Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - January 9th, 2026

23:35Carol Massar:Yeah, I mean, I don't know, how are you thinking about this year when it comes to the Trump White House, and especially with midterms looming. I've heard some folks say that, listen, there's a lot of pressure on the administration to get things done early in the year, because as midterms loom, there are expectations that there might be pushback against the GOP and the Trump administration. But I'm just curious what you're telling your clients. So what we've really liked is what we've been calling PROSEC, or Production for Security, and it's kind of along the lines of resilience. And that includes anything from chips, the electricity.

24:05So Intel, for example, I think there's going to be huge pressure on companies to use U.S. chip manufacturers, right? We have to break away from Taiwan. I think there's realization we're not producing enough electricity. We will deregulate. We'll get electricity in all forms running. I do think President Trump will give up on his kind of hatred of solar and adapt solar, but you're going to see solar, nuclear. I do. I think it's just... Wind is a step too far. I think wind's a step too far. He really does not like wind. He really does not like... I think there's a visceral hatred to it. Partly, I think it does destroy views.

24:34I think there's questions about its efficiencies and it does kill birds and stuff. And that seems to really bother them. So I'm not going to fight the wind. I do think on solar, house cats kill a lot of birds too. Truly. That is probably true. We had one that was very good at that. Yeah. So I think those are all the things that we can invest in. We just saw 2.7 billion going into uranium companies. So I think you can move away from the AI story and into anything that's going to be part of this building out of infrastructure. You know, you've got cat, You've got Deere, Navistar, all the heavy equipment makers.

25:03I think we're going to see real efforts to become slightly more independent.

25:07Carol Massar:Are all nations doing that? So how I see this starting is the U.S. really jumpstarted this, right? The U.S. has been all over this. I think what we're starting to see now is capital is going to follow next. So investors are starting to follow this. We talked to private equity companies who are starting to scour the universe for, hey, who's got mining rights that have been unused? Who's got some interesting patents in and around these rare earths and critical minerals? I think you're going to see, again, these huge buildouts potentially in electricity production. So it's capitalism. So globalization dead?

25:35Well, I think other countries are going to figure this out eventually that they have to do it. I think at some point, Europe's going to release like Shell and BP to actually do what they're phenomenally good at. And so far, there's still constraints. But I think everyone's adopting this. I think you have to look much closer when you're thinking about supply chains. Domestic political risk of this new world order. That's something I've been thinking a lot about, especially in an election year, because we thought that the Make America Great Again movement was really about keeping within the U.S.'s borders, not getting involved in foreign wars.

26:07The president has talked about leaving countries outside of the U.S. alone, and that's not really what we've gotten in the last few months. No, though I will say I think prior to Liberation Day and stuff, I think there was a lot of hope that we'd work very closely with Canada because Canada has a lot of things that we need that would be a big part of this. We work closer with Mexico and we kind of got away from that. So I think this starts, maybe it's just trying to reshape how these relationships work. Ultimately, I think we're going to need things like potash. We're going to need to work with Canada.

26:33But I do think, you know, they laid it out of the national security strategy and it's only 39 pages of double space. It's even I could read it. So I would recommend reading it because I think it does form this way. And we've been telling corporations for years now, and I think now we're getting a lot of incoming calls. Like we've been saying, if you are manufacturing in Thailand and Vietnam, you're not really diversified because you're going through the same shipping lanes. So I think you've got to be very careful about shipping. If you're looking at building a new plant this year, I think you want to build it in North, South America or Central America or the U.S.

27:00precisely because that's where we have a lot more control. So I think that's where corporations fall into this. And I don't want to say it's going to be us by ourselves. What I've been trying to say is I think for every single commodity or product, every country is going to have an X amount that they want to do themselves so they can be sufficient. Y, you can do with your close neighbors and then Z or Z, you just do on the open market. And I think that's going to vary by country to country, what they can do. But I think Europe's behind on this. I think the sad thing is, if I look at what we need to do in the US, you have a pretty good roadmap.

27:28Just look at China's done for the last 10 years, right? They have basically done Pro-Sec on steroids, and we're just starting to do it. But it's exciting. And I think some of it will last past an election cycle, because Biden did do the CHIPS Act, right? So Biden was not, you know, immune to like understanding this.

27:42Carol Massar:He continued a lot of President Trump in his first term, his China strategy. Right. So I think this is now truly going to replace ESG as a major policy tool, as a major way corporations think and how investors think. Right. If everything was ESG, I think where we were really is if you think about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, one probably, you know, Psych 101 proves I took it. But we were kind of at this kind of high self-actualization period. Like, what would we like sustainability to look like? But it was all based on the premise that we had the basics covered. But we don't really have the basics covered if we're dependent on China for those basics.

28:13So I think this is a pullback to say, to be truly sustainable and independent and resilient, you need to do some core level of this stuff yourself. And that's where I think we are. It's that evolution.

28:23Carol Massar:What are the implications of that in terms of cost to society, in terms of does it make things more expensive? If we're doing more manufacturing in the United States, well, labor isn't cheap here. So I'm just curious, what are the implications? What does it mean for economic growth maybe in the United States? So I think it's going to be potentially a little bit higher on some prices. So it's very good that oil and some of these energy costs are coming down. that will help on this. The flip side of that, though, is if people can go back to working for, I hate to say the word, but I'll say it, like national champions, right, where you feel that your industry, your job is important to the country, you probably go home feeling slightly safer about your job.

28:57I think there's a lot of benefits from this. We've been talking about this. Spider Marx is great. He kind of coined the phrase for us. Who is? Spider Marx. General Spider Marx. He's quite awesome. But he coined the phrase that we're in a pre-war environment. And we've always been in a post-war environment until recently. And I think pre-war sounds a little bit scary, but it's just like deterrence. If you understand that you're in a pre-war and you do the preparation properly, you deter the enemy. And I think the things that to me are really crucial about a pre-war is it creates a sense of urgency, which we're seeing, and self-sacrifice.

29:26We're speaking with Peter Scheer, head of macro strategy at Academy Securities. He joins us here in the Bloomberg Interactive Brokers Studio. Peter, you mentioned a few. We went through a little bit around the globe when we talked about Iran. We talked about Venezuela. We talked about Greenland, Cuba, Panama. What about Mexico? And what about Colombia? Have they been put on notice? I think Colombia has been put on notice. I've been much more focused on Mexico. So one of the things that we believe to some degree is we've been changing the rules of engagement with Venezuela, right? If you go back four months ago, who would have thought we would shoot a drug boat?

30:00We're now doing that. I think the world would have gone ballistic if we did that in the Gulf of Mexico or Gulf of America. Now, though, it's now standard operating procedure, right? We've attacked some of the drug facilities. I suspect that somewhere in Q1, Q2, late Q1, early Q2, we approach Mexico very seriously on the house of Sheinbaum. I'm like, we can work with you to get rid of your cartels, or we can get rid of your cartels without you. And to me, the one thing we haven't talked to, I know we've been talking about so much oil. If we can solve Venezuela's drug problem and cartel problem and Mexico, it makes both of those countries safer, more viable countries.

30:32Fewer people need to migrate out of those countries. That's what I was just going to say. So I think it fits perfectly.

30:36Carol Massar:But then in terms of drugs, maybe I'm crazy here, and I know we've only got about 40 seconds left here. What about China and fentanyl? Have we covered that? If we're talking about narco-terrorists, some might say, wait a minute. I'm looking at this more from the ability to kind of make those countries safer, where you have some ability to influence it so that people don't want to leave. A lot of people, you talk to people coming from Mexico, their choice is lead or silver. You either fight the cartel and die, or you join the cartels. Look at Venezuela, 8 million people or something have left. So I think if you can do that, and on top of that, if you cut the head off the snake, maybe the drug cartels and their activities in the U.S.

31:09do slow down.

31:10Carol Massar:So are you positive about the year? Are you upbeat? I am, actually. I'm very positive. I think, again, this build-out's going to be very interesting. The biggest risk to me is China threatening and doing something about rarest and critical minerals because we're not there yet where we need to be. Ten seconds. If President Trump wasn't in the White House again for a second term, would we be having this conversation? No, I think he actually really kind of planned ahead of this. So some of it I think we would have finally seen, because we've been talking about rarest critical minerals for years and years.

31:34We're finally realizing, the CHIPS Act realized some of this. This is what progression, how we're doing it is just stronger and more aggressive.

31:41Carol Massar:Such a great conversation. Peter Cheer over at MacroStrategy and Academy Securities. You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 p.m. Eastern. Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. Or watch us live on YouTube. Energy markets, oil specifically in focus this past week because of U.S. actions on Venezuela, culminating, as you know, in the removal of now former President Nicolas Maduro. That all just happening one week ago. Now, the U.S. did say throughout the week it would take control of oil from that country indefinitely and also split up the proceeds between the two countries.

32:20It also feels like we're talking a lot about energy demand again, both supply and demand, actually, generally, and against the backdrop of AI and the build of global data centers. So oil is one part of the conversation, Carol, certainly. And it's obviously an increasingly important part of the conversation, given what happened in Venezuela last weekend and what's going to happen moving forward. But the question about demand moving forward, not just for oil, but for energy also on our minds.

32:45Carol Massar:It's such a big part of what we've been talking about. And on that last month, Trump Media and Technology Group, the company behind Truth Social, announced a merger with TAE Technology. It's a fusion developer with plans to build the world's first utility-scale fusion power plant. This is all largely related to the power grab when it comes to the build-out of AI and those necessary data centers. Someone with thoughts on the energy market is Ken West. He's president and CEO of Honeywell Process Technology. It's formerly known as Honeywell Energy and Sustainability Solutions. We should note that conversation we had with Ken, that was last month before the U.S.

33:21takeover of Venezuelan oil. So at Honeywell, we're continuing to focus on the evolution of energy and how we can provide end-to-end solutions for our customers. In energy and sustainability solutions, we bring more than 100 years of technology across decades of development in determining how we can help solve those world's problems from originally processing some of the first gasoline to developing unleaded gasoline, and now today developing some of the new renewable fuels that are providing sustainable and affordable options for energy expansion for tomorrow. You know, we look at, and we talk about this each and every day, but the challenges that we're seeing, at least with energy production and demand here in the United States, and the grid certainly not being able to keep up.

34:10Where is the bottleneck from where you sit? You know, take a look. And first, you're absolutely right. The need on energy is greater today than it has ever been. And as we look out into the long term, we see the need just continuing to grow. You know, many forecasts would put it at anywhere from 20 to 40 percent growth over the next 20 years or so out to 2050. When we take a look at that bottleneck, it really is in being able to develop the infrastructure behind the scenes that can produce that power. And so one of the first areas that we address that challenge is really inefficiencies. And we really come together at the intersection of the technology needed to produce power, and then digital and optimization capabilities with Honeywell Forge that we use to provide sustainable and reliable solutions that allow those refineries to produce even more power than they did before.

35:03So if you take case in point, a refinery that we are able to help become 5 % more efficient, do that across 20 refineries, we've created a refinery without having to put any brick and mortar into the ground.

35:15Carol Massar:Yeah, I feel like that's, you know, Ken, the next focal point, right? Especially when it comes to the AI build out. We went to, you know, chips, the chip play and the data center play, and then it was all of a sudden like the power demands and building that out. But now I think whether it's chips, whether it's power centers, we're thinking about how to make all of this much more productive. because that will help everybody meet the energy demand. It truly is. It both meets the near-term and long-term energy demand and also does it in a way that's economically viable, which is just as important as coming up with a solution.

35:48So one of the ways that we're able to do that is by connecting to our plants. And when we create a connected plant, we're bringing in billions of data points every day. And we're connected today to more than 1 ,000 process units around the world. And we take those billions of data points and we can provide predictive potential solutions for those customers to improve reliability for tomorrow and to augment their workforce. As I travel around the world, one of the things that I clearly hear from all of our customers is a challenge in getting experienced workforce there to operate these facilities.

36:23We're able to take our connected plant solutions that run on Honeywell Forge and augment that existing workforce so we can take a control room operator that may have a few years of experience and provide them the capabilities of a control room operator that may have had 40 years of experience. That in itself allows our customers to become more efficient and continues to improve both reliability and safety of the expansion of energy. What's the payout that your sales folks have calculated here? investing in this solution up front and then the efficiencies that it creates? How long does it take to pay for itself?

36:57Many of these solutions are very fast paybacks. In fact, we have had opportunities where we can save millions of dollars in operating costs and energy costs that are going into a refinery for a very small fee that goes into our connected and engineering services. I've seen some of these be anywhere from less than a year to just a couple years of payback in some of the projects that we've provided for our customers. I'll give you a perfect example. One of the things that we've been able to do, we provide catalysts to refineries and petrochemical plants. These are key in making the chemical reaction that actually produces the induced product.

37:34When you take a look at these catalysts, they degrade over time and need to be replaced. In the past, you used to have to take a sample of the catalyst from the refinery, send it to our labs in Chicago. we would do microscopy on those samples to determine the color, the size, how much degradation has happened. Today we can do this with a digital image right on the plant. We can get an image every day and let that refinery know exactly the right day to change that catalyst over so that they can maintain reliable operations.

38:04Carol Massar:All right, that totally makes sense. The more data you have coming at you in real time, we talk about that with economic data. Hey, one of the things I wanted to ask you, Ken, Tim and I spoke with Neil Chatterjee yesterday, Chief of Governmental Affairs at Palmetto, former commissioner and chairman of the FERC, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. He was during President Trump's term, and then it carried over a little bit into President Biden's term. We talked, though, about the energy mix that's going to be needed for AI data centers, for increased manufacturing coming back to the U.S., but it's also, this is a global story.

38:35Carol Massar:What's the energy mix that you guys are planning for? And I'm curious, when it comes to carbon-based fuels, when it comes to wind, when it comes to solar, maybe coal, fusion, fission, nuclear, like help me understand what you see as the dominant energy mix going forward. Because you guys have to provide the tools to meet all of those different industries potentially. No, you're absolutely right. One thing is clear in that the world needs more energy in aggregate. And what we believe is that it's going to take a number of different potential options to be able to meet that overall demand. So we're really focused in three areas.

39:12First, we're focused on the optimization of the existing infrastructure that's there so that we can make the existing infrastructure more efficient. Second is that we see a number of transition fuels that are helping bridge that gap that we need in both the near term and long term. And LNG becomes one of those liquefied natural gas. And in fact, we've put a significant investment with two recent acquisitions, one for the liquefaction process unit that we purchased from Air Products, and the other in a company called Sundine that does pumps and compressors that are targeted at expansions in the LNG space that are helping to drive expansions in liquefied natural gas.

39:50And then the third is to broaden the entire realm of feedstocks that are available. And this not only allows responsible and sustainable expansion, but it also allows countries that may not have access to fossil fuels to also have access to the production of power and energy. This can include anything from biomass and other renewable resources. So we see it really as being across all three, and our technologies and solutions are focused at driving the entire aggregate up. Hey, Ken, just very briefly, we only have 20 seconds left with you. But geographically, the areas of opportunity for 2026 and 2027, what are they?

40:28Yeah, well, we definitely see significant new opportunities right here in the United States, and particularly in areas like the Gulf where we're seeing expansions of LNG projects. We see a need for energy security in a number of new geographies around the world where countries want to have their own access to energy. This is across areas like sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. And we continue to see growth in Asia. So I would say across our business, we really are well represented as about a third in the Americas, a third in Europe, Middle East and Africa, and a third in Asia.

41:01Carol Massar:Fascinating. Really cool stuff. I hope you'll come back because I'd love, we both would love to. This is something we talk about a lot in terms of kind of our energy transition, our energy demands and needs. Ken, thank you so much. Have a great holiday season. Ken West, President and CEO of Honeywell Energy and Sustainability Solutions. As we said, this unit is going to be renamed as Process Automation and Technology. So we'll be talking about that in the new year.

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44:17So some news. Back in December, the eVTOL maker Archer Aviation announced it had partnered with cities across the U.S. to submit multiple applications to launch initial air taxi operations. The FAA is set to review applications submitted during this initial phase of what's called the EIPP, the eVTOL integration pilot program. I'm mentioning this because it's important for a conversation with Adam Goldstein.

44:39Carol Massar:I appreciate that. There's a process to all of this, right? Yeah. Adam's the founder and CEO of Archer Aviation. It's the$5.6 billion market cap eVTOL company. He joins us from San Jose, California. You were last on with us in early November. A lot has happened since then. And I want to start with this EIPP. You've mentioned in the past plans in California, Texas, Florida, Georgia, and New York, but we don't know much beyond exclusivity in Huntington Beach, so one part of California. Have any more partnerships emerged at this point? Well, the EIPP program was put in place from an executive order from President Trump, which really was to ensure that America takes a leading position in this new advanced air mobility space.

45:21And so as an industry, we had to submit the different cities that we wanted to launch into. And those cities are being reviewed and there's discussions being had now on where the ultimate launch will take place. It's expected that five cities will ultimately get named and then ultimately will start flying later this year in the summertime period. So it's not that they're new partnerships. It's we all submitted as an industry for these individual cities. And we expect that to launch coming up here soon. Okay, can you talk a little more about partnerships that you're working on or the structure of them, what they look like, what the opportunities are?

45:57Sure. You should think about this as the industry's almost like Waymo moment, right? So we have to put these aircrafts in the air, get the local communities comfortable with them, prove that they're safe, prove that they're quiet, and really show that the technology is here and it's ready. That's really what this is all about. It's giving everybody comfort so we can have the community acceptance so we can really launch this thing forward. So, of course, we're looking at some of the biggest cities that make sense, the New York cities, the Los Angeles, those type of cities, but also cities that are really leaned in that might have some, you know, practical type of, you know, situation coming up.

46:33So, for example, the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics, where Archer was named the exclusive air taxi partner, was really in our sights. And so we did that by partnering with Huntington as a way to really put us close to the area, allow us to start flying, get to know that environment, that airspace really, really well, start to set up all the infrastructure, and then ultimately scale as we get into and closer to the Olympics.

46:57Carol Massar:All right. So let's talk a little bit about finances and money, because, you know, we certainly like to do that kind of stuff. Talk to us. The operations are generating, from what we understand, little or no revenue. What would that mean from a cash burn point of view? Because that's certainly important in terms of viability. Yeah. So if you look at the whole industry, the industry, according to pretty much any analyst, is expected to be very, very big. I think Morgan Stanley is probably the most bullish. They had a multi-trillion dollar valuation on the industry. Now, it's different than autos in the sense that there are only a few players.

47:30Like in aviation, You typically will have like a Boeing and an Airbus type of situation. So there's a couple of leading companies in the eVTOL industry. And it's likely that there's only a few companies that ultimately end up getting to market and ultimately scale to some very, very large numbers. And my guess would be larger than any one individual automaker has been, excluding Tesla, which is more of a pure AI company in my view. So you have this kind of scenario here where it's all about surviving to get through certification and then scaling into a business that's economically attractive. So that's really the goal in the game that we're playing.

48:04So we have an aircraft we've built that's become very mature. We're taking it through the certification process and ultimately going to launch it. So how are we going to launch that? We start very slowly and methodically. That's what the EIPP is about. It's a slow, methodical launch. Very similar to what Waymo did was a slow launch into these cities, gaining the acceptance. So it's really about proving those points today rather than generating revenue today. The revenue will come. There has been an overwhelming amount of inbound interest from countries all over the world that want these aircrafts there.

48:35And there's very few OEMs that actually can deliver against that. So the focus really is about the certification side.

48:40Carol Massar:No, I get it. I get it. And I'm looking, though, and I get it why you guys have a free cash flow that's negative by a lot. But I guess I'm just trying to understand from a perspective, though, as everybody's jockeying for position, what is your cash burn? And just is it manageable? Sure. So Archer is in a fortunate position where we finished the year with nearly$2 billion of cash on hand. So I think the most in the industry by a long shot. We also had lower burn than our competitors. But as we've been ramping up into, you know, closer into the certification production phase, you know, that burn does go up as we're building materials.

49:21And so we are at a very comfortable position today, but it's not something that we're sitting back and getting, you know, lazy about or getting too excited about. We are still driving every single day to make sure we can hit our timelines and actually get these aircrafts to market. So if I look at the EIPP starting in 2026, and then I look at the Olympics in 2028, we'll get certified, hopefully, sometime in between that time period. And we have plenty of cash to last us through that time period into the commercialization phase. And then ultimately, as the aircrafts are getting sold and deployed, we can start kind of reducing our cash burn and becoming, I think, a long-term viable business.

50:00What happens if you're not certified by the Olympics? Well, we also do have an international strategy as well. And so we launched last year in Abu Dhabi. We have a great relationship with the UAE. Two of the sovereign wealth funds are investors in Archer. And so we have a secondary path that we're going through in certifying those aircrafts around. And so it gives us sort of an alternate as well. But then there's the other side of the business, which is the defense business. And so we announced a partnership with Anderil. We've been working on new vertical lift aircraft with them designed for defense applications.

50:31This is the Omen autonomous air vehicle, right? The Omen is not the big aircraft that I was talking about. The Omen is a smaller drone project that Andruil has designed that we are providing the power train for. We are building a new full-scale vertical lift hybrid aircraft that's designed for defense applications that we do expect a program to get announced into the many, many billions of dollars, tens of billions of dollars type size. We're hopeful that can happen soon. But of course, that's, you know, also not within our control. Hey, Adam, you made a reference earlier in our conversation to sort of the Boeing and Airbus duopoly.

51:10And the way those companies, of course, work is they sell or, you know, they sell aircraft to the airlines and then those airlines then operate the aircraft. Are you going to be, is Archer going to be operating the aircraft in addition to manufacturing the aircraft? Or when you say you're going to sell the aircraft, who do you sell that to? Yeah, we will focus primarily on the sales side of things for the, I'll call it, you know, the early or maybe even really for the first decade, the early years of this industry. And so I think you have to earn the right to operate, meaning that is going to be a very expensive journey to operate.

51:45And so by selling the aircraft, it enables us to put, you know, production through the factory, get the pricing down to something that's very affordable for us. And ultimately, over the long term, when autonomy comes, you know, we can really then think about, you know, considering, you know, scaling our own internal airline. We will, of course, do things very small on the airlines side of things to begin with, learn that over time and grow that. So I really think it's all about sales. Now, the question that you asked is, who do we sell that to? So there's a couple of different categories, but you can think about where vertical lift aircraft exists today.

52:17So helicopters, where they're used. Hospitals, tourism, VIP is one category. And then the new category that we're going to add is really the sort of helicopter airport transfer. So we've talked a lot about that. So think like a Manhattan to Newark or a San Jose to San Francisco. Sign me up. Maybe. Really? Yeah. Yeah. If this thing is approved, I'll get in. If you think about it from a safety perspective, this is a significantly safer helicopter. That's the easiest way for you to think about that. And that's not an Adam statement or even an Archer statement. That's an FAA statement, right? We're certifying them at very high levels of safety.

52:56So, you know, from a perception, a consumer perception perspective, you know, if you were willing to take a helicopter, this is just a safer version of that. In fact, we'll be certifying that levels similar to the big commercial airliners. All right. So I have to first get ready to be willing to take a helicopter. Just before we let you go, the cost that you would get this to once it is certified per unit, what are you thinking? So our goal is to get the cost of the aircraft down to two and a half million. We sell that. That's the target price. And when you do the math and translate that through to the end user cost, where the operator can make money, you get down to prices that are similar to the high end of rideshare.

53:37So think like Uber Black. So that's really what we're targeting. And that can be achieved through volume, of course. And so that's not going to happen year one. That's going to take several years to get there. And so we think once you sort of get across the 500, 600, 700 aircraft units, you can get these aircrafts to something that becomes very affordable. It even looks cheaper than rideshare and ultimately can become a mass-scaled product.

53:58Carol Massar:So you're talking maybe like a ride from Midtown to LaGuardia that would cost maybe under$100? Similar to like a rideshare type of price. So if you think like Manhattan to JFK, Uber Black, that probably costs you$150,$200. So somewhere around those type of prices. All right. Looking forward to it. Good stuff. Adam, stay in touch. We love getting the updates from you. Adam Goldstein, founder and CEO of Archer Aviation, joining us. You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 p.m. Eastern. Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business App or watch us live on YouTube.

54:37All right.

54:38Carol Massar:Plenty of luxury and innovation on the road in 2025, But only one, only one gets the crown and can stand out as the absolute favorite for our Bloomberg News auto columnist, Hannah Elliott. Her top pick, a$200 ,000 Mercedes-Benz hybrid. It's a car with an 805 horsepower hybrid V8 engine, agile all-wheel drive and useful back seats. Hannah joined us from the perfect place to talk about cars, a garage in downtown L.A. Yes, yes, this is a garage in downtown L.A. in rainy L.A. And it's kind of the perfect spot to talk about cars, I have to say. I think it's perfect. So first of all, talk to us about the year that was.

55:20Carol Massar:I mean, you cover really that high end, that luxury space. What kind of year was it? For luxury cars, it was a great year. That's kind of the theme from 2025. The fact that we have seen luxury sales become a bigger portion of overall car sales for the year. And that means cars above$50 ,000. You know, earlier this fall, the average new price of a car beat$50 ,000 for the first time ever. And luxury cars and electric vehicles did have something to do with that. I have to say my favorite car of the year, though, was a hybrid, which is also a big theme. If we want to get into it, we can get into it.

56:03It's a Mercedes AMG 63 SE Performance.

56:09Carol Massar:Awkward name, but it's a great car. It's a hybrid. All-wheel drive V8, over 800 horsepower. I really loved it, but it also touches on the theme of the year, which is hybrids are doing really well, surprisingly. I got to ask you, though. Did you have range anxiety at all? No, not at all. That's one of the best things about the hybrid. You know, EVs have, as everybody knows, you know, have slowed a little bit. We've lost incentive, et cetera, et cetera. And hybrids in particular have really filled that space. And that's just the thing. You don't have range anxiety. You get all of the performance.

56:45You get better fuel efficiency, but you still get to use the car like you do, quote unquote, a normal car. And I think that still does matter for a lot of consumers. Not all hybrids are created equal. What's the experience driving this hybrid? I think people have the idea of a hybrid. You know, it's like at low speeds, it uses the electric motor, or maybe it turns off when you get to a stoplight, that sort of thing. What's the experience driving this hybrid? It is phenomenal. It's so, it's such a fast car. It's such a powerful car. This car is faster than the Ferrari Amalfi that I drove earlier in the year.

57:21Carol Massar:And it's not, this isn't anything to say against the Ferrari at all. The Ferrari is a great car too. But this Mercedes is less expensive, more powerful, faster, and it's a hybrid with better gas mileage. It's a$200 ,000 car. That's a lot of money. But when you're talking about this level of performance, it's a good value. You get a lot of bank for your buck. And to answer your question, Tim, it drives incredibly. It's so fun. How does the hybrid work, though? Does it work as a supplement? Does the gas engine supplement, like how does it work? Exactly. You can switch off between them. You can choose which mode you want to drive in.

58:04If you want to drive in electric only mode, you can do that. You can share electric and gas, or you can go just for gas too. If the battery is done for that drive and you don't want to do it anymore, you can pick, which is also great. There are lots of options.

58:19Carol Massar:You can save the hybrid if you want and use it, you know, if you want to, like when you're leaving early in the morning and you don't want to wake your neighbors, you can stealthily leave your driveway quietly. When you're sneaking around. Yeah, I mean, yeah, we're not going to say that, but sure, it gives you options and that's what I really love about this car. You know, you said it was a great year for the luxury market. And I always do wonder, Hannah, you know, do high end luxury car buyers, do they want to have in their collection, if you will, an EV or a hybrid that is, you know, that kind of matches or meets with the rest of their collection, if you will?

58:58Carol Massar:That's a great question. And I think the jury is still out on that. We are seeing that for high-end EVs, the really expensive ones, people are not buying them. And I think that's because of a combination of factors. But what we're really seeing is hybrids are attainable, accessible, they're desirable. The high-end EVs, people aren't wanting as much. I just think they don't have to buy people don't have to buy them. So we're not, you know, that's kind of what it comes down to. There's so many options. And it's nice to feel a little bit virtuous about driving an electric vehicle. But let's not forget, they're a little bit politically polarizing.

59:41Now, there are lots of other factors involved. So the jury's still out, and it'll be very interesting to see what happens in 2026, because there's a lot of change happening. And EVs, at the end of the day, haven't taken off as quickly as we thought they might.

59:59Carol Massar:Yeah, interesting to see even in my own family. It's not an EV, but it was a hybrid that somebody bought, you know, my sister and her husband. Hey, I want to ask you about kind of the ones to watch in 2026. You have another great story on the Bloomberg HANA. You talk about some of the brands such as Tesla, Lucid and Porsche struggling in 2025 for some different reasons. We talked about Tesla big time with Ross Gerber earlier. Take us through what you're kind of watching for 2026. OK, I'm watching two brands that I'm actually very excited about, Audi and Cadillac. And I admit a big reason is because both of them are joining Formula One in 2026, Which means that there's going to be so much hype and excitement and just thrill behind both Audi and Cadillac.

1:00:45It also means they're going to be pushing so hard to be sexy, glamorous, relevant. They've both got new product coming out that will sort of coincide with this big push into motorsport for each of them. Each of them have motorsport backgrounds, but F1 is a completely different level, of course. So I'm really looking forward to it. And Audi in particular has said, and this touches on another theme for the year, that they're going to go back to some simplicity inside their cars. And that might also mean some analog touches. It's not just about having a bunch of screens in the car.

1:01:22Carol Massar:Thank God. Yeah, that's going to be, we're going to see more of that. Mercedes has done that as well. And so has Ferrari. The automakers are listening to consumers who are saying, we don't want tech just for tech's sake. We would like some analog touches that make the car still feel engaging for a human. Audi is taking that to heart. They've said they're going to be doing that with some of their new product. So I'm watching Audi and, of course, Cadillac just because we've got an American F1 racing team now. So not that Haas doesn't count, but we've got another one. So those are the two that I'm really excited about.

1:01:58Does it matter still for selling cars that these are F1 teams? I say yes. Why? There are some people who, because all news and marketing and glamour can only reflect well on the brand. And I think a rising tide lifts all ships. If your brand is doing well on the track and is involved with all of these celebrities and really cool people who are at F1 races, we've got three F1 races in the US now, that can't help but elevate the brand just in general across pop culture. When you've got Jay-Z and Beyonce at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, F1 is transcending pop culture and just culture in general. And it can't do anything but help boost brand awareness, which I think does in turn lead at least to people coming in to the dealer and looking at cars.

1:03:00Carol Massar:And that's ultimately what you want. That's Hannah Elliott, Bloomberg News auto columnist. All right. So it makes us wonder for how many years, right, over the last few years, we've been talking about everybody all in on EV. And we know it's changed a little bit, right? It's changed a lot. Having said that, BMW is going to unveil three new electric vehicles in India as the German carmaker looks to grow its already dominant share of the luxury segment in the world's third largest auto market. So, you know, when we think about the car market, it's global. We think about what's going on in the US, but as you and I know, and we've had conversations with global leaders, what's going on in Europe and in the emerging world, especially when it comes to EV, it's kind of a different story.

1:03:38Yeah, it is. This is all part of a push to have EVs account for a quarter of BMW sales in the South Asian nation. That's this year, up from 21 % last year. This, according to Hardeep Singh Brar, president and CEO of BMW's India business, BMW sold about 18 ,000 units in 2025. It's already close to that goal. EVs made up about 23 % of the sales for the three months that ended December 31st.

1:04:04Carol Massar:And I think what's interesting is BMW has really withstood the high profile entry of Tesla into the Indian market a few months back. They've talked about the company that is BMW, about their rising EV volumes and faster overall growth in the December quarter. So the EV market in India, some perspective, small but growing rapidly. And it is bringing in and attracting big time those global players such as Tesla, BYD, and VinFast who are seeing sluggish demand elsewhere. So it kind of goes against growth in global EV sales, which is expected to slow this year as China winds down some subsidies. Europe waivers on its phase out of combustion engines and US producers and policymakers make a U-turn from this EV segment.

1:04:44But these are expensive cars, especially in a country like India, which has an emerging middle class, but certainly not on par with what you see in other nations. Listen to this, for example. The average selling price of BMW's EVs in India is close to 6 million rupees. That's about$66 ,600. Oh, my God. Similar to the starting price for Tesla's Model Y standard range. Both companies face the hefty 100 % tariff on vehicles they import to the country. This is for a small number of very wealthy people in the country.

1:05:21Carol Massar:Listen, that's a high price. in the U.S. market. So you think about that. Yeah, this is what's going to, you know, everybody keeps talking about a cheaper EV model. It sounds like China's doing it. So it does sound like global automakers in general need to get a little bit more aggressive when it comes to that. You can read more. Just check out all of these stories. Top auto on the Bloomberg. Still to come on Bloomberg Business Week, gold cheaper than platinum? The rare pricing value that has watch collectors and investors talking. This is Bloomberg.

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1:08:45Carol Massar:2025 was an excellent year for watches with major debuts and innovation. Keep in mind a story out on the Bloomberg, too, that prices in the secondary market for luxury timepieces rose to the highest in more than two years, boosted primarily by demand for dress watches favored by celebrities like Taylor Swift. Brands at every price point began to embrace bold color and shapes. A trend of stone dials and design forward watches inspired by the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, so writes Bloomberg Pursuits editor-at-large Chris Rauser. And watch lover. Timepiece lover. Timepiece lover, sorry. Chris joins us here to talk about the best watches of 2025, along with Felix Salmon, who's Bloomberg News senior writer for ideas and culture.

1:09:25Welcome. I have a watch.

1:09:27Carol Massar:A watch. Oh, okay. Felix should tell you briefly about the name of his watch. Oh. Yeah. My watch is called the Felix Salmon. How did that happen? Chris, how did that happen? Well, it's a salmon-collar dial. So literally. We're just jumping right into it. The watch is the Felix, as far as I know. It's this tiny micro brand in Austria called Hubring Squared. And their entry-level watch is called the Felix. And it comes in black, white, and salmon. So this is the Felix salmon. Would you have bought it if it weren't the Felix salmon? No. Did you buy salmon because of it? But it is a very important watch.

1:10:03Carol Massar:It's a cute watch. I do like the watch. And it has a colorful dial, which is one of the biggest trends from this past year, which was very fun for me because, you know, we talk a lot about watches that are very complicated. and you look at it and it doesn't look so exciting, but they're like, no, inside, it's doing all of these things. And I like that. But sometimes it's just great to wear a watch where you walk by and someone who doesn't know anything about watches is like, whoa, that's cool, what is that? Hence the avocado watch? Hence the avocado watch, which I am not wearing. I was looking at your wrist.

1:10:31Because I broke it yesterday. Is there any sort of warranty? There is a warranty, so it's fine. I was not upset, but it bounced off my hand as I was trying to put on the strap and the crystal crack. So I couldn't wear it, unfortunately. But I will wear it for you guys.

1:10:46Carol Massar:I was hoping. The Studio Underdog Avocado is one of this really cool British brand's fruit-themed watches. So they have pineapple and they have watermelon. And they do these drops and you have to wait and pounce just to buy it. Because they only make a couple hundred of them. Are they the Supreme of watches? They don't do a ton of partnerships, which is what I think of Supreme as being what people really want. But yeah, they are. There's like a lot of brands, some brands, indie brands do these big drops. And Studio Underdog did one at this watch fair in New York. And when I went, there were like lines around.

1:11:23They had these red carpet lines around the fair and you got a ticket and people who didn't get the tickets were so mad. Anyway, Studio Underdog, very cool. So can I actually get something like this or one of these or a variation of this without actually going and waiting in Lindo's store? They do drops every like six months or so. And they have a permanent collection of cool, colorful watches. And it's not impossible to get them when they do the drops. The reason I'm asking specifically about this one is because I would venture to say this is probably the one that's most within my price range.

1:11:51Yeah, they're usually like$675.

1:11:53Carol Massar:Yeah, I love these. Okay, where else do we go? Well, so a huge trend from last year and a bit the year before and going into this coming year are precious stones or semi-precious stone dials. which means dials that are turquoise or malachite or tiger's eye or something even more strange or random that you've never heard of. And sometimes those can be very, very expensive because the big brands do them. But there's also cheap versions. So I picked out this Baltic pink Prismic watch, which is very cool. It's pink albite, but pink dial watches are very cool right now. Rolex makes one that everybody wants.

1:12:25But you can get this one for about$1 ,600, which is way less expensive than the Rolex. If I could get any watch on this list, it would probably be the Warhol-esque watch that's on there. That's pretty cool. Yes, that is very cool.

1:12:36Carol Massar:Very interesting of you. So Andy Warhol was a watch person, and he had about seven Piaget watches. And he liked this style, which is like this big, chunky, semi-ovoid style. It used to be called the black tie. Now it's called the Andy Warhol. And Piaget, the brand, has a partnership with the Andy Warhol Foundation. And so they make the watches together. And these are more expensive. They're like$78 ,000, and they're limited. But they're very cool. Interesting watch, but I think my daughter did some artwork like that. Okay. Oh, here we come. I mean, like, my child could do that. You know you're not really in the luxury balance.

1:13:12Okay, Murphy Brown.

1:13:13Carol Massar:Out, out, out. Where shall we go next? Well, you know, I have to say there was one watch this year that we wrote about in Business Week that I really like, which is a new version of the Chanel J12 watch, which is an all-ceramic watch. Chanel was really out in front on making these all-ceramic watches. People don't always regard Chanel as being like a serious watchmaker because it's a fashion brand. But the movements inside are Kinesi. It's solid watchmaking. And this year, they've only made the watch in black or white, like all white, including the bracelet, or all black. And this year they made it in a beautiful dark blue.

1:13:45And I got very excited about it. And Felix came over to me at my desk and said, I'm sorry, I just want to be clear on this. What's exciting about this watch is that it's blue. and I was like, yeah, God, Felix, duh. Don't you get it?

1:14:00Carol Massar:Have you not met Chris Rouser? Yeah. I remember when it came out in white and then everyone got very excited that it came out in black and now I guess we have to get excited again. This is many years later. It was like 20 years before they had another color. It's just a beautiful color. It wears really well. And now, you know, some of the watch people who sort of poo-pooed that model over the years because it was a fashion watch are coming around to respecting it. Because it's blue. because it was always been a good watch but it helps that it's blue perhaps that's a perfect segue to talk about colors of watches versus metals of watches yeah and about one of felix's recent stories that i would argue is finally we're valuing watches the correct way just the metal that's on your wrist nothing else well it's super interesting that there's a huge number of gold watches out there from like third tier brands or brands that don't have a lot of resale value which are genuinely trading for their meltdown value because gold has become so expensive it's well over four thousand dollars an ounce now if you have a watch with a gold bracelet that is likely to have five six seven ounces of gold in it you do the math it's you know that's way more than the watch would be worth just as a watch and so yeah i think a lot of these watches are actually being melted down and turned into gold.

1:15:20Carol Massar:I love that you kind of went through, though, because I think as a world we think about platinum and being that as the top, and yet you kind of... Because it was for a good part of history. It was for a good, right. But now, as gold on a per-ounce basis is worth roughly twice as much as platinum, and gold has been worth more than platinum for well over a decade. So the idea that you get a gold card and you want an upgrade, you get a platinum card, But that still works in your mind that platinum is like a higher level. But in terms of actual value, it hasn't been true for a long time. So go ahead, Chris.

1:15:56No, Felix points out that there's this like sort of ephemeral ideas like, yes, like the gold. Now I'm platinum on delta, but also platinum is heavier. So it feels it has a sense of feeling more weighty. It's harder to work with. And that's a lot of, you know, a lot of watch people talk about like, oh, it's so hard to work with. I'm just going to come out and say that platinum, like no human being can tell the difference between the weight of gold and the weight of platinum. They're right next to each other on a periodic table. Platinum is a lot heavier than white gold because white gold has a bunch of extra, I believe the technical term is umskja in it that isn't gold.

1:16:29But yeah, the piece that I wrote was really about let's compare a white gold watch to a platinum watch mainly because they just look the same. And I remember before I even wrote this piece, I went up to Chris. I'm like, I'm right about this, right? They look the same. Yeah, they're exactly the same. I mean, you have a picture of the two versions of Rolex's Day-Date watch in this piece. To me, they look completely indistinguishable. Talk about the difference in prices, at least on the primary market, and then we can get into the secondary market. Secondary market, weirdly, is kind of also the same.

1:17:00They don't really trade any different on the secondary market. Platinum is$68 ,000. The gold is$51 ,000. Yeah, exactly.

1:17:07Carol Massar:$51 ,000. Six, yeah. So, okay, so in terms of the value of the metals, though, what's the difference there? Platinum has just increased quite a lot over the past few weeks. But roughly speaking, there's twice as much metal value in the gold watch than in the cheaper watch than there is in the more expensive one. Is it just sacrilegious to talk about watches this way, Chris? No, this is so interesting. And when Felix brought this up to me, I was like, you know, I have a lot of these, like, ingrained, like, sort of prejudices about why things are priced the way they're priced. And it was so interesting to go into it and really look at it.

1:17:40And in terms of value for what you're getting. And I think a lot of people just don't think about it that way. And I think it's actually valuable and instructive to think of it that way. And honestly, there's a lot of things in the watch business that people just sort of do in pricing. Because pricing is based on perception, obviously. And maybe it's time to look at that. So the way I think about these watches in particular is that you have the metal. and then you have something that I call Rolexness. You know, that you're buying the brand, you're buying the day date, you're buying the history or whatever, the marketing.

1:18:15The value of the metal plus the Rolexness is the value of the watch. That doesn't work because the amount you're paying for the Rolexness is twice as much in the platinum watch than it is in the gold watch. And the Rolexness surely, Chris, is the same in both cases. Yes. And the Rolexness really is how it makes you feel to wear it. this watch is unusual because it's the it's identical but in other models of the brand there's certain tells where you can tell it's platinum from looking from afar so they have like an ice blue dial that only exists on platinum watches which means if you see that and you're a rolex person you know oh that person paid a lot more for that watch than someone else who's wearing the watch we should mention that the day date has its own like if you know you know thing which is that not only does white gold look exactly the same as platinum but both of them look exactly the same as steel Rolex just doesn't make a steel day date if it did it would be a lot cheaper but that's one of those things that if you see the day of the week at the top of the Rolex then you know it's precious metal you make the point Felix in the piece that the color gold to some people it's not as attractive necessarily as the silverish color of platinum or white gold and there's this idea that it's polarizing to some people.

1:19:31There are definitely people who just like, I don't like wearing gold. But let's put this in context. Gold jewelry, like yellow gold jewelry, is orders of magnitude more popular than platinum or white gold. It is the baseline from which everything else is just an afterthought.

1:19:49Carol Massar:It's just fascinating, though. Like, I think about, I know we have to wrap up, but like, I go back to like the 50s when my parents got married. Like, she had a platinum, like platinum rings. Oh, yeah. There were certain eras where you wanted things to be in platinum. Well, when Cartier started using platinum in the early teens, it became everything. Everything was based on platinum. And now I will say gold watches, all gold watches are becoming the thing that people sort of want, even though it's pretty gaudy. You know what I really want to know? But that's the era we live in. Yes, that's true.

1:20:18We just had a whole segment on watches are getting gaudier. Yes, that's true.

1:20:22Carol Massar:Are you going to buy a new watch this year? I mean, don't tell my husband. that's a yes maybe I think he'll probably find out Felix are you buying a new watch this year? I was telling Chris I'm thinking about buying a watch as a present for a friend of mine but again this seems to be one of these things that exists only in influencer world on TikTok and I'm going how do I find this thing? We can get it Chris has people I have people A big thank you to Felix Salmon and Chris Rauser Felix is Bloomberg News Senior Writer for Ideas and Culture. Chris Rauser, Bloomberg Pursuits Editor-at-Large. And that wraps up our weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio.

1:21:02Carol Massar:Thank you so much for joining us. Check out our Bloomberg Business Week show Monday through Friday, starting at 2 p.m. Wall Street time on Bloomberg Radio and on Sirius XM Channel 121. You can also watch our daily broadcast on YouTube. Just search Bloomberg Global News. We're simulcast on Bloomberg Originals, available at Bloomberg.com slash Originals, and streaming platforms including Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Samsung TV Plus, and more. Have a good and safe weekend, everybody. I'm Carol Masser. And I'm Tim Stenevich. This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Available on Apple, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts.

1:21:35Listen live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 p.m. Eastern on Bloomberg.com, the iHeartRadio app, TuneIn, and the Bloomberg Business app. You can also watch us live every weekday on YouTube and always on the Bloomberg Terminal.

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