Ford Making Big Cut To Salaried Workforce, An Early Cybertruck, Amazon Sues Fake Reviewers

The Automotive Troublemaker w/ Paul J Daly and Kyle Mountsier

Today we’re talking about a major cut in salaried positions at Ford, the Q2 Tesla investor call that gave some insight into when Tesla’s Cybertruck may be entering the market, and a legal move by Amazon intended to keep global site reviews honest.

• Ford to cut 8,000 jobs from Ford Blue and other salaried positions to grow profits
  • CEO Jim Farley said the company is not being competitive on cost and “under earn” on both ICE and EVs according to a Bloomberg report
  • Ford employs 31,000 people in the US where the vast majority of the cuts are going to be made
  • Previously, Farley has stated his intention to cut $3 Billion in costs by 2026 as he wants to make Ford Blue the primary cash engine for the entire business
  • Take Away: Lean and profitable seems to be a common, post pandemic trend
    
• Tesla’s Cybertruck may see first deliveries as early as mid - 2023
  • On an investor webcast, CEO Elon Musk delivered the news. The last time the Cybertruck delivery was mentioned was in the Q4 report from 2022 when Musk said, “Hopefully next year”
  • Profits rose while revenue declined
  • Tesla converted 75% of it’s Bitcoin holdings to cash adding just under $1 Billion in liquid capital
  • You can check out the most recent shareholder deck here
  • Take Away: Underpromise, overdeliver…but we’ll see
    
• Amazon sues thousands of FB groups soliciting fake product reviews
  • Over 10,000 lawsuits were filed yesterday against the administrators of FB groups who solicit and incentivize other users to leave fake reviews on Amazon sites across the globe
  • “Our teams stop millions of suspicious reviews before they’re ever seen by customers, and this lawsuit goes a step further to uncover perpetrators operating on social media,” Dharmesh Mehta, Amazon’s vice president of selling partner services, said in a statement. “Proactive legal action targeting bad actors is one of many ways we protect customers by holding bad actors accountable.”
  • Earlier this year, Meta identified and removed one such group that had over 43,000 users who had been dodging detection by removing letters when spelling words that might trigger further investigation
  • Take Away: Consumers typically trust one another and keeping reviews plentiful and clean is an important step in retailing

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Hosts: Paul J Daly and Kyle Mountsier
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