Wednesday, March 17, 2021

FOMC Press Conference March 17, 2021

FULL-THROTTLE HYPE: City of Mesa Newsroom Just "Forward-Looking Statements" for The Post COVID-19 Pandemic Economy (Company Press Releases

Electra Mechanical Solo : What is it?

Also, it has not four, but three wheels. This means the Solo is classified as an autocycle.

Weird Electric 3-Wheeler aimed at commuters and urban inhabitants or what?

Not Quite a Car, Not Quite a Motorcycle: A Vehicle Built for One

By Susan Carpenter nytimes.com May 10, 2020

CAUTION: “There’s been so many of these,” said Karl Brauer, executive publisher of Kelley Blue Book. “A lot of people want to solve the problem of clean, space-efficient, inexpensive personal transportation.”

Microcars have tended to sell in microscopic numbers in a new-car market with millions in annual sales. Fiat sold just 6,556 of its Fiat 500s in 2019, despite their seeming ubiquity. Mercedes pulled its Smart car from the U.S. market after selling just 680 units last year. Toyota yanked its Scion iQ after selling just 482 of them in 2015.

“It’s not to say a group of people won’t buy these,” Mr. Brauer said of the Solos, “but that group is in the hundreds, not the thousands, and something that sells in the hundreds is not saving anything: not the planet or our congestion problems.”

He added, “If you can’t get tens or hundreds of thousands of these to sell, it’s not having any sort of meaningful impact on any of these problems it’s supposed to be solving.”

“Conceptually, it makes sense,” said Juan Matute, deputy director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. “But what’s socially desirable and environmentally beneficial isn’t necessarily personally optimal.”

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(the company for now has a lot riding on this imperfect product.)

AN AUTO-CYCLE

Despite the view out of your windshield that reads "car," it drives a lot like a neighborhood electric vehicle.

> It doesn't appear much thought went into the way the Solo turns or stops; it doesn't feel as engaging as it looks like it would be. There's little in the way of feedback or feel from the power steering system, . .

> Solo is a single-seat commuter "car" designed to thrive in congested urban markets. > ElectraMeccanica plans for the Solo to be built in China by motorcycle maker Zongshen Industrial Group (which also sells a low-cost electric motorcycle in the U.S. ), but the company is looking at building a factory of its own in either Phoenix or Nashville.

Is the 2020 ElectraMeccanica Solo Safe?

ElectraMeccanica says the Solo meets some NHTSA crash standards, but you'll have to take the company's word for it as it won't share its internal crash-testing data publicly. Since the Solo isn't a car (and thus not required to be crash tested), NTHSA won't independently vet the Solo's safety, either

2020 ElectraMeccanica Solo Quick Test Drive: The New Sub-$20,000 EV

It only has three wheels and one seat, but its manufacturer has a lot riding on this imperfect creation.

MotorTrend

Christian Seabaugh

Feb 18, 2021

If the Wall Street GameStop drama taught us anything, it's that the Whose Line Is It Anyway? credo—"Everything is made up, and the points don't matter"—applies to far more than just a game show.

Ignoring GameStop,

take a look at how Wall Street values electric car stocks: Tesla, Workhorse, and Nikola—the latter two of which have yet to sell a vehicle—are worth more per share than established automakers like Ford and Stellantis.

Another small, relatively unknown electric automaker trending up on the stock exchange is small Canadian upstart ElectraMeccanica, maker of the new ElectraMeccanica Solo EV.

What Is the 2020 ElectraMeccanica Solo?

The Solo is a sub-$20,000, one-passenger, three-wheeled EV designed for cheap, efficient city transportation. Indeed, the 2020 ElectraMeccanica Solo is one of the cheapest ways to buy a new electric vehicle in the U.S.

Emphasis on vehicle. Unlike the similarly cheap Kandi K27 ($17,499 to start), the Solo isn't technically a car. It's an electric autocycle, which is exactly as it sounds—a three-wheeled car/motorcycle hybrid like the Polaris Slingshot.

"But ElectraMeccanica doesn't expect you, the consumer, to be its biggest buyer—instead, it's banking on fleet sales.

> The company believes the Solo is the right size and price for businesses that need a small fleet of vehicles for courier services and food delivery.

> It's also investigating starting its own car-sharing application in a post COVID-world.

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PRESS RELEASE

ElectraMeccanica announces plans to establish U.S. base of operations in Mesa

March 16, 2021 at 8:17 am

"ElectraMeccanica Vehicles Corp.(NASDAQ: SOLO)("ElectraMeccanica" or the "Company"), a designer and manufacturer of electric vehicles, today announced that it has selected Mesa, AZ, in the greater Phoenix area, for its U.S. based assembly facility and engineering technical center. Phoenix ranks as the fifth largest city in the U.S. according to 2020 census data, with nearly 1.8 million residents. Mesa, a suburb of Phoenix, ranks 35thnationally. The Company's selection marks the end of a comprehensive, year-long site search conducted by ElectraMeccanica and its partner, BDO USA's Site Selection & Incentives Practice("BDO"). . .

The proposed facility in Mesa will support ElectraMeccanica's strategic plan to meet anticipated demand for their flagshipSOLOEV. When fully operational, the facility is expected to create up to 500 new jobs and will be capable of producing up to 20,000SOLOsper year. . . "

Insert text > Forward-looking statements give the Company's expectations or predictions of future conditions, events or results. They are not guarantees of future performance.

There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements

These statements relate to analyses and other information that are based on forecasts of future results, estimates of amounts not yet determinable and assumptions of management. Any other statements that express or involve discussions with respect to predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions or future events or performance (often, but not always, using words or phrases such as “expects” or “does not expect”, “is expected”, “anticipates” or “does not anticipate”, “plans, “estimates” or “intends”, or stating that certain actions, events or results “may”, “could”, “would”, “might” or “will” be taken, occur or be achieved) are not statements of historical fact and should be viewed as forward-looking statements

https://www.mesaaz.gov/Home/Components/News/News/7442/16

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Market Summary > Electrameccanica Vehicles Corp

NASDAQ: SOLO

5.46 USD −0.045

Mar 17, 12:05 PM EDT ·

Disclaimer

Pre-marketAfter hours ()

Open	5.39
High	5.56
Low	5.24
Mkt cap	537.11M
P/E ratio	-

Div yield	-
Prev close	5.51
52-wk high	13.60
52-wk low	0.90

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NEW DATA FOR PROGRESS REPORT: Voters SUPPORT Federal Investments To Impr...

Tuesday, March 16, 2021

Charting the Path of Treasury Yields

Whoah-Yeah !! FOIA FOIA FOIA

Well Well Well >

Snagged again by Freedom of Information

Subtitle: When in doubt, call it out and dig deeper

Kansas City PD Presentation Says Every Shooting Investigation Is Handled The Same Way... Unless It Involves A Cop

Legal Issues

from the no-bias-here-if-you-don't-count-the-bias-towards-cops dept

Mon, Mar 15th 2021 3:33pm — Tim Cushing

The Kansas City Police Department has managed to turn a few heads -- and not in the good way -- with an internal PowerPoint that may as well have been titled "So, You've Killed Someone." The document was obtained during discovery in a wrongful death suit against the KCPD. Back in 2019, Officer Dylan Pifer shot and killed Terrance Bridges, claiming he thought Bridges was trying to pull a gun from his sweatshirt pocket. No gun was found on Bridges.

The presentation [PDF] obtained from Bridges' family's lawyer by the Kansas City Star advises cops of two things: police shootings should be handled like routine criminal investigations to eliminate claims of bias. And police shootings should be handled nothing like routine criminal investigations because they involve cops.

The opening slide makes it clear what the priority is in investigations of shootings by cops: preserving the narrative. It even has the number one next to it.

Upon completion of this block of instruction, the participants will, with the use of handouts and notes, be able to:
1. Identify the best defense again [sic] claims of bias or favoritism in the investigations of officer involved shootings.

You know what's not a top priority? Preserving evidence. That comes behind officer safety.

Supervisors should consider the preservation of evidence as secondary to the safety of the public and department personnel.

The presentation points out that shootings are controversial and claims "police critics" will often claim investigations -- which routinely clear officers of wrongdoing -- are "biased and that police receive special treatment." So, the best defense is a good offense. . .

All well and good, except the presentation spends most of its running time explaining how this sort of investigation won't be treated like a regular criminal investigation.

. . . The presentation then spends a bit of time bemoaning the public's confidence in law enforcement, which isn't at an all-time high. It blames the media (again) for misrepresenting shootings by officers and, again, stresses doing everything by the book to combat this perception. But the book for officers is very different from the book for citizens. And until law enforcement agencies are willing to change that, the rest of what bothers the presenter about public perception isn't going to change.

And this is about the worst possible way you could end an instructive presentation on handling shootings by officers:

There is nothing wrong with being glad to be alive and being okay that you were the winner in a competition in which the winning prize was your life.

Law enforcement isn't a competition with winners and losers. It's a job, an important one, but one that has apparently been handed to people who believe members of the public are enemy combatants and that shootings are just games to be won.

Filed Under: investigations, kansas city, police, police shootings

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