A report out on Wednesday suggested that EV adoption isn’t moving fast enough to reach net-zero road emissions by 2050.
What does this mean?
Environmental success stories are few and far between, but EVs are definitely one of them: the clean machines already on the world’s roads are saving a collective 1.5 million barrels of oil a day – a figure that’s projected to hit 2.5 million by 2025. In fact, sales of EVs are on track to more than triple to 21 million by 2025, compared to the 14 million forecast just a year ago. So sleep easy: this climate change thing is all sorted.
Um, not according to analysts at BloombergNEF, who think more needs to be done to reach carbon-neutral road emissions. It turns out that replacing the 1.2 billion gas-fueled vehicles on the world’s roads is a big ask, even if sales of new ones have peaked. As for how to speed things up, BloombergNEF’s analysts are recommending a hard-stop on sales of new gas-guzzlers by 2035, more emphasis on public transport, and extra investment in charging stations.
Why should I care?
The bigger picture: This is an “us” problem.
The report also flagged the growing gap in EV adoption, with the proportion of EV sales in wealthy economies expected to hit 85% by 2040 compared to emerging economies’ 54%. That’s not okay if we want any chance of reaching net-zero, and some analysts think richer governments will need to offer financial support to narrow the gap.
Zooming out: Great Scott!
Even DeLorean announced plans this week to launch its own EV in 2024, though it admitted that the so-called Alpha5 won’t even be street legal at first. Presumably they only need it to get to 88 miles per hour in a mall car park so they can go back to 1981 – the year before its founder was charged with conspiring to smuggle drugs and DeLorean went bankrupt.
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Salesforce Continued Its Growth Streak To Investors' Delight
Salesforce reported better-than-expected quarterly results earlier this week, and investors sent the cloud computing giant’s shares up 8%.
What does this mean?
Salesforce’s cloud products are still going down well with businesses that are finessing their hybrid working models. So well, in fact, that the provider seems to have shrugged off the wider slowdown that’s hobbled its tech rivals: it made 55% more in subscription revenue from its platforms division last quarter than the same time last year, making it the company’s fastest-growing segment. One of those platforms was Slack, which continues to outperform: the number of customers who spent more than $100,000 on the messaging software grew by more than 40% for the fourth quarter in a row. All told, Salesforce’s total revenue climbed by a better-than-expected 24% – sustaining the 20%-or-more growth streak it’s been on since at least 2016.
Source: Salesforce
Why should I care?
The bigger picture: The future is a mishmash.
Salesforce is feeling good about its chances for the rest of the year too: the company reported that the value of deals customers have signed but not yet closed was up 21% last quarter. That suggests there’s more revenue set to come in going forward. There are concerns, mind you: Salesforce said it’s expecting to make $600 million less in revenue this year than it would do if it weren’t for rising interest rates and a strong US dollar, which make its international revenue worth less when converted back to its home currency.
Source: Google Finance
Zooming out: The pursuit of HP-ness.
This new business landscape is benefiting HP too: the PC-maker’s own quarterly results came in better than expected on Tuesday, despite a dropoff in consumer sales as shoppers cut down on nice-to-haves. HP’s commercial segment now represents 65% of its business, and it’s expecting its recent acquisition of remote-working specialist Poly – due to be completed at the end of the year – to give it another boost.
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