Get Up! Love's Truck Stops (Noun, Not Verb) Adding EV Charging Stations -- February 4, 2021

See below: link here.

First things first: the "Michelob weekend" is here!

• PGA: first round of Waste Management begins today;
• it will be all about Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy, and Patrick Reed
• Tiger Woods will get out to fast start, fade
• Super Bowl: one day closer

Covid-19 tracker here: Link at WSJ. Number of cases dropping like a rock now that Christmas surge is more than a month behind us. States leading the list for weekly new cases:

• Florida
• Texas, #2 -- it took a long time, but Texas is finally near the top of the list
• South Carolina
• Arizona
• New York
• Oklahoma

New York: for all the whining about how they're running out of vaccine, New York has used only 62% of their supply; North Dakota leads the nation at 85%. West Virginia ties North Dakota in today's report but lagged slightly behind ND yesterday.

Minimum wage:

• Long Beach, CA, mandated grocery stores with more than 300 employees pay their workers $4/hour additional pay as "heroes" during pandemic
• Kroger: closed two stores in Long Beach, CA; says they won't pay the additional $4/hour

Speaks volumes:  Shell posts 87% earnings drop but raises dividend

Royal Dutch Shell raised its dividend despite reporting a plunge in annual earnings to the lowest in at least 15 years, as the oil industry reels from the effects of the pandemic. The company’s 2020 net income adjusted for one-off factors and cost of supply — Shell’s preferred profit measure and the one tracked most closely by analysts — fell 71 per cent to $4.8bn, from $16.5bn in 2019. That is the lowest since the company’s creation in 2005 through the unification of Royal Dutch and Shell Transport. The Anglo-Dutch oil major reported an annual loss of $21.7bn, a number that reflected a hefty post-tax impairment figure as Shell reassessed long-term energy prices and asset values in light of the coronavirus crisis and its strategy for the energy transition. That was the company’s first-ever headline loss and one of the biggest in the UK’s recent corporate history.

Even though cash flow fell 40 per cent against a year earlier and net debt rose to $75.4bn from the prior three months, Shell decided to raise its dividend for a second time in recent months. A dramatic two-thirds cut to the payout last April to 16 cents, the first since the second world war, was met with shareholder ire and the company’s share price dropped to a multi-decade low later in the year. As Shell sought to woo back investors, it raised the payout to 16.65 cents in October and has said it will again raise the dividend by 4 per cent to 17.35 cents a share in the first quarter of 2021.

I was one of those shareholders. Sold my Shell as soon as the dividend was cut last April, 2020. Dividend still pales to what it was.

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EV Trucks

I just sent a note to a reader: once I start seeing truck stops put in charging stations for E-trucks I'll start to believe the story. 

First things first: Love's Truck Stops ARE ADDING EV charging stations. Love's Truck Stops are not stopping in their initiative to add charging stations!

I guess it's time to start believing the story.

Recent news: almost none.

• knowledge gaps seen as barrier to vehicle electrification, RTO Insider; January 27, 2021;
• New York Thruway: has 39 electric vehicle charging stations at 23 locations; goal: 100 fast-charging electric vehicle stations with an average of 30 miles between each location (this sounds like charging for cars, not trucks); 100 charging stations is a drop in the bucket for what will be needed
  

Other EV news: Porsche Taycan can't stop smashing records; CarBuzz --

Porsche is no stranger to setting new records with the Taycan. In 2019, the electric sports car was crowned the fastest four-door electric car at the Nurburgring with a time of seven minutes and 42 seconds. More recently, the Taycan performed the world's longest drift, sustaining a slide for 55 minutes. And now Porsche can add another 13 new records to its long list of achievements. 

Last December, Porsche brought a Taycan 4S and a Turbo S to the Brands Hatch racing circuit in the UK, setting 13 separate records. Behind the wheel of the electric sports cars were Le Mans legend Richard Attwood, former F1 and Porsche racer Jonathan Palmer, 2020 Porsche Carrera Cup GB champion Harry King and 2020 Cayman Islands Porsche Sprint Challenge GB champion James Dorlin. 

Hydrogen? Link here.