I wasn’t exaggerating when I said that Tesla made “gigacasting” the word of the year in the automotive industry. Automakers are going crazy for gigacasting with a real if-you-can’t-beat-them-join-them attitude about the production and prototyping technique pioneered by Tesla. Or, in GM’s case, there’s a real if-you-can’t-beat-them-buy-them approach to a key enabler of Tesla’s gigacasting approach.
Whilst on the topic of General Motors, perhaps we should talk about Berkshire Hathaway dumping its position in the automaker. Is this about GM or is this about BH? It’s worth exploring. Also worth exploring are semi-solid state batteries.
And, finally, the IIHS is back in the news this week with information on how our big, bulky cars are becoming more fatal for pedestrians.
I’m writing this from the bottom of a bunk bed, which is actually quite pleasant. Jason is in the top bunk, he enjoys it a little less.
GM Grabs TEI Before Tesla Does
Reuters has a fun exclusive this morning about a Michigan-based automotive supplier you’ve probably never heard of called Tooling & Equipment International (TEI). This is one of approximately ten million automotive suppliers in Michigan with names that are so straightforward and literal that it makes it a little hard to know if they’re doing the important/boring work for car companies or doing something far cooler.
TEI, it’s clear, is doing something far cooler. It’s helping Tesla and other automakers with gigacasting. Specifically, TEI is one of the companies helping with new techniques for creating alloys and heat-treating larger and larger parts. The bigger the part you can gigacast, in theory, the quicker and easier you can build a whole car.
And now TEI is owned by General Motors. From the Reuters report:
TEI is now part of General Motors (GM.N) after agreeing a deal that may have flown under the radar but is a key part of the U.S. automaker’s strategy to make up ground on Tesla, four people familiar with the transaction said.
By snapping up a specialist in sand casting techniques that accelerated the development of Tesla’s gigacasting molds and allowed it to cast more complex components, GM has jump-started its own push to make cars more cheaply and efficiently at a time when Tesla is racing to roll out a $25,000 EV, the people said.
With TEI gone, Tesla is leaning more heavily on three other casting specialists it has used in Britain, Germany and Japan to develop the huge molds needed for the millions of cheaper EVs it plans to make in the coming decade, the four people said.
Damn, got’em.
Berkshire Hathaway Reportedly Dumps GM Holdings
Berkshire Hathaway is far from the only conglomerate holding company, but because it’s owned by the usually prescient mega-investor Warren Buffett it gets a lot of attention when it does anything. The big automotive news of late is the company’s slow and profitable divestment from Chinese automaker BYD.
So what is it up to now? According to Marketwatch, the company dumped about 22 million shares of GM this last quarter:
Over the last decade, GM has produced annual returns of -0.5%, compared to an 11.7% rise for the S&P 500 SPX, according to FactSet data. Ford Motor Co. F, +5.91%, which Berkshire Hathaway didn’t hold, also has produced negative returns, while Chrysler owner Stellantis STLA, +2.90% has seen annual returns of 20.8%.
Berkshire has been in GM since about 2012 and has been dropping shares for more than a year. What’s interesting to me is not so much that the company has been dropping its GM shares (Buffett does this all the time and owns/buys/sells a lot of major companies), but that the firm is now holding on to a record cash position of $157 billion. What’s that all about?
The Answer To Batteries Might Be: Gels
If a solid won’t do and a liquid seems unwise, perhaps consider a gel. This was the mantra of the ’90s when all of a sudden my shaving cream, my deodorant, and even the crap I eat on long runs got replaced with a gel. Gels! What can’t they do?
Apparently, gels can help bridge the gap between the dream of solid-state batteries and the reality that solid-state batteries don’t quite deliver yet.
There’s a thorough report out of Automotive News explaining how the gels might work:
Unfortunately, current EV batteries feature a lot of liquid to transfer ions between positive and negative electrodes. These batteries obviously work, but they create issues in terms of packaging, safety, and performance. Solid-state batteries, in theory, solve some of these problems and offer much greater range.
IIHS: These Slabby Vehicles Are Killing People
The Insurance Institute For Highway Safety is out again with another report on vehicle safety, this time highlighting how bad those slab-fronted cars are for pedestrian safety.
Here are the highlights:
Over the past 30 years, the average U.S. passenger vehicle has gotten about 4 inches wider, 10 inches longer, 8 inches taller and 1,000 pounds heavier. Many vehicles are more than 40 inches tall at the leading edge of the hood. On some large pickups, the hoods are almost at eye level for many adults.
[…]
Vehicles with hoods more than 40 inches off the ground at the leading edge and a grille sloped at an angle of 65 degrees or less were 45 percent more likely to cause pedestrian fatalities than those with a similar slope and hood heights of 30 inches or less. Vehicles with hood heights of more than 40 inches and blunt front ends angled at greater than 65 degrees were 44 percent more likely to cause fatalities.
“Manufacturers can make vehicles less dangerous to pedestrians by lowering the front end of the hood and angling the grille and hood to create a sloped profile,” said IIHS Senior Research Transportation Engineer Wen Hu, the lead author of the study. “There’s no functional benefit to these massive, blocky fronts.”
I think automakers might argue that the functional benefit is they look good, but I suppose that’s not really a functional benefit.
This all makes perfect sense and is something that safety groups have been arguing for a long time. Do you know what a safe car is in this scenario? If you look at the graphic above it’s clearly something like a Toyota GR86 or a Ford Mustang. Clearly, if we want to make the world safer, we need more people driving sports cars.
The Big Question
Serious question: What’s the deal with Berkshire Hathaway squirreling away $157 billion?
Less-Serious Question: What company would you buy with $157 billion?
This is what rich people do when they know that the bubble is about to burst. It’s blatently obvious that it’s going to happen, just a matter of when. I’m guessing September 2024, just in time to vote Trump in and push us over the ledge into a 3rd world country.
Buy low, sell high. You can’t buy low if you have no cash on hand.
Better question is why and how can’t we tax the crap out of that $157billion. I mean, they don’t actually need that much money to feed themselves tomorrow like……. 2/3 of the rest of the population on earth.
“Better question is why and how can’t we tax the crap out of that $157billion. I mean, they don’t actually need that much money to feed themselves tomorrow like……. 2/3 of the rest of the population on earth.”
Buffet has advocated many times for the Federal Gov to change the tax codes in favor of increases on personal wealth. In fact, he said that 99.5% of all his wealth will be split between philanthropy (The Giving Pledge) and taxes when he dies.
BH pays an enormous amount of taxes each year on all of its transactions as well. Some estimates (including in their shareholder reports) have them covering around 1.5% of all corporate tax collected in the US.
BH/Buffet pulls its weight in regard to taxes. Now, other people/companies? It depends…
>In fact, he said that 99.5% of all his wealth will be split between philanthropy (The Giving Pledge) and taxes when he dies
Technically True. BUT, as of last year he’s been transferring more and more BH shares into 5 specific charities, only 1 of which (Bill/Melinda Gates Foundation) isn’t connected to him. (The article is technically paywalled but I think the link should be able to bypass it.)
Linky no bueno.
You are correct that he is transferring shares. Everyone in America who gives a donation should be doing the same thing. When you gift shares through a Donor Advised Fund (DAF) you give them the full market value of the stock, not the value after paying capital gains.It’s absolutely the smart and prudent way to do it. There are other reasons to have a DAF like harvesting depreciated stocks, but this isn’t the place to get in the weeds on that.
As far as giving to his own charities, I sure as shit hope so! This way they are vetted as I don’t imagine someone of Buffet’s wealth and reputation would put his name in association with a scumbag organization. (I could be wrong, obv., but I doubt it).
I guess I’m not sure what the “BUT” part of the reply means. He’s doing it the most efficient way.
>This way they are vetted as I don’t imagine someone of Buffet’s wealth and reputation would put his name in association with a scumbag organization.
Very convenient then that 3 of those charities all happen to be run by his children. That was the point of my comment.
Honestly, I’d be surprised if they weren’t. Maybe that’s a red flag or maybe it’s a red herring. I have no idea either way. I’d like to think they were being run properly as the kids don’t have all that much incentive to act grimy or skim. That could just be the optimist in me typing, though.
The recipe for rich is the same if you are good rich or bad rich. The good rich just hide it more “transparently” like WB, which I give him credit for. Still rich guy doing rich guy stuff that us little guys can’t do cause we ain’t rich. I mean, technically we can, but our gains are trivial compared to theirs unless you are paying close attention and are really into it, so-to-speak. The gap is getting larger, COLA goes up, we get 2-3% raises, if we even get them, and this dude has a scrooge McDuck pile of dough he’s swimming in…. just doing nothing.
So you are one of those “Eat The Rich” people even if it was completely self-made money that he’s gonna eventually give away to benefit millions of people? I guess giving away $51 Billion over the last 7 years is doing nothing…
https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/warren-buffetts-charitable-giving-tops-51-billion-2023-06-22/
We are just going to have to agree to disagree on this one because I’m not even sure I’m capable of deciphering what the hell you are going on about.
No, not an eat the rich person. Lots of people do it legit, and I’m very happy for them. My philosophical issue with wealth is simply that humans only need so much to sustain a happy life. It frustrates me to see wealth accumulate like this. I intellectually understand why, but emotionally don’t.
I have a hard time believing that one could build this level of wealth 100% legitimately. One must exploit someone at some point in order to build $157 billion dollars in cold hard cash. This is my fundamental issue, I suppose.
. Nevermind. Thanks for the discussion and have a great day.
No problems here. I’m a bit of a shock-jockey. It’s all done to illicit conversation. I am pretty sure we are on the same page, overall.
Woah, woah, woah…. I remember in the 80s- early 00’s that most cars had low, pointy front ends, for styling and aerodynamics. Then in the mid-00’s, they started to go to taller, blunt front ends. I seem to recall that at the time it was said that it was for pedestrian safety. So which is it?
Also, does anyone else find Warren Buffet super annoying? Billionaire hate aside, I’m tired of hearing about his shitty little house and shitty old Toyota. Bruh, that’s not a flex. As a poor person, I find his refusal to actually enjoy his wealth insulting. Dude, go buy a mansion or a Lambo. Him buying a Lambo would be a smaller percentage of his net worth than me buying my weekly medium iced Dunks.
I believe that was a European Union thing that required a certain amount of space between the hood of the car and the engine. The first, easiest way to make that happen was to bring the height of the hood all the way forward from the cowl to the grill.
Not having read the IIHS report to know exactly what they looked at, I’d guess, based on the graphic up there, it’s more of an overall hood-height issue than blocky/angled issue. Yes, the blunt/mid is worse than the angled/mid, but the tall is bad no matter how it’s angled.
The hood gap was to protect a pedestrian landing on the hood. With the trucks these days, you would need a pole vault to get up there.
On SUVs and trucks, this is definitely an aesthetics thing. Logic would dictate having lower hoods for better sightlines to reduce the potential of hitting someone in the first place. Only one of many examples we all know of that proves people don’t buy vehicles (or much else) with their brains.
He did own a beach house in Malibu for awhile, but apparently sold it because he wasn’t using it enough. Not sure where the Toyota thing came from, he’s been driving full-size Cadillacs pretty consistently since the 1950s, usually dark blue, to the point that its kind of his trademark. Think his current ride is an XTS.
Hmmmm, I seem to recall seeing multiple articles stating he drove an older Corolla or similar. Maybe I’m getting that detail confused with someone else.
He had an old Deville for a long time, but with really low miles since he basically just drives two/from the office, until his daughter apparently begged him to trade it as a 15/20 year old car was, to her, an “embarrassing” image to the company. So it was swapped for a DTS, and then an XTS, which is probably about a decade old by this point.
Could be thinking of Dick Yuengling, he’s a billionaire, at least on paper, and apparently still uses a 3rd gen oval Taurus as his work/airport car.
The IIHS is complaining that cars are too wide, tall and heavy?
Ironic.
It must be frustrating to be an engineer at one of these companies to do something significantly innovative, and then land an Apple or a Tesla as a customer and have all the credit for the innovation go to them.
I hope the payday was big enough to make up for it.
This is why everyone here needs to do their part for automotive safety, and buy more mid-engine sports cars and supercars.
It’s all about that pedestrian safety!
Squirreling away $157 billion?
That’s nuts!
(No! The squirrel emoji doesn’t render!)
There’s something to be said for that sportscar idea; I’d expand that to any classic/vintage/ancient vehicles. I drive my forty-year-old car pretty damned carefully, knowing that just about anything might total it due to (lack of) parts availability!
Have bare minimum insurance and don’t make a claim if you get in a wreck. I got in a front end collision, made no claim, and so vehicle was not totaled and I rebuilt it with junkyard parts.
“In short, an Abrams tank has better forward visibility, and is less likely to hide a small child, than the SUVs below it.” (Twitter)
Assuming BH sits on that money, it’s their bet that inflation is going to stay low for a bit and they’re not sure what’s going to boom yet as the US infrastructure and climate investments are just starting to be spent.
I think there’s a good chance the Saudis will manufacture an oil shock just before the 2024 election, and there might be a lot of money made on that if one has cash ready.
Ironically hoods – explicitly the fronts – have been raised in car designs explicitly to confirm with Asian and European standards for pedestrian safety. Years ago they mandated a ‘cushion’ – an air gap between the hood proper and the mechanical bits they cover – to serve as a crush zone that softens the blow off a pedestrian impact. From Car and Driver:
https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a15118822/taking-the-hit-how-pedestrian-protection-regs-make-cars-fatter-feature/
“A minimum of 20 mm (0.8 inch) of clearance is required between the underside of the hood and the highest part of the engine or any other hard point such as the windshield-wiper motor or the HVAC plenum. This raises not only the front of the hood but also its trailing edge by at least 0.8 inch.
With the rear edge of the hood elevated, the entire cowl must be raised a like amount—or a bit more if the designers want a wedge-shaped profile.”
Higher leading hood edges = taller, more upright grills, which have since become fashionable and exaggerated in automotive design apparently to the point where they’re causing the damage to person’s they were initially intended to prevent.
*Persons. Thanks autocorrect.
I think the other thing at play is EPA regulations that allow vehicles of a certain size to kind of fall off the grading chart for CAFE regulations. So now pickup trucks just keep growing so even the “half ton” variants will have room to hit that size.
I just saw a picture on Reddit this morning comparing a Chevy 2500-series to it’s 30 year old counterpart. You’d swear the old one was the size of a Maverick.
Most of those graphics floating around are quite misleading (comparing 2wd to 4wd, regular cabs to crew cabs, etc).
Like for like, trucks have grown, but nothing like popular wisdom. My 2019 F350 is no taller or wider than a 1970s 4×4 HiBoy, and almost all of the length increase is from the crew cab.
Actually if I had that cash lying around I’d buy Square Enix. Because I’m a nerd, nostalgic for my youth, and sad about how poorly it’s run.
Ugh, I almost said Jalopnik for similar reasons. I could make my work archive readable again? 🙁
Firing a certain herb on day one would be icing on the cake.
I feel like if you’re going to fire a certain herb you have to find a way to livestream it so everyone who used to enjoy a G/O site could have a moment to luxuriate in his misery.
fill the air with the scent of roasting herbs
“Over the past 30 years, the average U.S. passenger vehicle has gotten about 4 inches wider, 10 inches longer, 8 inches taller and 1,000 pounds heavier.”
During which time the average US resident has also gotten much wider and much, much heavier.
Is my webcam on? How do you know this? I’m just bulking up for winter hibernation!
I’d make my own company! With blackjack and hookers!
In fact, forget the company!
Regarding huge, blocky front ends on today’s pickups:
I think automakers might argue that the functional benefit is they
look goodmake insecure men feel better about themselves.And now for something completely different (since I can’t begin to comprehend how to handle $157B):
Please, please get Torch to hunt down Kevin Hart for an interview about micro cars. It would be gold, Jerry! Gold!…
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/2023/11/14/la-auto-show-preview-evs-asian-debuts-and-celebs/71576626007/
Giant body on frame trucks aside, the embiggening of vehicles in America is our own (regulatory) fault. If “passenger vehicle” regulations applied to what people actually use as passenger vehicles, the Focus and Cruze wouldn’t have been replaced by the Escape (or Bronco Sport) and Trax. Incentives matter.
As others have pointed out, eventually big insurance payouts will generate a market correction that prices these large vehicle risks into the private ownership experience.
My concern is that the rise of large castings for structural applications really makes it almost impossible to DIY repairs. Many castings are difficult/ impossible to weld to repair cracks or damage. So, if a large casting is damaged, we are just supposed to replace it? What if it is not available or prohibitively expensive? Sure, it’s cheaper and faster to make on the front end, but what about the back end of the lifecycle?
Sounds like you need a new (supergigacasted) car to replace it, pal!
The iPhone repair method!
Aluminum casting isn’t the same as iron casting
True, Aluminum castings are what tesla uses, weldability depends on alloy and heat treat. Supposedly they have their own special formulation similar to AA380 that Munro is calling A386.
“Looks like your drivers side headlight has a broken mounting bracket. We’ll have to replace the whole front end of the car since it’s all one piece. It’s $34,300 for part plus labor but unfortunately it’s been on backorder for 11 months….”
There’s a Rivian in my town with some damage to the front quarter panel. I wonder if they haven’t fixed it because it’s a $40K repair.
Eh, some 3D printing and JB Weld and you’re back in business.
At least we’re not at the Matchbox/Hot Wheels end game where your car is just a large piece of molded plastic with a die cast body, some axles and some wheels.
Isn’t that what they are aiming for? Modular bodies on a “skateboard” holding all the batteries, motors etc.?
I mean, if it got me a color-shifting dune buggy with giant flame decals down the side, and a giant V8 with an exposed blower, I’d be down for that.
You sir, know how to party.
Mandate that repair points have to be designed in? Then in theory a piece could be cut off and a new one welded/bonded on. That would make new cars even more expensive, alas. Those cars would need to be cut up, repaired, accelerated aging done and crash-tested to ensure the repairs are sound. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable can post.
A lot of people seem to be concerned about the repairability of gigacast cars, and I don’t get it.
1. If you’re concerned about frame casting being damaged in a crash and being unrepairable, guess what? Cars already have unrepairable frames. Frame straightening is very out of style on unibody cars and insurance companies already total cars with any amount of frame damage.
2. Aluminum castings are usually weldable. I mean these kind of have to be, how else are they gonna attach the casting to the stamped sheet metal parts around it? You can’t spot weld a casting, so it’s gonna be arc welding or maybe glue.
3. Really casting being part of the frame is the only new thing here. Less critical parts being made of large castings has been around for a while, the whole steering column and dash structure in my 1995 f150 is a big ass cast bracket thing.
“Frame straightening is very out of style on unibody cars and insurance companies already total cars with any amount of frame damage.”
That is why you have the bare minimum insurance, and don’t make a claim when you get in an accident so you can have the frame pulled and repair the car. My 1998 Nissan Sentra was in a front end collision this year. I made no claim, drove it to the mechanics ship after the wreck, had a new radiator put in (no new condenser because I never used the A/C anyways). Then I drove to Pull-A-Part, got replacement parts from donor cars, put them on….then went back to the mechanic to have the frame pulled and everything lines up fine now and have had no problems with the car…. besides an oil leak but I just keep ot topped off and it is fine. It is a 5 speed manual so it has always ran and gone on over 20 four hour trips this year.
My dads 1995 Cherokee has been totaled more than once but he found a shop in the bad part of town operated by Russians who don’t charge sales tax, and the do a really good job of straightening cars.
Most people don’t seem to realize that(in most states) you don’t have to make an insurance claim, or even if you do, you can buy the car back from insurance.
Sooooo according to the IIHS I still need to slow down for pedestrians when driving the wife’s Crosstrek but not in my BRZ?
A large part of the problem is pedestrians who don’t know (or bother) to look out for cars before crossing the street. Cyclists riding without lights and helmets on the wrong side of the road, or down the middle, or at random places at random times, are also just asking for Darwin to firmly nudge them out of the gene pool.
Ah yes, blame the victims.
Not necessarily. Everyone carries a degree of responsibility for personal safety. Yes, in this case, the burden of that is the person operating at multi-ton machine capable of instant death, but pedestrians and cyclists need to be aware of their surroundings. I walk several miles every day and I am a very “defensive pedestrian.”
Sometimes the victims brought forth their own demise….not always, but when it comes to pedestrians being hit….they have at least part of thr blame usually.
In other (made up) studies, American consumers reported that vehicles with hood heights of less than 40 inches and blunt front ends angled at less than 65 degrees were 93 percent less masculinity reaffirming.
Guess it’s time to put cow-catchers on the front of all of these slab riders.
Why is BH hoarding cash? Bigger ROI than stocks and recession proofing. What would I buy with $157 billion? An arms manufacturer ‘cause the Big One is coming!
“Guess it’s time to put cow-catchers on the front of all of these slab riders.”
Isn’t that what Lexus is doing with their recent styling?
Ed Whitacre did once remark that Cadillacs looked like “old-fashioned choo-choo trains” – maybe Bob Lutz was ahead of his time?
Bob Luz was ahead of his time on so, so many things.
GM made this purchase knowing that Tesla is ahead of them in its ability to build reliable, long-lasting EVs. It’s a shame that GM was a decade ahead of its time with the EV1, and then decided to sabotage its own development.
A mass-produced EV1 could have been viable, if only they’d have tried. The range figures often quoted for the NiMH-equipped variant are often greatly understated. 105 miles? Maybe if you drive it with your foot to the floor all the time up to the car’s governed 80 mph speed limit…
John Wayland, the builder of “White Zombie”, a Datsun 1200 conversion that was once the world’s fastest street legal EV, had an excellent article on his personal experience driving the EV1. He operated it at over the speed limit and did some pedal-to-the-floor accelerations, and found the real-world range was closer to 130-160 miles, the latter figure when obeying speed limits.
https://portev.org/commentary/living_in_the_past.htm
Less-serious answer: I would buy Axe Capital and Prince Capital
More serious, They can make more money on interest than they can on stocks, but long term, it looks like they are slowly getting out of transportation.
But did Warren Buffett privately dump GM stock before Berkshire Hathaway did? #allbillionaresareevil
Cash positions earning interest when the rates are high have the potential to outperform an unstable market.
Unserious answer: I hear some super smart and talented people think social media companies are a great buy.
Really, though, I’d probably buy a few smaller companies. It couldn’t take that much to buy Canoo, as well as a couple smaller tooling companies or something and do some strong vertical integration. Or just a few smaller companies in different industries to try to diversify.
I hear there is a social media company with a name about being honest that could really use that 157 billion.
I hear that company is doing great. Tremendous. They already have $157 billion. Some people are saying they have $157 trillion. People are saying that. It’s a beautiful thing.
“It’s a very, very, successful company. And it will be a a zillion dollar co. as soon as my new accountants place a realistic value on it”
Usually, if the insurance industry mandates a change through premium adjustment, people respond by buying the changed products with lower premiums. Perhaps if the insurance industry slapped a big fat surcharge on big fat vehicles, the market would move toward smaller vehicles.
Sadly, the insurance companies are unlikely to do that on their own. It’s going to take a significant number of large payouts for pedestrian deaths to change their minds.
Pedestrian deaths are at a 40-year high in the US, that should be enough to change some minds.
Should be, but isn’t. Insurance companies look at payouts and money in. You want to convince them to charge more for higher pedestrian deaths, you need to make sure they have to truly pay substantial sums when they happen. Which I wholeheartedly support.
I hate that terms like “gigacasting” or “gigafactory” are becoming things. I’m irrationally irritated by it.
I don’t think you are being irrational, seriously the castings and factories are not 1,000,000,000 x the size of traditional castings/factories. Plus it sounds like a word made up by a 8yo who is desperately trying to be cool.
Checks Musk’s other actions and statements… Yep – “8yo desperately trying to be cool” checks out.
So… deca-casting then?
The funny thing is, is that it’s not even big on the scale of casting things.
https://www.themanufacturer.com/articles/sheffield-forgemasters-announces-record-breaking-pour/
It’s just big compared to things that are traditional cast for cars.
Don’t get me wrong, I realize that my last statement right there makes it unique, and that the process (and equipment) is pretty special, but it’s not that special or unique. It’s still sand casting.
GM is getting itself into a quagmire.
GigaQuagmire.
I think GM did this to try to slow down Tesla and therefore give themselves more runway for ice (ice truck specifically) profits.
There is zero evidence to show that GM is actually serious about actually producing evs at scale.
I am not a GM fan, at the same time GM has been overall good for the US economy and its continued slow decline isn’t.
I jumped to the comments to express the same sentiment. It is a silly term amongst many silly terms that people love these days. I’m also an engineer, so using the correct words to convey the correct meaning in the most concise way possible is how my mind generally works. I have to put in concerted effort to sound less robotic when communicating with normal (non-engineer) humans, so when normal humans lazily throw around silly, nonsensical terms like this I die a little inside with frustration.
Its no different than its ever been.
chadforging
Looool
That’s why my future businesses will be Terafactories, they will be 1000x better.
Or, I’ll skip straight to Petafactories; which will also have dogs and cats in the break rooms.
Ackshually Terafactories are 1000x better than Gigafactories.
I also am unreasonably irritated at the explosion of terms; mere sound and fury signifying nothing. Next up: Ultragigaübersuper Factories
I edited right away, but apparently after you replied.
The problem with Terrafactories is the Magicite is a really limited resource and I’m not sure where you’d even use the armor they create.
I’m pretty sure my googolplex factory (with the G-Plex flex name) is a lot better.
“There will be mass hysteria…
Dogs and cats living together…”
Don’t be a cliched old person. Just go with it. Language is a fluid, ever-changing monster.
Language needs to be precise. Changing definitions like this only spreads confusion. The directly conflicting definitions of “organic”, “evolution” and “synthetic” are proof of that confusion. And there’s no good reason for it. The alternate definitions already have perfectly good words to describe those concepts:
“Of, marked by, or involving the use of fertilizers or pesticides that are strictly of animal or vegetable origin” = Traditionally farmed, not organic
“A marked change in appearance, character, condition, or function (of the same organism or object)” = metamorphasis, not evolution.
“highly processed conventional base oils” = ultrapure oil, not synthetic oil
While I agree with you, I think this example was intended very differently. Companies are constantly trying to invoke tech innovation to juice their stock. A good example is the real estate company We Work that branded itself a tech company. This is not a case of language being used for accuracy, just trying to evoke something techie around a mostly dull casting process.
It uses AI, you know!! /s
Its not even “techie”, at least to actual tech folks. Its simply a range of numbers. To use it this context…might as well use “fuckton” or “gazillon”.
Agreed. And Fuckton works for me.
Look, I’m not here complaining about words like “fleek” or whatever the new trend words are with zoomers. I’m complaining that one company coined a dumb term that doesn’t really make sense and is a direct contradiction to the very definition of the words used to form it (giga), and that now other companies are jumping onto using the buzz word because, well, buzz word.
I guess I’ve just been in Corporate America so long that I am completely numbed to this concept. Now excuse me while I holistically scale this comment so I can boil the ocean from 30,000 feet.
Hey after you’re done can you reverse engineer the process for our vmo* team? And then circle back to catch me up on what you learned? I’ll then take it offline to process the lessons bf taking it up the chan by creating an exec. pp deck on the outcome
*value mgmt. office
I’m just waiting for it to end up in other fields. Charismatic gigafauna, larger than charismatic megafauna.
Gigabiggly.
Giggitycasting.
Agreed, it’s gigannoying.
megacasting is better