First things first: no, I didn’t predict the pandemic. As a strange year ticks to a close, I am revisiting the predictions I made for 2020 to see how things went.
- The Baltimore Ravens will win the super bowl
Grade: WRONG
Well, you win some you lose some — in this case, the Ravens failed to win a single game in the playoffs.
2. New EV truck manufacturers will miss their ship dates
Grade: Right
Sure enough: the Lordstown Endurance EV pickup is now scheduled for September 2021, the Bollinger B1 and B2 are expected sometime in 2021, the Rivian R1T is expected to roll out in June 2021 (Tesla’s Cybertruck isn’t out until 2021 either, although wasn’t included into my prediction since it wasn’t expected out in 2020). And while the pandemic slowed everything down, I’m guessing these may well have missed their 2020 releases without pandemic-related challenges.
And for the record, I’m not trying to cheer against new EVs — I’m very excited for EVs to work their way into mainstream vehicle sales — just trying to recognize the complexity that exists in manufacturing and launching a new vehicle. I think I’m also probably more bullish than many on the capacity for legacy automakers to make the successful move into EVs — an early barometer of this activity will be the sales of Ford’s Mach-E crossover.
3. Nothing interesting will happen with VR
Grade: (Mostly) Right
Reasonable people may disagree here, but I think I got this one. Now, it’s not like nothing took place whatsoever — Facebook released a new generation of Occulus headset, and Apple acquired NextVR (…although for less than the company had raised). And it’s true that VR headsets have continued to sell for video games, but that’s about it, and even there, the release of the new traditional consoles (Playstation 5 and Xbox X) was certainly more ballyhooed then any VR release.
The tech analyst I follow most closely, Benedict Evans, seems to agree, writing a blog post a few months ago called “The VR Winter.” He makes what I think is a great point, that if ever there was a golden time for Virtual Reality to grow, it was the lockdown pandemic environment of 2020. I imagine VR will continue to grow as a video game console, but my intuition is that augmented reality will break in with a variety of use cases in a few years before VR grows significantly beyond video games.
4. Good things will happen with Libra
Grade: WRONG*
So much for being a contrarian. Libra has significantly downsized its ambition amidst a very critical reaction from regulators. That said, the effort appears to be moving forward and intends to launch in Q2 2021. I think it is safe to call this prediction WRONG, but I look forward to revisiting how things with Libra shake out in the future.
Also, while Libra is still on the drawing board, 2020 has been a year of tremendous activity for cryptocurrency more generally.
Bitcoin, in particular, has surged nearly 300% this year — as of this writing, Bitcoin prices were a bit over $28,000, up from around $7,200 at the beginning of the year. This has been driven by factors I don’t begin to understand, although people that follow it more closely seem to think some of it has to do with increased institutional investment in the space, easier consumer access, and people buying cryptocurrency amidst volatile economic conditions.
5. Trump will lose the Presidential election
Grade: Right
My reasoning a year ago: “Trump will lose a close election, succumbing to deep unpopularity, especially among female voters, despite continued strength in the economy.” With the pandemic, the economy’s strength has not continued (although the stock market has) but otherwise sounds about right.
For those keeping score a home, that’s two wrong, two right, and one mostly right: an improvement from last year’s prediction bloodbath. That said, 2020 was a valuable reminder that your predictions may not mean much if you miss the macro items (see: pandemic). That’s advice I’ll try to take to heart as I assemble my predictions for 2021.
