Raphael Stevens

Auto brands Jeep, Ram Trucks and Fiat are partnering with U2 frontman Bono’s (RED) organization to offer special-edition vehicles, aimed at raising more than $4 million to fight against health crises.
The vehicles will include “(RED)” editions of the Jeep Compass and Renegade small SUVs, Ram 1500 pickup and, for Europe, an electric version of the Fiat 500.
The tie-up is the latest for (RED), which has formerly partnered with Amazon, Apple, Beats and Starbucks.

Bono at the 2016 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
David A. Grogan | CNBC

Jeep, Ram Trucks and Fiat are partnering with U2 frontman Bono’s (RED) organization to offer special-edition vehicles, aimed at raising more than $4 million to fight against health crises.
The vehicles will include “(RED)” editions of the Jeep Compass and Renegade small SUVs, Ram 1500 pickup and, for Europe, an electric version of the Fiat 500, which Stellantis previously discontinued in the U.S.

Money from the sale of the vehicles will support the Global Fund, which began operations in 2002 to end the epidemics of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. It has since expanded to include aid for the coronavirus pandemic.
The automaker declined to say how much profit from each vehicle sale will go toward the organization.
The tie-up is the latest for (RED), which has formerly partnered with Amazon, Apple, Beats and Starbucks. It also adds to the list of collaborations for Olivier Francois, chief marketing officer of the company, formerly Fiat Chrysler and maker of Jeep, Ram and Fiat vehicles. He has become known for convincing brands such as Gucci and celebrities like Eminem, Bill Murray and Bruce Springsteen to partner or advertise for the automaker.

2022 Jeep Compass (Red) edition
Source: Stellantis

“As the first automotive brands ever to join forces with (RED), a leader in the worldwide fight against pandemics, our immediate goal is to initiate a call to action to help combat these global health emergencies, including COVID-19 relief efforts,” Francois said in a release.
Bono, co-founder of (RED), called the partnership with the automaker “a power shot in the arm” for the organization’s “fight against pandemics and the complacency that fuels them.”

“I’m here to sell an idea that unless this pandemic is defeated everywhere, no one is safe anywhere,” Bono said during a news conference on top of Fiat’s former headquarters in Turin, Italy. “I’m not sure it’s clear that people realize that it’s not an act of charity to get vaccines out to people who live on the other side of the world, it’s enlightened self-interest.”

2022 Ram 1500 (RAM)RED Edition
Stellantis

The Jeep Compass and Fiat 500 are red in the color of the (RED) organization’s logo. The Ram 1500 is black with red badging and accents. All of the vehicles feature other red characteristics and special (RED) badging.
(RED), named for the color of emergency, is not a nonprofit. It is an organization created by Bono and activist Bobby Shriver in 2012 to engage companies to donate and raise awareness for its causes.
(RED), which has been criticized for financial transparency and partnering with companies that could have easily offered to donate funds, reports it has generated nearly $700 million for the Global Fund, helping more than 220 million people.

2022 Jeep Compass (Red) edition
Source: Stellantis

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Lilac Solutions is raising $150 million from investors including Lowercarbon Capital and T. Rowe Price.
The 35-person start-up developed an alternative, and more sustainable, method for extracting lithium, a key ingredient in electric car batteries.
“We don’t think California, New York or Joe Biden will hit their electric vehicle goals without a technology like this,” said Clay Dumas, a partner at Lowercarbon.

Dave Snydacker is CEO and founder of Lilac Solutions, a lithium extraction startup based in Oakland, California.
Courtesy: Lilac Solutions Inc.

As consumers, we rely on lithium-ion batteries to power everything from smartphones to electric vehicles. Demand is soaring, and automakers can’t secure partnerships fast enough to keep up.
That presents an economic challenge today. But the longer-term problem is that lithium extraction has potentially severe environmental consequences. To get lithium in volume requires either mining it from hard rock or evaporating it from subsurface brines, which are essentially saltwater ponds in the desert.

Cars are going electric, and politicians are trying to make it happen faster. President Joe Biden is aiming for half of all new passenger vehicle sales in the U.S. to be electric by 2030, and California and New York have taken steps to effectively ban the sale of new gasoline-powered cars in a matter of years.
That all requires more batteries, and climate-concerned engineers in Silicon Valley are trying to find a more sustainable way to extract the key ingredient.
Lilac Solutions, a start-up in Oakland, California, is in the process of closing a $150 million funding round to develop technology that dramatically lowers the amount of land and freshwater needed to extract lithium from continental brines. The round is being led by Chris Sacca’s Lowercarbon Capital and T. Rowe Price.

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Lilac CEO and founder Dave Snydacker said his company has demonstrated the ability to extract as much lithium from a one-acre sized system as the traditional method would get from a 10,000-acre facility with an evaporation pond. As an alternative to evaporation techniques, the 35-person start-up developed materials called ion-exchange beads for lithium extraction. The beads look like white, one-millimeter grains to the naked eye and are made of robust, ceramic materials that are hard but porous.
The company loads the beads into a big tank where a brine resource is located. As the brine flows through the tank, the beads absorb lithium out while rejecting contaminants in the water, like sodium, magnesium, calcium and boron. The system flushes the beads with hydrochloric acid to produce lithium chloride and then converts it into a powder form of lithium, which automakers need to produce their battery cells.

“We don’t think California, New York or Joe Biden will hit their electric vehicle goals without a technology like this,” said Clay Dumas, a partner at Lowercarbon. Dumas said his firm has invested more into Lilac than into any other company they’ve backed, and he views the technology as potentially central to solving U.S. supply chain woes that could hamper American competitiveness.

‘Many have tried to do this’

Lilac’s ion-exchange beads can be reused hundreds of times before they need to be replaced. At that point, the company sends them back to their factory to melt them down and remanufacture them into new beads.
“Many have tried to do this,” Snydacker said. “But for the first time Lilac developed a bead that has the right chemical properties for commercial lithium production.” 
With its funding, the company plans to double headcount in the next year. It will also develop pilot lithium projects in Argentina and Chile to complement their U.S. pilot, and will continue sending lithium samples to battery and automakers.

A Lilac Solutions lithium extraction pilot plant loading for transport to a field site.
Courtesy: Lilac Solutions Inc.

Matthew Nordan, managing director of Prime Impact fund, said that besides using less water and more renewable energy than other lithium extraction methods, Lilac’s system also alleviates the problem of salt waste, and fulfills a need for speed.
“If you look at how we make lithium for batteries today, a lot of it is done where the good lord saw fit to put lakes of lithium,” said Nordan, a Lilac board member. “Companies dig in lines, pump enormous amounts of water from the ground, end up with a viscous slurry and take it away on a truck. They leave behind salt, lots and lots of salt and every time it rains, the salt can flow down the valley into farm land.”
Lilac pumps everything it’s taken but hasn’t used from the continental brine and puts it back where the company found it, he said. Without increased lithium production, Nordan added, the auto industry will face steep cost increases.
Benchmark Mineral Intelligence predicts a lithium shortage in 2025 that equates to 189,000 tonnes. The entire lithium market size in 2015 was around 177,000 tonnes.
“This is a great example of how quickly and consistently demand for lithium is evolving,” Simon Moores of Benchmark Mineral said in an email. “It’s going mainstream at a rate that no other commodities have experienced before. And it’s all driven by a lithium ion powered electric vehicle revolution.” 
According to Benchmark data, lithium accounts for 5% of the cost of a lithium ion battery in a vehicle.
If automakers don’t get a grip on their raw materials, “their battery cell cost will likely rise in the coming years, bucking two decades worth of falling battery prices,” Moores said.
Lilac’s financing round includes participation by other new and prior investors The Engine, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, and early Tesla backer Valor Equity Partners, among others.
WATCH: We need an ‘incentive price’ to boost lithium supply

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Stitch Fix has opened its direct-buy option up to the public, meaning customers do not need to be a subscriber to purchase individual pieces of clothing or shoes from its website.
“It it will take time for consumers to know that it’s out there,” Chief Executive Elizabeth Spaulding said.
Stitch Fix’s hope is that direct-buy sales will boost profitability in the long run.

The Stitch Fix logo on a smartphone arranged in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, U.S., on Saturday, June 5, 2021. Stitch Fix Inc. is scheduled to release earning on June 7.
Tiffany Hagler-Geard | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Now that Stitch Fix has debuted a new way for shoppers to buy clothes, the online styling service must use the coming year to market it to the masses.
“It it will take time for consumers to know that it’s out there,” said Chief Executive Elizabeth Spaulding in an interview Wednesday with CNBC’s Sara Eisen.

Stitch Fix has been known for its subscription offering, which sends customers hand-picked bundles of apparel and accessories. The selections are guided by the company’s AI. Now, Stitch Fix is extending a direct-buy option, known as “Freestyle.”
“We are going to be launching many new features, more brands and personalized stores,” Spaulding said. “We want to give ourselves time to really make this big transition into becoming the destination for personalized shopping and styling.”

Stitch Fix’s stock closed Wednesday up more than 15%, at $41.01, having fallen almost 30% year to date.
Investors rallied behind Stitch Fix’s upbeat fiscal fourth-quarter results, released after market close Tuesday. But many are also looking toward the business’ future potential, as Spaulding leads Stitch Fix in a new direction with a potentially larger market opportunity.
Spaulding said she expects the changes will help the company grow its addressable market. Previously, customers had to be a Stitch Fix subscriber to purchase individual pieces of clothing or shoes from its website. Now, direct-buy is available to the public.

But Spaulding also said Stitch Fix will have to invest heavily in advertising “Freestyle” to a broader audience that might have resisted signing up in the past.
The hope is that direct-buy sales will boost its profitability in the long run. The company said “Freestyle” is already boosting the amount of money Stitch Fix’s active clients spend on average. In the latest quarter, that metric topped $500 for the first time.
Stitch Fix now counts nearly 4.2 million active clients, which are people who either ordered a “Fix” subscription or bought an item directly from its website in the preceding 52 weeks from the final day of the quarter.

A ‘meaningful test’ ahead

Still, most analysts remain cautious. Spaulding is less than 100 days into her role as CEO. And after taking over for founder Katrina Lake on Aug. 1, she is already steering the company away from a subscription-based model.
Against relatively low expectations, Stitch Fix delivered a better-than-expected fiscal fourth quarter, Wells Fargo analyst Ike Boruchow said in a research note. But the company doesn’t appear to be “firing on all cylinders,” he said.
For one, the online styling service’s outlook is weak. Stitch Fix is anticipating revenue growth in fiscal 2022, its current fiscal year, of at least 15% from the prior year. Boruchow notes that comes in below the company’s multiyear average of a more than 20% year-over-year increase, despite stepped-up investments in marketing.
“Online apparel dynamics have been stronger than this,” Boruchow said.
Stitch Fix’s inventories are also about 80% above 2019 levels, which could end up weighing on profits, he said. Wells Fargo has an underweight rating on Stitch Fix shares, with a $35 price target.
Some analysts see potential, but want to look for signs of progress in future quarters.
“We believe ‘Freestyle,’ which has been highly successful with existing clients to date, now faces a more meaningful test in its ability to successfully drive new customer acquisition,” JPMorgan analyst Cory Carpenter said in a research note.
And there are other red flags. Carpenter noted that Stitch Fix only added a net of 58,000 active clients in its latest three-month period, the lowest in six quarters. He expects a similar, disappointing level of net adds in the first half of fiscal 2022.
Spaulding dismissed this concern Wednesday, saying the summer months tend to be slower for user growth.
“We kind of saw exactly what we thought we would see,” she said.
In order for JPMorgan to be more positive on the stock, Carpenter said, the company’s profits need to “sustainably turn the corner following multiple years of compression.” JPMorgan has a neutral rating on Stitch Fix shares, with a $45 price target.
Stitch Fix has a market value of $4.4 billion.
—CNBC’s Michael Bloom contributed to this report.

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The seven-day average of U.S. Covid deaths is 2,031 as of Tuesday, the first time over the 2,000 threshold since March, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
Reported deaths are currently highest in large U.S. states like Florida, which is seeing an average of 376 daily deaths over the past week, and Texas, which is reporting a daily average of 283.
Texas and Florida, combined, account for about one-third of the nationwide average.

Clinicians work on intubating a COVID-19 patient in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) at Lake Charles Memorial Hospital on August 10, 2021 in Lake Charles, Louisiana.
Mario Tama | Getty Images

An average of more than 2,000 Americans are once again dying from Covid every day, a grim threshold that the country has not seen in more than six months. 
The seven-day average of reported U.S. Covid deaths stood at 2,031 as of Tuesday, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. While new infections have plateaued, fatalities continue to rise, increasing by 13% from one week ago and 43% from the start of the month. The last time the average daily U.S. death toll was over 2,000 was on March 1. The country was coming down off of a record-setting winter surge in cases and record-high fatalities that averaged 3,426 a day mid-January.

Covid-19 officially became the deadliest outbreak in recent American history on Monday, surpassing the estimated U.S. fatalities from the 1918 influenza pandemic.

Average daily deaths were also over 2,000 at the start of the outbreak in in April of 2020, and limitations in testing at that time mean the nation’s first peak of 2,245 average daily deaths on April 24 of that year could be an undercount.
Reported deaths are currently highest in large U.S. states like Florida, which is seeing an average of 376 daily deaths over the past week, and Texas, which is reporting a daily average of 283. Combined, that makes up about one-third of the nationwide average.
On a population-adjusted basis, Alabama, Florida, and West Virginia are reporting the steepest number of average daily deaths per 100,000 residents.
The rise in the daily death toll comes on the heels of the country’s latest surge in infections, which is showing some signs of easing but remains concerningly high. The U.S. is reporting about 135,000 daily cases over the past week, and while the trend has been obscured for much of the month due to inconsistencies in states’ reporting around the Labor Day holiday, the seven-day average is down 18% from Sept. 1.

Hospitalizations, too, are elevated but on the decline. About 91,500 Americans are currently hospitalized with Covid, according to a seven-day average of data from the Department of Health and Human Services. At the start of the month, that figure was nearly 103,000.
Any change in the trend of reported cases and hospitalizations typically does not show up in the death toll numbers for weeks, as it takes time for people to become infected with the virus and then get sick enough to need urgent care.
“I think that if the curve, if the cases, are going down, the deaths should follow,” said Dr. Arturo Casadevall, chair of molecular microbiology and immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He added that treatments for Covid have also improved, with better therapies today than existed a year ago.
Despite any encouraging signs in the nationwide trend, the spread of the highly infectious delta variant is still on the rise in some states.
The Ohio Department of Health warned Wednesday that many hospitals in the state are “at, or reaching, peak capacity,” with the increase driven largely by unvaccinated patients. Case counts there are up 33% from the start of the month to an average of 6,771 per day.
Case counts in Alaska and West Virginia are also at or near all-time highs. The average of 857 daily cases in Alaska is a pandemic record for the state, though daily deaths are about the same as on September 1 at two per day. West Virginia, where the 26 deaths per day as of Tuesday represents a 157% increase from the start of the month, has not been spared a rise in the death toll.
Still, infectious disease experts say, outcomes could be even worse if it weren’t for the development of Covid vaccines. 
“If we had no vaccines and we were suffering through this delta, the death rate would be dramatically higher,” said Dr. Bruce Farber, chief of infectious diseases at Northwell Health in New York. “Hundreds of more thousands of people would have died, probably in the millions. And I think that’s what we saw in any countries where delta spread through it quickly without adequate vaccination.”
Nearly 55% of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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The Ohio Department of Health warned Wednesday that many hospitals in Ohio are “at, or reaching, peak capacity” as the latest coronavirus surge grips the Midwestern state.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine a day earlier warned of a “startling” rise in Covid hospitalizations among young people.
A lack of staffing is complicating the latest rise in Covid hospitalizations, according to Holzer Health System CEO Dr. Michael Canady.

A healthcare professional suits up with PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) to enter a Covid-19 patient’s room in the ICU at Van Wert County Hospital in Van Wert, Ohio on November 20, 2020.
Megan Jelinger | AFP | Getty Images

COLUMBUS — The Ohio Department of Health warned Wednesday that many hospitals in Ohio are “at, or reaching, peak capacity” as the latest coronavirus surge hits the Midwestern state.
The spike in Covid-19 hospitalizations “is causing major issues in our state. The overwhelming majority of those in hospitals are unvaccinated,” the health department said on Twitter.

The warning comes a day after Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine flagged a “startling” rise in hospitalizations in the state among younger people during the delta variant-driven infection increase.
“Throughout this pandemic, even in the worst of times, we were not seeing this many younger people under 50 going into our hospitals,” DeWine, 74, said in a press conference Tuesday. “The clear difference among these younger Ohioans and older Ohioans is rate of vaccination.”
The governor said just 35% of the state’s residents age 39 and younger are vaccinated, while 73% of the “more vulnerable” people ages 40 and up are vaccinated. Ohio’s vaccination rate lags the U.S. overall, with roughly 58% of Ohioans ages 12 and up fully immunized, according to the state department of health. Nationally, that figure is 64%, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

CNBC Health & Science

Covid hospitalizations have been trending upward in Ohio in recent weeks. The seven-day average of patients with confirmed or suspected Covid in Ohio hospitals is 4,017, nearly double where it was one month ago, according to a CNBC analysis of data compiled by the Department of Health & Human Services. It is below Ohio’s peak in mid-December, when the weekly average was 5,652, according to CNBC’s analysis.
Across Ohio, roughly 79% of hospital beds are in use as of Tuesday, although the majority are non-Covid patients, according to the Ohio Department of Health. About 80% of the intensive care unit beds in Ohio are currently in use. Covid patients are taking up about 22% of all ICU beds, according to the state health department.

That’s high compared with the national average of Covid patients in ICU rooms, which stands at under 13%, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.
About 97% of Covid-related hospitalizations in Ohio are among unvaccinated people, DeWine said. “We know what the problem is. The problem is the delta variant. It’s dangerous. It’s driving our surge, and the solution is not very complicated. … Our solution is to have more people vaccinated,” DeWine said.
Lack of staffing is one issue complicating the latest spike in Covid hospitalizations, according to Dr. Michael Canady, who is CEO of Holzer Health System, which is based in southeastern Ohio near the West Virginia border.
“I’m afraid that if someone comes in with a medical problem or a surgical problem that we would normally be able to take care of, that we won’t have the ability to do that simply from staffing and beds,” Canady said in a video tweeted by the Ohio Department of Health.
“Now, we have physical beds, but we are so short staffed right now from nurses who have burned out, left, gone to nursing agencies, traveling agencies that are paying up to $10,000 a week to draw our nurses away,” Canady said. “It’s very challenging. I’ve been in health care over 40 years, and I’ve never felt so helpless.”
— CNBC’s Nate Rattner contributed to this report.

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