November 23, 2022

Today's Topics

Hello! Whether you’re going to be relaxing with family, tucking into turkey, or getting stuck into the holiday football — we’d like to say happy Thanksgiving from all of us at Chartr HQ. Today we’re exploring:

  • Recall. Tesla's vehicles get recalled a lot, but does it matter?
  • China x Hollywood. American movies are struggling in China.
  • Turkey trends. The birds are bigger, but we're eating less of them.
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On Saturday, Tesla announced the recall of more than 321,000 vehicles over a software glitch disabling the tail lights of some cars. That came just a day after the company recalled 30,000 Model X SUVs due to problems with the front passenger airbag. This follows on from multiple issues this year, including a September recall in which more than a million Tesla vehicles were potentially affected by a problem with the powerful automatic windows.

All told, data from the NHTSA shows that Tesla’s tally of recalls this year in the US is now up to 19, with 3.8m vehicles potentially affected. That's a lot considering Tesla is not one of the largest volume manufacturers in the country. Indeed, only Ford drivers have been more heavily impacted by issues this year, with approximately 8.1m Fords caught up in the company's 63 recalls.

Update required

In fairness to Tesla, these days the word “recall” is something of a misnomer — gone are the days when vehicles always had to physically go into the repair shop. The vast majority of these recalls, including Tesla's latest, are now fixed by an over-the-air software update. That means almost no effort, or cost, is required on the part of owners to fix the issue.

"Recalls" aside, Tesla’s market value has fallen $670bn from its peak last year, a decline equivalent to losing the value of 3 Disneys or 4 Nikes. Despite that, Tesla remains the most valuable automaker in the world, worth two-and-a-half times as much as Toyota in second place.

Disney has secured a coveted Chinese theatrical release for James Cameron’s long-awaited Avatar sequel, some 13 years after the initial release of the record-breaking blockbuster smash.

The incredibly-expensive second installment, Avatar: The Way of Water, will be released next month and will need the Chinese market boost — Cameron claimed the movie needs to be the ‘third or fourth highest-grossing film in history’ just to break even.

The bronze age of Hollywood

Avatar 2 will join the pretty exclusive list of 23 American-made movies that have screened in China so far this year, with government regulators cracking down on Hollywood productions as international relations continue to strain with the US. Indeed, as reported by Bloomberg, US movies have accounted for just 10% of the Chinese box office so far this year. That's dramatically down on the 32% share in 2019 and nowhere-near the ~47% back in 2011.

Top Gun: Maverick was notably shunned in China this year as Hollywood producers included a Taiwanese flag on star Tom Cruise’s bomber jacket, for example. Avatar 2, centred around the fictional jungle moon Pandora, was clearly deemed a safer bet by Chinese authorities.

However, with COVID cases soaring in the country and more lockdowns looming, whether the movie actually makes it onto every big screen in China remains to be seen.

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Big bird season

Here’s a fact to chow down on as Thanksgiving preparations get well underway: the turkeys many Americans will tuck into tomorrow are much meatier prospects than they were in the past, with the birds now weighing nearly twice as much as they did in the 1960s.

Turkeys have been a staple of the American Thanksgiving table since the turn of the 19th century, and farmers have looked to breed the biggest birds for celebratory centerpieces ever since.

Indeed, today the average commercial turkey weighs a whopping 32.3 lbs — just under double the paltry poultry offerings of 60 years ago, which would come in closer to 17 lbs. In fact, modern turkeys are so big that they often have trouble breeding, leaving many farmers and producers reliant on artificial insemination.

Smaller appetites

Interestingly, although turkeys are getting bigger, American’s are actually eating less turkey in recent years than they have in the past. The average American now has a 15.3 lb helping of the holiday favorite per year which — whilst still amounting to nearly half a bird by modern standards — is some way off peak turkey consumption in 1996 when the average US citizen gobbled up 18.1 lbs.

Elsewhere in big turkey news: a pair of Thanksgiving birds, ‘Chocolate’ and ‘Chip’, were given the official presidential pardon on Monday — here’s a deep dive into the history of the pardoning practice.

More Data

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are looking to spearhead the streaming resistance, raising $100m for their new independent production company.

• A Google Maps deep dive on the best time to travel and shop this Thanksgiving.

• Are soccer games always this long? Breaking down FIFA’s new extra time rules that are leading to the lengthiest matches ever.

Credit Suisse expects to lose $1.6bn in the fourth quarter, as wealthier clients withdrew funds from their asset management division.

• A global panel of scientists and government authorities have decided: the leap second is being scrapped.

Hi-Viz

• The only time to use pie charts is when charting Americans' favorite pies.

• Our friends over at The Pudding have explored how where you grow up impacts your future economic success.

• Breaking down where one driver's 4,131 DoorDash deliveries came from.

Trendlines: Computer giant HP is cutting 6,000 jobs as demand for PCs slows from pandemic highs — but how sharply is demand falling? [Answer below].

Answer here.

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