Grounded

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AUTO
UK can’t stand the Musk as Tesla sales dive

UK Tesla sales this month are nearly half of what they were last year, despite a 28% rise in industry sales. Tesla says it’s due to factory issues. A cynic might say it’s because former liberal darling Elon Musk became Donald Trump’s favourite court eunuch political advisor. No longer, though. Anyway:

Spill the goss, girlfriend

• Tesla sold 3,244 EVs in May 2024

• But just 1,758 in May 2025.

After we finish crying, we must ask: but why? 

Capitalism + political activism

Tesla says it’s because they’d sold all their stock of the Y Model cars and their Berlin-based factory hadn’t built all the new ones. 

But half of Brits say they wouldn’t buy a Tesla because they think Musk is the end of a rather annoying bell.

And cheaper models, flooding in from China, are also more popular, particularly in Europe. 

What are we buying instead? 

Volkswagen and BMW are driving EV sales. But Chinese alternative, Build Your Dreams (BYD), is ramping up fast. 

• BYD sold 1,388 EVs in the UK last month

• Doubling their sales in the meantime

• Even though it’s being sued by the Brazilian government for using slaves to build its factories. 

That’ll show Musk, the capitalist pig. 

Viva la revolution, and all that.

Tesla sales are also declining across Europe

Aside from Norway, curiously, where the new Y Model has been delivered to. 

Perhaps Tesla is right: UK sales might increase once the new model is delivered. Regardless:

Idealism is all well and good, chaps, but have you seen my nice new car?

AVIATION
Wizz Air is grounded

Wizz Air’s profits fell 62% in 1 year because one-fifth of their planes didn’t take off. Which is a problem for a company that makes money from planes doing the opposite. 

What’s going on? 

• Wizz Air made €167.5 million this year (down from €437.9 million the year before). 

• Plus, their two big markets - Israel and Ukraine - aren’t exactly travel hotspots at the moment. 

It’s a rather rum situation, all told, because:

Airlines lease planes, not own them

A fun fact to impress your friends, co-workers and romantic liaisons. 

Wizz Air leases a fleet of 206 Airbus A320 planes, with very temperamental Pratt & Whitney engines. Each costs the company $400,000 a month. Which means they’re losing a king’s ransom every day a plane is grounded.

In short, if you’re worried about plane delays on your looming holidays, just check if you’re travelling on an A320… 

JOBS
Fully automated finance bros

Finance professionals, worried about their 3% drop in pay, are hurriedly developing tech skills to save themselves from the abattoir of economic change. 

What’s going on? 

• UK finance salaries dropped 3%

• So now the average salary is £102,300 (the poor lambs)

• 90% of them think developing tech skills is going to save their pay. 

Perhaps it will. Because:

Finance is now fuelled by AI

The UK’s financial sector is the most productive part of the economy. 

• It’s three times higher than the rest of the economy

• Gave £110 billion in taxes to the government. 

One report found that finance leaders are scaling AI incredibly fast - 75% of financial institutions are already using it. 

NEWS BITES
This just in…

• 📊 🤦 The ONS incorrectly stated the inflation rate leading up to April, owing to a miscalculation of the Vehicle Excise Duty data. The statisticians got inflation wrong by 0.1%, which should surely be an offence punishable by walking the plank. This comes after the ONS came under fire in May for getting it wrong about employment rates. Silly sausages. 

• 💼 📱 Fintech darling Wise is the latest company to leave London in favour of New York. Its main listing will be in NY now, the arrant traitors. The CEO wants more liquidity (which the LSE lacks) and more American investors (bigger wads of cash). 

• 🇬🇧 🙃 Confidence in the UK economy is lower than it was in 2015. Barclay’s study, based on billions of transactions, found that 66% of Brits pay closer attention to their budget now, and (roughly) half of us don’t feel better off than a decade ago. Weirdly, consumer confidence was at its highest just after Brexit, in 2016. That might be because half of the electorate thought it was a good idea.

• 🕵️ 🔏 Reddit lets you hide your posts now, which means all my Flat Earth theory stuff from 10 years ago won’t harm my budding political career anymore, huzzah! Reddit says the update introduces a ‘Content and Activity’ setting that lets users decide which subreddit content they participate in will appear on their profiles. You can find it under the ‘Curate your profile’ section. 

• 📰 ✨ WH Smith is changing its name after being sold to the private equity firm Modella in a £76 million deal. Now, all its high street stores will change their name to TG Jones. You have been warned. Closely monitor the reactions of people waking from comas.

• 🟢 🔌 Green hydrogen has successfully fuelled UK construction sites in a trial using solar panels and hydrogen fuel cells connected to a battery. Since January, they reduced CO2 emissions by 53,000 kg (that’s 90 round-trip flights between Helsinki and Munich).