Your Cybertruck mockery won’t shatter Tesla bulls

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Today's Agenda

Tesla's wacky new truck is mainly meant to haul Tesla's stock.
Democrats now face tough choices on impeachment.
Immigration is Canada's secret weapon against the shorts.
New York should charge $6,000 a year for parking.

Tesla's Cybertruck Shatters Expectations, Internet

You can call Tesla Inc. pontiff Elon Musk many things, but you can't call him overly cautious. Last night he rolled out a new electric truck, called the Cybertruck, that appeared to have been designed in Microsoft Paint by my nine-year-old self about five minutes before the presentation. It promptly overloaded the Internet with mocking comparisons to DeLoreans and very old video games.

Even worse, Musk had a guy chuck stuff at the truck's windows to prove how shatterproof they were — and the guy promptly shattered them.

It's that classic Elon Musk combination of hubris and lack of forethought that makes him so endlessly entertaining.

Tesla's die-hard fans will almost certainly overlook this latest bit of goofballery, as they have all the others, writes Liam Denning. In fact, though the stock dipped 6% today, the Cybertruck's existence signals to Tesla bulls that Musk & Co. are still hard at work figuring out new ways to justify Tesla's nosebleed valuation. They could question whether the stock price should "drive strategy and operations, rather than the other way around," as Liam writes. But where's the fun in that?

Further Car & Driver Reading: American drivers just keep getting older, as The Youngs hold off on buying cars and getting licenses. — Nathaniel Bullard

Impeachment Analyst Ratings: Sell Removal

Last week, when impeachment hearings began in the House, this helpful newsletter advised you to watch President Donald Trump's approval ratings for signs the proceedings were having an impact. It's been only nine days, but so far the verdict is … not so much.

Per FiveThirtyEight's polling average, 41.9% of Americans approve of Trump's performance today, up from 41% nine days ago. So the president's remarkably resilient (though still remarkably low) approval rating is unmoved. More important, Republicans in Congress are also unmoved. Even supposedly persuadable moderate Representative Will Hurd of Texas said he won't vote for impeachment. Further, much further to the right — no, keep going … keep going, almost there — is Devin Nunes, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, who spent most of his valuable time during the hearings giving a guided tour of the fever swamps of far-right conspiracy theories, Jonathan Bernstein notes. This might have frightened and confused Dems and independents watching, but it kept right-wing media fed with fresh takes that helped solidify Trump's standing among Republican voters.

And therein lies the problem for Democrats: Sure, their hearings offered further solid proof of Trump withholding valuable stuff from Ukraine to get it to smear Joe Biden. Clearly impeachable, unacceptable behavior. And yet this message apparently didn't bleed through to any swing voters on Team MAGA, if such people exist. This leaves Dems with two unappealing possible outcomes, writes Jonathan Bernstein in a second column: They can press ahead with impeachment despite an inevitable GOP acquittal in the Senate, which will make Trump feel vindicated and literally unimpeachable. Or they can drop impeachment and … make Trump feel vindicated and literally unimpeachable.

Further Impeachment Reading: Fiona Hill's testimony contained a warning that Democrats risk playing into Russia's hands when they call Trump a Russian asset. — Eli Lake

Canada Keeps Owning the Shorts

It's rare to hear money managers admit they've been beaten, but Jared Dillian confesses he's just about ready to throw in the towel on selling Canada short. Like many others in stock and currency markets, Jared thinks our neighbors to the north will eventually succumb to bubbly housing prices and debt levels. And yet Canadian asset prices just keep stubbornly rising, and Jared thinks he knows why: Canada's liberal immigration policies. Canada throws open its doors to new arrivals, a proven strategy for keeping an economy vibrant, even if it brings some political headaches. America seems to be forgetting that.

Free Parking Is the Best Deal in New York

Every single thing about having and driving a car in New York City is beyond awful. But it's pretty cheap, at least on the surface, assuming you're willing to endure the hell of finding and curating on-street parking spaces. Because those are free, which helps explain why they are so hard to find. But "free" is not the same as "cost-free," notes Justin Fox, who points out that huge percentages of the cars clogging the streets and choking the air in New York are just looking for parking spots. He does some calculations and figures the city could save itself a lot of these costs by charging for street parking. Less than a dollar per hour, or $6,000 per year, would do the trick, in his estimation.

Telltale Charts

Thanks to lax regulation, climate change and more, fine-particle air pollution is rising again, hurting the development of children around the world, writes Noah Smith.

After years of drinking from a firehose of cash, shale frackers are having a harder time raising capital these days, writes Liam Denning, suggesting consolidation is finally coming to this beaten-down industry.