci-fi magazine flooded by AI-written stories will no longer accept submissions.

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Just For Fun

Hats off to this guy.

Don’t slow down.

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