Self-Driving Cars Hit Roadblocks & Are Streaming Bundles the New Cable?

This episode explores the increasing scrutiny on autonomous vehicles and the rising trend of streaming bundles that mimic traditional cable setups.

1. Autonomous vehicles are facing increased federal scrutiny, affecting their deployment on U.S. roads.
2. Major streaming services are re-bundling into packages, resembling the traditional cable models they once sought to disrupt.
3. Consumer trust in autonomous technology is low, with a significant portion of the public still fearful of self-driving cars.
4. The streaming industry is experiencing high cancellation rates, prompting companies to explore bundle deals to retain customers.
5. Tariffs and international trade policies play a crucial role in the automotive industry, especially concerning electric vehicles.

1: Introduction and Updates

Neil Freiman and Toby Howell discuss recent developments in streaming bundles and federal investigations into autonomous vehicles. Key topics include safety issues with self-driving cars and the resemblance of streaming bundles to traditional cable services. Neil Freiman: "Raise your hand if you are a self-driving car company and you're not under investigation from the feds."

2: Deep Dive into Autonomous Vehicles

The hosts explore the challenges and regulatory scrutiny facing the autonomous vehicle industry, discussing specific incidents and broader industry trends. Toby Howell: "Americans are still a little bit nervous when it comes to autonomous driving."

3: Streaming Services Bundle Up

Discussion on how streaming services are bundling their offerings to mimic cable packages, analyzing consumer reactions and the strategic moves of major companies. Neil Freiman: "We truly are back to cable with these new streaming bundles."

1. Stay Informed: Keep up-to-date with changes in streaming service offerings to choose the best deals.
2. Safety First: Be cautious about the rapid adoption of new technologies like autonomous vehicles.
3. Evaluate Investments: Consider the impact of tariffs and trade policies when investing in industries like automotive.
4. Consumer Advocacy: Voice concerns and preferences to streaming and automotive companies to influence future developments.
5. Embrace Change: Be open to the evolving landscapes of technology and media to better navigate their benefits and challenges.

Episode 323: Neal and Toby discuss Biden’s aggressive tariff hikes on Chinese EVs, chips, and minerals that could impact industries across the country. Next, Comcast is the latest to bundle streaming services together in an effort to capture more customers. Then, self-driving companies are under tense scrutiny after a string of crashes trigger multiple investigations. Also, Caitlin Clark makes her WNBA debut as some say she’s already made significant changes to women’s sports. Meanwhile, Copper becomes the hottest metal in the market due to its importance to AI and EVs. Lastly, Red Lobster continues its downward spiral with nearly 100 locations closing up shop. Will this mean no more Cheddar Bay Biscuits?

People

Neil Freiman, Toby Howell

Companies

Zoox, Waymo, Amazon, Ford, Tesla, Comcast, Apple, Netflix

Books

None

Guest Name(s):

None

Content Warnings:

None

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That's robinhood.com dot disclosures investing involves risk. Other fees may apply. Robinhood Financial LLC, member SIPC is a registered broker dealer. Good morning, brew Daily show. I'm Neil Freiman.

Toby Howell
And I'm Toby Howell. Today, streaming is basically cable now, and the only thing that's missing is an extremely confusing remote. Then Red Lobster is shutting down 99 locations, and we're officially on bankruptcy Watch. So time to start hoarding those cheddar biscuits. It's Wednesday, May 15.

Let's ride out with the metaverse in with the jeopardy. Verse. Sony Pictures, who produces the famous show, announced a new jeopardy. Spinoff yesterday called Pop Culture Jeopardy. Where contestants answer questions on topics like the avengers, mixed martial arts, Broadway, and Zendaya.

Yeah, just her. Neil, as the only person I know to have ever held a buzzer, albeit on kids Jeopardy. What are your thoughts on pop culture jeopardy. And the wider jeopardy. Verse?

Neil Freiman
Did you know that between July of last year and April of this year, there was not a single version, there wasn't a single episode of regular jeopardy. Just traditional jeopardy. It was all these tournaments that they're trying to do, the invitational, the Masters tournament, the second chance tournament. And so they're clearly trying to build up stars that have been on the show in the past that you know and love the Amy Schneider's of the world and have them come back on the show and build up their profiles. But I just worry a little bit that it might be too much of a good thing.

And jeopardy. Is getting a little too big and trying to expand into too many different areas, but maybe expanding it into various subtopics and putting it on Amazon Prime Video like they're doing here and just keeping the original jeopardy. More traditional, as people have known and loved for 36 years, is the way forward. That was very jeopardy. Of you, by the way, answering my question with a question of your own.

Toby Howell
Well, I'm going to hit you with a question. Who do you think should host it? Oh, I don't know. So Ken Jennings, pop culture, they're probably going to go with, like, some football player, Kelsey. Well, isn't Kelsey hosting another show on Amazon prime?

Yeah, let's just have the Kelsey's host everything. Yeah, Jason Kelsey. Now let's hear a word from our sponsor, the Wendy's cinnabun pull apart. Neil, our time with the pull apart is coming to a sweet end today. We are scraping the bottom of the cup to get that last hit of cinnamon sugar and icing right now.

Neil Freiman
I say we celebrate this sponsorship coming to its close the same way we ushered it in, by saying ooey gooey a startling number of times. I couldn't agree more. You want to do the honors or should I? After you. Ooey gooey.

Toby Howell
Ooey gooey. Ooey gooey. Ooey gooey. Ooey gooey. Ooey gooey.

Neil Freiman
Ooey gooey. Ooey gooey. We will miss you cinnabon pull apart and all of your doughy sweet cinnamon. And yes, ooey gooey goodness. You were more than a sweet treat to us.

You were the sweet treat. But fret not, even though this is our last ad for the cinnabon pull apart, you can still get a taste of ooey gooey magic by heading to a Wendy's near you or going to Wendy's dot morning brew chinese electric vehicles are pretty much invisible on american roads, and President Biden wants to keep it that way. Yesterday he said the US would quadruple tariffs on chinese EV's from 25% currently to 100%, effectively boxing them out of the market. For some context, with a 100% tariff, a chinese automaker would have to sell their ev in the US at half the price of cars made elsewhere to compete, which simply isn't going to happen. The higher tariffs on Chinese EV's was just one of a series of trade barriers Biden placed on China yesterday, including doubling tariffs on solar cells and semiconductors, tripling tariffs on some steel and aluminum products, and higher duties on certain advanced batteries.

The goal is to protect american manufacturers from getting undercut by cheap, highly subsidized clean energy products coming in from China, which makes more of these items than its own population can possibly buy. And that's especially true of chinese electric vehicles, which are scary good and scary cheap. Elon Musk recently said Chinese EV's will pretty much demolish most other car companies in the world if countries don't slap tariffs on them. And Biden was happy to oblige. Speaker one, he was happy to oblige.

Toby Howell
And this is a bid to do kind of a lot of things, actually. One, as you said, prevent this flood of low cost chinese cars from swamping domestic manufacturers. It also is a bid to reduce the big trade imbalance that we currently have with China, then also potentially eliminate some of those security risks of importing a bunch of cars made by China. These are all relatively bipartisan issues as well, which is why. Why we see a massive, massive tariff like this come into play.

100% tariff is nothing to joke at. No, but compared to President Trump, it's low. Or former President Trump, because you have to look at this also in the context of the election. President Biden is really gearing up for those votes in the midwest, in those swing states like Michigan and Ohio. And he really wants to show american automakers and the people who work there that he's trying to protect their jobs.

Neil Freiman
Meanwhile, Trump has tried to one up Biden in the first place when it comes to tariffs. He slapped tariffs on $300 billion worth of chinese imports when he was president. And as soon as this news came across his desk, he launched into his plan to put 200% tariffs on Chinese EV's, and he wants to slap 60% tariffs on every product coming in from China and 10% tariff on everything coming across the board. So both presidential candidates are in this mode of protectionism. Protectionism, for sure.

Toby Howell
Does this mean cars are going to get more expensive? EV's are going to get more expensive? On the surface, probably not initially, because the tariff is not going to buy anyone's car buying life right now. Because as you said, China sells basically zero EV's in the US right now. Last year, chinese car companies exported $400 million worth of EV's in the United States.

That is the. And if we compare that to european manufacturers, it's. They imported sales by european manufacturers were almost 20 times higher. So again, right now, Chinese EV's are a drop in the bucket. So this is more of a protectionist, more of a preventative tariff than anything trying to reduce the current amount of EV's coming into the United States.

Neil Freiman
Yeah, I think the only brand that exports EV's from China to the US right now is Polestar, which is owned by. Geely, the big winner of this probably could be Mexico, because chinese automakers are going to set up shop, set up these factories in Mexico that will be able to send, send autos to the US without that tariff. ByD, which is one of the biggest chinese EV makers right now, is already releasing a pickup truck for the mexican market. So we'll see whether Mexico emerges as the big winner here. Of course, Trump also wants to put tariffs on Chinese EV's made in Mexico.

So they can't come across the border. So both presidential candidates right now are raising tariffs. There's been a lot of pushback though, saying, hey, what about the green transition? Don't we want consumers to be able to have cheap EV's? Aren't you trying to get us to a zero emission world here?

And so to put up barriers for lower cost EV's and lower cost just clean tech energy and clean tech products in general, people say is counterintuitive. It's counterintuitive, but you also don't want to completely undercut the US auto market. And so by leveraging these tariffs, hopefully you get just a more holistic and more us focused approach to still advancing that clean energy agenda. This is getting ridiculous at this point. Another bundle has hit the streaming industry.

Toby Howell
This time it's comcast teaming up with Apple and Netflix to offer its Peacock streaming service as a bundle exclusively available to their customers. The new combo is called Streamsaver and is the latest effort by entertainment companies to try and lure and retain customers by offering more content for less money. It's not lost on customers, though, that we're watching cable get rebundled and reinvented in real time. I mean, it was literally less than a week ago that Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery said they were teaming up to offer Disney, Hulu and Macs as a bundle as well.

The logic makes sense. Offers several services in one package to simplify a fractured entertainment landscape, but it also adds in another layer of options and price points for customers already overwhelmed with them. Neil, we don't know the price yet, but what do we think about this latest comcast, Apple, Netflix, three headed Dragon? I'll tell you what Jimmy Kimmel thinks. So he presented for Disney last night.

Neil Freiman
He got on stage and he made a lot of jokes. He said, we are bundling. And while from the outside, this may look like an act of desperation, from the inside it also looks like that we didn't want to bundle. We had to. Like when you're freezing to death and it's so cold you have to get into a sleeping bag with your uncle so you don't die.

That's us. And these streaming companies are seeing massive cancellations rates that they've never had to deal with before. People are balking at these higher prices and they're saying, okay, we need to start offering maybe the equivalent of a value menu where we're putting a bunch of these services together. And this is historic. I mean, this has never happened before, where these top tier streaming services from various different companies are coming together, but it shows, it just goes to show you the state of the times.

Toby Howell
Now, one of the issue is stickiness has been a real, real problem. As you said, a lot of these streamers are raising prices, which has increase churn as well. But then also what increases churn is the binge ability of like, the current entertainment landscape. Usually you sign up for a service, you watch one show on it. Once that show is over, you're like, eh, I don't really know if I need this anymore.

So that's one attractive thing about these bundles, at least from the bundler's perspective, is that giving people a wider buffet of content will hopefully make them stick around for longer. You won't just cast Apple TV to the side now that you're, I don't even know, an Apple tv show right now. What's a good one that's going on right now? We're getting ready for severance because it hasn't been on so long. So please come back.

There you go. Yeah, that's my Apple tv show. Yeah. So, okay, who are you taking right now? We got these different bundles.

Neil Freiman
We got Comcast, Netflix and Apple TV against Disney, Hulu and Max. I mean, probably Disney, Hulu and Max. At this point, that feels like you got both the top end and the bottom end as well. So taking out Netflix. I'm taking out Netflix.

Toby Howell
What about you? I'm going with comcast, Netflix, and Apple TV. Absolutely. And it looks like it's going to be at a pretty attractive price point. Together, all three of those, the cheapest you can get them is $22.

Neil Freiman
And Comcast CEO said, this is going to be a lot less than that. But yes, we are in a new era. All of these streaming companies have also rolled out the ad services to ad platforms. So we truly are back to cable. Okay, raise your hand if you are a self driving car company and you're not under investigation from the feds.

Right now, I see no hands, which is not surprising. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened at least four probes in the past month into vehicles that can drive themselves or assist human drivers, and two came in the past few days. The agency is investigating Amazon's self driving Robo taxi unit, Zoox, after two of its vehicles brake suddenly and were rear ended by people on motorcycles. Yes, Zoox is a real thing. The next day, it announced it was investigating the self driving company Waymo, over 22 reports of those cars crashing into gates, chains, or parked vehicles or doing something else that may have violated traffic laws.

And that comes on top of probes into Ford's blue cruise hands free driving software and a review of its massive Tesla recall last year over its autopilot feature. These flurry of investigations show that federal regulators are ramping up their scrutiny of autonomous vehicles just as these companies are hoping to roll them out onto more roads. It's been a bumpy ride so far, and it looks like it's only going to get bumpier. Speaker one. Right.

Toby Howell
And one of the things that makes it even bumpier, too, is that Americans are still a little bit nervous when it comes to autonomous driving. According to a AAA survey on autonomous vehicles, 66% of US drivers Express fear, while 25% express uncertainty about fully self driving vehicles. So if you talk about headwinds to an industry right now, you're getting it both on the consumer side and then also on the regulator side. But other than that, if you zoom out, though, these companies are full steam ahead. I mean, we just talked about Wave, which is this London based autonomous driving company that just raised over a billion dollars worth of capital.

These companies want this to happen even though there are a bunch of bumpy roads ahead. Right. And even cruise, which is GM subsidiary for autonomous driving, got dragged. I mean, got dragged, literally, because it dragged a pedestrian 20ft and it had to reclaim. It had to take all of its cars off the road.

Neil Freiman
At that point, GM really could have just said, all right, we're done with this. Like, this is too much of a headache. But actually it's. There's a bit of a renaissance. And Cruise just started deploying its fleet again last month, so Cruz is making a comeback.

Elon has said he's balls to the wall with autonomous. So there are. There's going to be this tug of war between regulators and autonomous driving companies, and it's just going to. We're just going to see what happens. But there's definitely an increased pushback from regulators right now.

Toby Howell
I do just want to also call out that autonomous vehicles are here. I mean, if you look at Waymo, Waymo's robotaxis are making 50,000 trips a week with a pretty strong safety track record here as well. So this is not something that is far fetched or futuristic at this point. 50,000 trips a week is a not insignificant number. So do just want to give the entire industry a little bit of credit here as well.

Up next, Caitlin Clark's WNBA debut kicks off a new era for the league.

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Overall, the Clark effect can already be felt around the league. Ticket sales are up 93% across the league compared to last season. Games have been moved to bigger arenas to accommodate demand, and a lot more games are being shown on national television. It goes beyond just attention, though. The entire league is getting charter flights for the first time this year.

Caitlyn Clark and MVP frontrunner Aja Wilson both inked signature shoe deals with Nike. The Golden State WNBA expansion team also announced its name and brand identity yesterday. The Golden State Valkyries. Neil just in terms of sheer volume of things that are happening and attention being drawn to the league, this year has a chance to shift the entire trajectory of the game, and we don't even have the viewership numbers from last night yet. There's so much anticipation.

Neil Freiman
Every single team in the WNBA, all twelve of them, is on track for record attendance this year. Everyone's waiting to see whether what Caitlin Clark did for college basketball at Iowa will translate to the WNBA. But the fact that her team got blown out last night shows that there is a huge, there's a wider league beyond Caitlin Clark. And I think the most important thing that WNBA is to do this year is to send all of the attention that's going to be on Caitlin Clark across the league and build up its other stars, because that's what's going to make the Caitlin Clark effect more sustainable, is if it permeates the entire league, and not just the Indiana fever. Right.

Toby Howell
And some of the other college stars are still fresh in people's minds. I mean, cameron brink from Stanford, she's out in LA. Now you have Camila Cadorzo and from South Carolina, and LSU's angel Reese, now on the same team. Both of them also have great rivalries with Caitlin Clark as well. So I do think you're right.

How can the attention fracture and not just be this heliocentric league around a single player? I think, hopefully, it's a rising tide, floats all boats kind of situation here. And it might be because I saw that the Washington mistakes were moving their June 6 game from the current arena seats, 4200 seats, and they're moving it to the Capitol, one arena, where, you know, the big men, the men male leagues play in Washington, DC, that has 20,000 seats. And then I looked at who they're playing, I was like, oh, it's obviously going to be the Indiana Fever. No, it's actually the Chicago sky.

Neil Freiman
So there's one indication that the interest in the WNBA is going beyond Caitlin Clark. Although the tv network staff certainly zeroed in on Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever, 36 out of the four. Their 40 games are going to be on national tv. Even though they were quite terrible last year, they were like 13 and 27. Right.

Toby Howell
Another interesting part of that tv pie, though, is what's going to happen with local broadcast. Local broadcasters have really taken advantage of the increased attention this year. A lot of people, as we talked about in our previous story, are cutting their cable subscriptions. So some teams, like the sun and Jazz and the NBA, are broadcasting all their local games on free tv. A lot of those teams are striking.

A lot of those broadcast networks are striking similar deals with WNBA teams. So I do think a winner here are local broadcasting networks rather than just like the national broadcasting networks. And the big question is, so when are these women going to get paid more because this one viral when Caitlin Clark salary came in at $76,000. Meanwhile, Victor Wemban Yama is the number one pick for the NBA, is making more than 100 times that. And so the question is what, what's going to happen here?

Neil Freiman
And the, the big thing is that the WNB has just to make more money from its tv deals. Currently it's making $60 million a year. The commissioner wants to at least double that with negotiations with Disney in 2025. And I think she has a great bargaining chip with Caitlin Clark. Can it bring that to the table and say, hey, you know, we were worth more than 60 million.

We're going to bring a lot more eyeballs to the table for advertisers, for sponsors, for others. So it will take time for these women to get paid more. But I think it will happen if things go according to plan this year. If there's one thing this podcast needs more of its metal energy. So let's discuss the saga of a mining deal that will impact everything from the clean energy transition to your wedding ring.

Last month, australian mining giant BHP made an offer to buy England's Anglo American for $39 billion. That would be the biggest mining deal ever. And the incredibly high price tag is due to one reason and one reason only, copper. Copper is a crucial ingredient for making electric vehicles, transmission lines, AI data centers and more high tech products. And as more money pours into clean energy infrastructure, demand for copper is booming.

This week the price of the metal hit a two year high and is projected to go even higher. And luckily for Anglo, it's sitting on cushy copper mines in South America, which make it such an enticing takeover target for BHP. And it's also why Anglo rejected BHP's original $39 billion offer and then rejected BHP's revised $43 billion offer this Monday. It doesn't think this is a fair price given the upside potential of its copper reserves. Toby, we haven't seen such intense action over mines since Gandalf confronted the Balrog.

Toby Howell
No, we haven't. What you have here is this industry. Titan Anglo is over 100 years old. It's trying to figure out what to do with itself. Should it break off some of its assets, get smaller, get leaner?

Should it just accept the deal that's being presented to it? Whatever the choice is, one thing it is clear, copper is the focus going forward. Copper is the new oil. That's what the chief strategy officer at an energy company recently said on Bloomberg. He said it's the highest conviction trade I've ever seen.

Copper prices are surging everywhere you look. It's because you cannot avoid them. It is powering everything from the EV revolution, but also, like the AI revolution relies on copper as well, because transition lines and power lines are a big part of that equation. So everywhere you look, it's copper all the way down. And so that's why we're talking about, like, this relatively large mining deal right now.

Neil Freiman
When is Rory and Kitty gonna tweet about copper? I don't know what the roaring kitty equivalent is right now, but maybe. Maybe it's you and me. I tell you what. Meanwhile, there's another angle to this deal.

Also, because you mentioned Anglo is looking to shed its other part of the business. It wants to prove to shareholders that it knows what it's doing, because it's trying to block this deal and not get taken over. So it actually owns De Beers, which is this diamond mining giant, this iconic company, and it wants to spin that off or sell it, which is spooking the diamond market, which is already going through a lot of rough times right now because of inflation. Consumers are pulling back on buying diamonds. And then you have man made diamonds, which has taken up a lot of market share.

So De Beers is in this weird, liminal space right now, where its future is in doubt. It's casting this shadow over the entire diamond market, which is going through a really rough time right now. It sounds crazy to think that De Beers is this cast off, this spinoff asset, but it used to be very much associated with luxury, and it's a premium asset. But now you're right. The diamond industry has just completely shifted.

Toby Howell
One thing that might hold that up, though, is that the government of Botswana owns 15% of De Beers as well. They've had this partnerships that's gone back over half a century at this point. So that's one thing that could hang it up, because Botswana does not want to get spun off or does not want to kind of be a part of maybe another deals as it's become one of the continents richest economies on the backs of De Beer. So that's another wrinkle to yet a very wrinkled merger deal that's going down between these two companies. It could be the end of red Lobster as we know it.

At least 99 locations are being abruptly closed as of yesterday, with their entire contents, restaurant equipment, cheddar biscuits, and all, being auctioned off. That amounts to about 15% of its locations nationwide, leaving the largest seafood chain in the country looking like a shell of its former self, Red Lobster has struggled to molt and adapt to a higher interest rate world with higher material and labor costs, while still trying to claw its way out from under a significant debt load. Earlier this year, its largest investor announced it was seeking to exit its position. And back in April, it was reported that it considered filing for bankruptcy, which looks like it will happen as soon as this week. It's been an entire mess, Neil, red lobster, it's looking like it's on its last legs.

Neil Freiman
It is. I mean, but if you go back to where Red Lobster started in 1968, it was a revolution. These casual, full service dining restaurants that we know and love, the chilies of the world, where you go into the mall parking lot, they didn't exist. And Red lobster really pioneered that model, and it wrote it to great heights over the subsequent decades. Brought a lot of seafood to people in the midwest that don't really weren't able to get seafood.

But right now, it's been squeezed by these fast service casual restaurants like Chipotle Chick fil A. And then at the same time, it appears like this was horrible mismanagement all the way down. You have execs at Red Lobster blaming thai union, which took it over a few years ago, saying these people do not know how to run an american restaurant. They are a seafood distributor. And it appears like the whole point of taking red lobster over was to be able to get their seafood products into red lobsters and they cut out existing suppliers.

They also just changed up the menu with things that they didn't know what they wanted. They cut costs across the board. So there is a lot of blame to go around, including this ridiculous promotion that they did. Yeah. Focus in on the executive suite again.

Toby Howell
Between 2021, 2022, they company welcomed an entirely new lineup of executives, including new CEO, marketing officer, financial officer, the whole shebang. All of them left within two years. So you're right, like this management turnover was significant at the top. I also do want to touch on just how big a deal this was to a lot of people. I mean, you said it brought seafood to a lot of people in the midwest.

The mayor of Danville, Illinois posted a message on Facebook about the sudden closure of its city's red lobster. He said that the restaurant was closed despite ranking number 15 out of 600 for customer service. So the fact that the mayor is flaunting stats like this and took to Facebook to say, like, this is a big deal for our community, it just shows what a special place some red lobsters held within communities that don't get access to this type of food. And we can't leave this segment without talking about this promotion, which may not have doombred lobster, but it didn't really help. They unleashed this $20 all you can eat shrimp deal.

Neil Freiman
Uh, last year, they made it every single day of the week, and that led to an $11 million quarterly loss. The CEO of Thai union said, I'm never eating shrimp again because this was such a disaster. Uh, so, like, they, these promotions, uh, that they've tried to roll out to boost traffic boosted them way too much, and it was terrible for their business. And so while that wasn't the reason that they, uh, that red lobster is going through it right now, uh, it did not help. And the Wall Street Journal reported last night that red Lobster could file for bankruptcy as soon as next week.

Let's wrap it up there. Thanks so much for listening, and have a wonderful and wacky Wednesday. If you want to leave any feedback on the show or share your favorite red lobster memory, hit us up at our email morningbrewdailyorningbrew.com. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer.

Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia graham is our associate producer. Yuhenua Ogu is our technical director. Billy Menino is on audio. Hair and makeup now comes in a bundle.

Devin Emery is our chief content officer. And our show is a production of Morning brew. Great show, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.

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