Akio Toyoda, the CEO of Toyota Motor Corporation and grandson of the company’s founder, is stepping down after leading the world’s largest automaker for 14 years, according to Nikkei Asia. 

Chief Branding Officer Koji Sato will replace Akio Toyoda on April 1. The plan is to “fully remodel” the automaker as a mobility company and accelerate the electrification of vehicles under Sato’s leadership. 

Toyoda has led the company that pioneered hybrid cars with its Prius model since 2009 and will become chair. Sato is currently the chief branding officer and head of the Lexus unit. The handover is primarily due to Toyota’s slow adoption of electric vehicles. 

“Because of my strong passion for cars, I am an old-fashioned person in regards to digitalization, electric vehicles, and connected cars. I cannot go beyond being a car guy, and that is my limitation,” Toyoda told reporters.

“The new team can do what I can’t do . . . I now need to take a step back in order to let young people enter the new chapter of what the future of mobility should be like,” he continued. 

One of Toyoda’s mishaps was the botched launch of the company’s first mass-produced EV, the bZ4X, which was immediately recalled after its launch last year. He also has had a staunch view that hybrids are much better than EVs, which likely led to the management reshuffle. 

“The mission of the new team, led by new President Sato, is to fully remodel Toyota as a mobility company,” Toyoda emphasized.

Tatsuo Yoshida, a senior analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, said today’s announcement is a total “surprise.” He noted, “Toyoda’s choice to remain as chairman will help maintain the company’s business strategy and continuity.”

Toyoda’s slow move toward all-electric vehicles probably cost him the top spot. 

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

GOP Senator Rand Paul has joined others in promoting an updated bill to reinstate military service members who were previously fired for refusing to comply with the Biden Administration’s COVID vaccine mandate.

The legislation, named the Allowing Military Exemptions, Recognizing Individual Concerns About New Shots (AMERICANS) Act of 2023, includes a requirement that the Secretary of Defense offer reinstatement to active members who were removed from duty for not taking the shots.

Senator Paul noted “The COVID-19 vaccine mandate has ruined the livelihoods of men and women who have honorably served our country. This inept bureaucratic policy should have never been imposed, and while it has since been rolled back, we still have service members who have not been rehired, promoted, or received back pay and benefits.”

He continued, “The AMERICANS Act will address these issues and others that the Biden administration has failed to consider at the expense of service members’ lives and our nation’s national security interests.”

Senator Ted Cruz, who is also co-sponsoring the bill added “Our military continues to feel the effects of the Biden administration’s reckless, misguided, and now-prohibited vaccine mandates.”

“I’m glad that we were able to remove the COVID-19 vaccine mandate last Congress, but there is more work to do,” Cruz urged, adding “The AMERICANS Act would correct the wrongs done to unvaccinated service members who were discharged for exercising their conscience.”

As they noted in their statements, the Senators were previously successful in getting the mandate scrapped by threatening to block the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act.

Representative Dan Bishop, who has introduced a companion bill in the House, also noted that “While last year’s NDAA directed that SECDEF rescind the DOD’s authoritarian COVID vaccine mandate, it didn’t prohibit the DOD from issuing a similar mandate in the future.”

He continued, “The bill also didn’t provide any meaningful remedies for service members who were kicked out due to the mandate. This is completely unacceptable. Sen. Cruz and my bill, the AMERICANS Act, will close these glaring loopholes and bring justice to military members who were purged by Secretary Austin’s egregious vaccine mandate.”

Specifically, the legislation will require the Department of Defense to:

• Reinstate any service member separated solely for COVID-19 vaccine status who wants to return to service, crediting the service member with the time of involuntary separation for retirement pay calculations;

• Restore the rank of any service member demoted solely for COVID-19 vaccine status, compensating the service member for any pay and benefits lost due to that demotion;

• Adjust to “honorable” any “general” discharge given to a service member solely due to COVID-19 vaccine status;

• Expunge from a service members’ record any adverse action based solely on COVID-19 vaccine status, regardless of whether the service member previously sought an accommodation;

• Make every effort to retain service members not vaccinated against COVID-19, providing them with professional development, promotion, and leadership opportunities equal to that of their peers; and

• Provide a COVID-19 vaccine exemption process for service members with natural immunity, a relevant underlying health condition, or a sincerely held religious belief inconsistent with being vaccinated.

The Military Times estimates that more than 3,400 troops were “involuntarily separated from the service” due to non-compliance with the vaccine mandate.

Despite Republican attempts to stop mandatory vaccines for active duty personnel, and to uphold exemption rights, the Biden administration has continually pushed for dishonourable discharges and even court martialing for troops who disobey orders to get the shots.

US natural gas futures erased some losses but still hovered sub $3 per million British thermal units after federal regulators approved Freeport LNG’s request for a partial restart of operations at the liquefied natural gas export terminal on the Texas coast. 

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approved Freeport LNG’s request to restart operations. Freeport was granted approval to   begin the “cool down” of its Loop 1 transfer piping and restart the terminal’s boil-off gas management compressors and other piping. 

Here’s what Houston-based energy firm Criterion Research told clients: 

The FERC has formally granted Freeport LNG approval to “commence commissioning, including cooldown, of Loop 1 LNG transfer piping and commissioning and reinstate service of the boil off gas (BOG) management system.” The letter was dated January 26, 2023 and the approval was based on an inspection conducted by the FERC and PHMSA onsite on January 25, 2023.

Moving forward, Freeport will need to request and receive approval for any further activity. This includes securing permission to “reinstate service for Loop 1 LNG circulation to enable ship loading to Dock 1 and to cooldown, recommission, and reinstate service of the liquefaction trains, including rundown piping to tanks.”

Based on Freeport’s initial request this week, the Loop 1 and BOG work will now take 11 days, placing the completion of that process on Monday, February 6, 2023.

Recall earlier this week. Freeport released a statement that it “has completed repairs to the Export Facility on Quintana Island, Texas, performed safety reviews, revised various procedures, implemented new safety systems and performed necessary training in order to safely begin to resume initial operations at its Export Facility.” 

Freeport’s LNG net flows show some signs of life after being halted last June when an explosion rocked the facility and brought it offline. 

Even after the news, US NatGas futures are still deep in the red and sub $3 — mainly because of increased production, ample supply, and a mild winter. 

The question remains if NatGas prices will finally find a floor if Freeport begins a partial restart — considering the facility is one of the biggest export terminals in the US. 

By Isabelle Lee, Bloomberg Markets Live reporter and strategist

Investors fretting about the prospects for global earnings growth may want to brace for a long slog this year, and stiff headwinds to equities as a result.

Analysts’ estimates for 2023 profits continue to fall, with major regions showing negative revision momentum, according to research from Bloomberg Intelligence’s Gina Martin Adams and Gillian Wolff. In the US, for example, sell-side analysts have lowered projections by more than half since September, while the outlook for emerging markets has slumped even more.

The upshot is it may be too early for investors to bet on a full-fledge rebound from the pummeling equities took last year, even with China moving past its zero-Covid policies and the Federal Reserve potentially set to end its interest-rate hikes. The concern is that companies still have more pain to absorb as the past year’s jump in borrowing costs ripples through the global economy.
“Global earnings estimates are being cut at an increasingly rapid pace through much of the developed world, threatening to put more pressure on stocks,” the BI strategists wrote.

The S&P 500 Index is headed for the best January since 2019, and the US economy is still expanding, albeit at a slower pace. But even onetime optimists have been questioning whether the world’s biggest economy can achieve a soft landing. JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s Marko Kolanovic, for example, said earlier this week that slowing growth is setting the stage for a selloff in stocks. He expects a recession in the US and Europe.

Of the 44 sectors that BI tracks in global markets — 11 each in China, Europe, the US and emerging markets — three quarters have reduced expectations for earnings-per-share growth in 2023, the strategists wrote.

“There still seems to be this broad ubiquitous downgrade that’s occurring across the board,” Wolff said in an interview. “In terms of calling the bottom for these downgrades, it’s difficult to say. But near-term, it’s not showing signs reversing.”

Global markets appear to be at different phases of their respective growth cycles as they rebound from the pandemic — a dynamic that earnings estimates highlight.

For instance, anticipated earnings growth of close to 15% this year in China and India won’t show up in the average for emerging markets because of declines foreseen in Taiwan, South Korea and Latin America, BI said. Europe may see a slight earnings contraction, while the US will likely see earnings growth of roughly 3% — compared with the pre-pandemic pace of 7%, according to BI.

However, all markets face a similar hurdle when it comes to central banks bent on tamping down inflation. Fed officials, for example, have signaled they intend to keep rates elevated even after they eventually stop hiking.

“The lag effects of the Fed’s tightening so far will slow the economy in the second half of 2023 and cause analysts to slash earnings estimates, which ultimately is a headwind for stocks,” Richard Saperstein, chief investment officer at Treasury Partners, said in a note.

A group of seven Republican Senators have been holding Tuesday “breakfast club” meetings in order to formulate a strategy for the upcoming showdown over the debt ceiling.

According to Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN), the group doesn’t actually gather for a meal.

“No breakfast — we’re fiscal conservatives,” he told Bloomberg.

Almost all of the Breakfast Club’s members, including Rick Scott of Florida and Mike Lee of Utah, late last year led an unsuccessful revolt against reelecting GOP leader Mitch McConnell. Like the House’s far-right Freedom Caucus that almost blocked Kevin McCarthy from the speakership, they are a reminder that the party’s populist members aren’t afraid of a high-stakes rebellion.

“There is always a need for leadership,” said breakfast club member Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who added that “If we don’t balance the budget we’ll never get interest rates down, we’ll never get inflation down.“

“I think we’ve got to have a legitimate conversation about how do we balance the budget,” said Sen. Scott. “I think we’ve got to have a legitimate conversation about how do we balance the budget,”

The formation of the group marks the first time Senate GOP conservatives have united into a faction since the long-disbanded Tea Party Caucus from over a decade ago – when Cruz and House conservatives huddled in the basement of a now-closed DC restaurant just steps from the Cannon House Office Building while the government was in the middle of a 16-day shutdown which was orchestrated in part by Cruz.

On Wednesday, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said they’re hoping to work with House conservatives to lead the effort. “And we’re going to hopefully influence what they’re asking for.”

The emergence of the group, which also includes Rand Paul of Kentucky and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, comes as President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats are doubling down on their call for a “clean” debt ceiling. Biden has said it would be a financial “calamity” if the US defaults on its obligations.

McConnell has said spending reductions often are negotiated with debt limit increases, but aggressive moves by some conservative House Republicans to force deep reductions have prompted concerns of a repeat of 2011, when a simmering feud over roiled financial markets and damaged an economic recovery. -Bloomberg

In short, GOP conservatives aren’t going to go quietly into the night.

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Attorney General Merrick Garland said Monday that his agency hasn’t used a double standard when investigating President Joe Biden’s classified case.

Former President Donald Trump and some Republicans have said the Department of Justice has treated Biden more leniently than the former commander-in-chief, whose house was raided by FBI agents in August. Those agents found materials with classified markings, the Justice Department has said.

“We do not have different rules for Democrats or Republicans, different rules for the powerful or the powerless, different rules for the rich and for the poor, we apply the facts, and the law in each case in a neutral, non-partisan manner,” Garland told reporters during a roundtable on Monday. “That is what we always do.”

When asked if he has any regrets regarding how the agency handled the two cases, Garland said that the DOJ should make decisions “in a nonpartisan and neutral way without regard to who the subjects are.” He added, “That is what we’ve done in each of these cases. And that is what we’ll continue to do.”

Late last week, FBI agents discovered more classified documents at Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, according to a DOJ prosecutor and the president’s personal lawyer. That discovery was the fourth time since November that classified documents were found in Biden’s possession, although his lawyers did not reveal their existence until earlier this month.

Joseph D. Fitzpatrick, assistant U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, told news outlets over the weekend: “I can confirm that the FBI on Friday executed a planned, consensual search of the President’s residence in Wilmington, Delaware.”

Some of the documents and other materials were dated from Biden’s time when he was a senator representing Delaware from 1973 until 2009, said his lawyer, Bob Bauer, in a statement to news outlets. Other materials were from when he was vice president between 2009 and 2017, he said.

Bauer stated that he allowed FBI agents to search his “the entire premises for potential vice-presidential records and potential classified material.” Biden and his wife, Jill, weren’t there, he added.

“DOJ took possession of materials it deemed within the scope of its inquiry, including six items consisting of documents with classification markings and surrounding materials, some of which were from the President’s service in the Senate and some of which were from his tenure as Vice President,” Bauer said, adding federal agents “also took for further review personally handwritten notes from the vice-presidential years.”

With the latest finding, an increasing number of congressional Democrats have expressed reservations about how the White House is handling the case and want a full investigation. And Republicans in the House have, on a daily basis, sent letters to various federal agencies and officials demanding information and records about the documents.

Leading the way, new House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) sent (pdf) a letter on Monday asking Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle for all internal documents, communications, and other materials relating to Biden’s Delaware home.

Read more here…

By Michael Every of Rabobank

Black gold, white gold = inflation

Trigger warning: today’s Daily again references big picture issues and literal triggers, rather than the up-and-down xbp or y% of assets a, b, or c.

Except in one regard: markets were juiced yesterday by a major US energy firm announcing it would start share buy-backs on a huge scale. That is despite the backdrop of rising refinery crack spreads and worries about the future upwards trajectory of energy prices. Regardless, financialisation again takes priority over productive investment and production – although the US firm involved points to the regulatory backdrop steering towards a green transition as part of reason for its choice.

On which, the Guardian(!) yesterday “Revealed:” –though it’s no revelation to some– “How US transition to electric cars threatens environmental havoc.” In short, the required lithium is three times current global production, with appalling environmental side-effects and destruction of water tables; and that’s just for the US, not the growing global market.

The Guardian argues the only sustainable solution is to build more walkable US cities with public transport and bicycle options. Which rules out the American Way; and that of Canada and Mexico; Latin America; obviously the Middle East; most of Asia; Australia; even fluffy New Zealand; and Africa too, as it develops. Indeed, we would need an unfeasibly expensive economic geography-economic model redesign to make everywhere work like Amsterdam, nice as that would be. Logically, therefore production of either black gold, oil, and/or white gold, lithium, is going to be needed on a vast, and environmentally damaging scale ahead.

Yet the market is celebrating a return to financialization and share buybacks that produces nothing but inequality and, for the real economy, volatility.

BRICS and mortars = inflation

That backdrop also has enormous geopolitical and geoeconomic implications. Given where many key commodities reside, we recently saw the proposed launch of a pan-LatAm currency, the ‘Sur’, to be used for international trade settlement to replace the US dollar. Russia’s Foreign Minister Lavrov is suggesting 2023 might also see the launch of a new BRICS currency tied to gold at the summit to be held in South Africa at a later date.

Some think that if new bricks in an anti-US wall mean the US dollar is doomed; and gold is picking up of late, with China stepping up its purchases (even if total holdings are still miniscule compared to dollars), which some think makes that case.

However, this new paradigm doesn’t recall how gold worked when it was around – and I mean the true gold standard prevailing before WW1, not the ‘let’s pretend we are on  gold’ that was evident after WW1 and after WW2, both of which broke down.

In the ‘gold old days’, it was used for international trade settlement, and local paper money could be redeemed for it. Banks still made fiat loans. Governments often still spent far more than they taxed.

If the economy overheated, imports flooded in, and gold flooded out. Devaluation of the paper currency vs. gold followed, so imports got more expensive and exports cheaper. The same thing happened if other countries raised the deposit rates they paid on gold above those elsewhere. To prevent painful devaluations, gold deposit rates needed to rise to entice foreign gold back into the country, and/or public spending had to be slashed, or taxes raised, to cool things down.

Overlooking the fact that inflation therefore swung wildly from high rates to deep deflation, because gold was the target, not stable prices, this arrangement was no different from the neoliberalism of the IMF and Wall Street. Brave, anti-imperialist, anti-Western BRICS governments thinking a new, more humanistic path can be paved with gold –with public transport, bicycle lanes, and walkable cities– are deluding themselves. It’s a policy straitjacket.

Globally, it is also a black or white zero-sum game that will see the US weaponize itself, and the dollar, further.

The concept is the BRICS keep their local currencies but switch to a gold-backed currency for trade settlements: freedom! Except you can’t run trade deficits on gold without having an ‘IMF’ policy response forced on you. So, logically:

• The BRICS would have to force the West they export to move onto gold too, and watch them suffer devaluation, deprivation, and desperation for once – how bullish for markets!; or

• The BRICS would accept dollars as settlement, then sell them in the market for the new gold-backed currency – to whom? No BRICS would want dollars, and the West would not use gold; or

• The BRICS would have to decouple from trading with the West and sell all their output to each other… while balancing intra-bloc trade to avoid anyone becoming a Germany to anyone else’s Greece. That’s despite them being commodity exporters, with the exception of China.

Furthermore, this is all going to happen while the West watches impotently on, not seeing an existential threat emerging, even to the wolves of Wall Street. The bloodthirsty world-dominating US imperialists some intellectual BRICS fans decry are also structurally incapable of doing anything at all to snuff out evident threats to their franchise from the disenfranchised. True, the latest heralding of energy-sector share buybacks and the usual inanities at Davos suggest that could be the case. Yet, as always, I urge you to look elsewhere, and at the military.

Western Leopard 2 tanks will now trundle towards Ukraine, although in uncertain, but certainly low numbers. More importantly, the New York Times tweets: “To keep Ukraine’s howitzers firing, the Pentagon will increase its production of 155-mm shells six-fold, to 90,000 rounds per month – raising ammunition production in the US to the highest levels since the Korean War.” Moreover, the Washington Post has an editorial about the $858bn Pentagon budget, and how it adopts wartime purchasing practices. In particular, a provision allows the US military to sign “emergency” multiyear, non-competitive agreements to produce munitions, missiles, rockets, and mortars, aimed at cost-saving via bulk buying, two things the Pentagon has failed badly at for years.

The Post also notes the budget proposal does far more than that: “It lays the foundation for a vastly revitalised defence industrial base – and does so with one eye on the People’s Republic of China.” 25 new mass-assembly lines will soon roll out weapons quantities “far in excess of what is required to replenish Ukraine.” 700 HIMARS systems are ordered vs. the 20 sent to aid Kyiv, and 3,600 of two kinds of anti-ship missile, more appropriate for the South China than the Black Sea.

Concurrently, there is also a lobbying effort underway for the US to start to rebuild its merchant marine, as well as reversing planned cuts to the US Navy.     

Strategically, Vegetius would argue this is the right thing for the US to do, and the Pentagon specifically echoes him in stating, “Production is deterrence.”

More US production of mortars is also a response to the BRICS, and sits alongside the CHIPS Act and Inflation Reduction Act that together bring tech production back home.

However, this boost in production is also inflationary before it eventually moderates via a domestic supply-side response.

I repeat that until now the Ukraine war, and the wider new Cold War, have been fought with INVENTORY run-downs; now they will have to shift to PRODUCTION, reordering economies in the process.

This surge in Pentagon demand against supply constraints in the US defence-industrial sector is going to have a similar effect to that of Covid stimulus (which a recent Fed paper suggests added 2.6 percentage points to headline CPI).

That suggests a risk that the Fed might have to do more on rates than some think it will after its upcoming pause (which the market just got excited about hearing the BOC use too). Indeed, as just shown, an interest rate response was a past method of draining gold from rival countries, and it’s true for the Fed today too; and if means less financialisation and more production, all the better. (Which may be why Wall Street really won’t talk about this.) Plus, the Fed has swap lines it can use, or not, within the hegemonic Eurodollar system.

Also, even if the Fed ignores the Pentagon —highly unlikely– and opts for more financialization, the drop in production –and geopolitical drop in the dollar– would also prove inflationary. Again, that would shock some in markets.

Okay, that’s enough references to big picture issues and literal triggers: please go focus on the up-and-down xbp or y% of assets a, b, or c.

A stellar 3Y auction on Tuesday, a record-breaking 5Y auction yesterday and moments ago: a blowout 7Y auction completes a sequence of three monster auctions which have seen an absolute flood of demand mostly by foreign buyers.

The high yield in today’s 7Y auction stopped at a high yield of 3.517%, which was 40bps below last month’s 3.921% and the lowest since August. It also stopped through the When Issued 3.538% by 2.1bps, the highest bid-to-cover also since August.

The Bid to Cover surged from 2.454 to 2.691, much higher than the six-auction average and the highest since the TSY market panic bid during the March 2020 covid crisis.

The internals were even more notable, with Indirects confirming the pattern observed in the past two auctions, seemingly unable to get enough, and getting awarded a whopping 77.1% of the auction, sharply higher than the 68.1% last month and the 4th highest on record.

And with Directs awarded 16.8%, or just below recent averages, Dealers were left holding just 6.1%, a record low.

Overall, this was another spectacular auction and a far, far cry from that catastrophic 7Y “belly buster” auction two years ago. It also suggests that buyers are afraid that the coming debt ceiling crisis could mean no new supply for months to come, or that the bond market simply is convinced that the Fed will be slashing rates in the very near future.

Authored by Andrew Thornebrooke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) is introducing legislation to ban social media app TikTok from distribution in the United States.

Hawley announced the bill on Twitter early Jan. 24, saying that the app gives China’s communist regime a means of violating the privacy of Americans, including children.

“TikTok is China’s backdoor into Americans’ lives,” Hawley said. “It threatens our children’s privacy as well as their mental health.”

“Last month Congress banned it on all government devices. Now I will introduce legislation to ban it nationwide.”

TikTok decried the move, saying that a ban on the app would not solve Hawley’s national security concerns.

“Sen. Hawley’s call for a total ban of TikTok takes a piecemeal approach to national security and a piecemeal approach to broad industry issues like data security, privacy, and online harms,” said a TikTok spokesperson in an email to The Epoch Times.

“We hope that he will focus his energies on efforts to address those issues holistically, rather than pretending that banning a single service would solve any of the problems he’s concerned about or make Americans any safer.”

TikTok Used by China to Violate Americans’ Rights

Hawley’s announcement is just the latest in a long series of blows to the embattled social media company, which has been dogged by reports of its connections to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which rules China as a single-party state.

Hawley originally introduced the “No TikTok on Government Devices Act” in 2020, which sought to ban the use of the app on all government-owned devices due to such national security concerns. Another version of that bill was signed into law in late December 2022.

“In light of all we know, it is unthinkable to me that we should continue to permit federal employees, those workers entrusted with sensitive government data, to access this app on their work phones and computers,” Hawley said at the time.

“I’m encouraged by the bipartisan support we have seen in this body to hold the Chinese Communist Party accountable and that includes, by the way, holding accountable those corporations who would just do China’s bidding.”

Similarly, national security and intelligence leaders have warned that TikTok poses a national security threat due to its connections to its parent company, Beijing-based ByteDance, which itself has numerous ties to the CCP.

“Because the parent company of TikTok is a Chinese company, the Chinese government is able to insist upon extracting the private data of a lot of TikTok users in this country, and also to shape the content of what goes on to TikTok as well to suit the interests of the Chinese leadership,” said CIA Director William Burns during a December interview with PBS.

Likewise, FBI Director Christopher Wray said the app could be used to collect data on Americans for the CCP and to conduct untold numbers of influence operations.

“The Chinese government could use it to control data collection on millions of users or control the recommendation algorithm, which could be used for influence operations if they so chose, or to control software on millions of devices which gives it opportunity to potentially technically compromise personal devices,” Wray said during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing in November.

Moreover, a class-action lawsuit filed in December claims that TikTok violates state laws against wiretapping, because the app records every keystroke, click, swipe, and text communication, including information written but not sent by the user, when users enter other websites through the app.

Read more here…

NASA and Boeing are working on the Sustainable Flight Demonstrator (SFD) project, which aims to produce a full-scale Transonic Truss-Braced Wing (TTBW) demonstrator airplane that consumes less fuel and lowers emissions by 30% versus today’s most efficient single-aisle commercial aircraft.

NASA will commit $425 million of funding, while Boeing will invest $725 million in SFD and, by the end of the decade, have a full-scale demonstrator aircraft ready to test. 

By 2030, the next generation of single-aisle aircraft could enter service and be the successor to the 737 Max. 

“It’s our goal that NASA’s partnership with Boeing to produce and test a full-scale demonstrator will help lead to future commercial airliners that are more fuel efficient, with benefits to the environment, the commercial aviation industry, and to passengers worldwide. If we are successful, we may see these technologies in planes that the public takes to the skies in the 2030s,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson wrote in a statement. 

According to Boeing, the single-aisle airplane with a TTBW configuration will be part of the aviation industry’s commitment to reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050. 

NASA explained the TTBW concept plane has extra-long, thin wings stabilized by diagonal struts. This design allows for less aerodynamic drag than a traditional airliner — resulting in less fuel consumption. 

Separately, GE Aerospace is working with NASA on hybrid-electric propulsion systems for commercial jets. Both will introduce electrified aircraft propulsion technologies for commercial jets during the next decade.