 |
|
|
|||||
At the new Tesla Diner in Hollywood, a retro-futuristic drive-in, you can catch a short film lasting about 30 minutesthe typical length of a charging session at a Superchargerwhile you plug in your car. You can also get lunch (on the menu: a Tesla burger with electric sauce) while you use one of the 80 chargers on site. Its not the only attempt to reinvent the gas station in the age of electric cars. A startup called Rove opened a charging center last year that includes a lounge where drivers can pull out their laptops and catch up on work. Ionna, a coalition formed by automakers, is building Rechargery sites that also include lounges and coffee. The concept is simple: If it takes longer to charge an EV than to pump gas, gas stations need to become a better place to hang out. But this probably isnt the future of EV chargingor only a small part of it. Elon Musk has said that he wants to build a network of new diners if the Hollywood location is a success. (Dont hold your breath: It took seven years for Tesla to build the one that just opened.) It could be helpful as an interim solution. But most EV charging will ultimately look different. First, faster charging is on the horizon. In China, BYD is rolling out EVs with batteries designed to charge in five or six minutes, and building a network of ultra-fast chargers to support the vehicles. Solid-state batteries, under development now, will also enable fast charging when they eventually come to market. If faster-charging battery technology becomes widespread, the typical gas station model wouldnt have to change. Its more likely, though, that gas stations will become less and less important, as charging becomes embedded everywhere else. Already, around 80% to 90% of EV drivers in the U.S. charge at home most of the time. Its more convenient than going out of your way to a charging station. Its cheaper. Its also better for your cars batteryand the electric gridto charge slowly, over hours rather than minutes. (New tech may help batteries degrade less with fast charging, but the power demand from chargers is still a challenge for the grid.) For EV owners who live in apartments, shared chargers in garages are becoming more common, so they also have the option to charge at night. Curbside chargers on streets are also beginning to roll out in some cities. If drivers plugged in at work, and slowly charged during the day, the network of cars could help store extra solar power without the need to build as much large-scale battery storage infrastructure. And when someone needs a fast charge, that can happen at the places they already go. Some stores have had EV chargers for years, and more retailers keep rolling them out. Starbucks is building chargers at some stores. Fast food chains from Dunkin’ to Chick-fil-A have started adding chargers at some locations. Walmart plans to install chargers at thousands of its stores. Cars spend 95% of their time parked. And unlike gas cars, EVs don’t need supervision while they’re refueling, so they can take advantage of that unused time. Instead of creating entertainment for new charging stations, maybe we just need to keep adding more chargers to the places where cars already park.
Category:
E-Commerce
An artificial intelligence agenda that started coalescing on the podcasts of Silicon Valley billionaires is now being forged into U.S. policy as President Donald Trump leans on the ideas of the tech figures who backed his election campaign.Trump on Wednesday is planning to reveal an “AI Action Plan” he ordered after returning to the White House in January. He gave his tech advisers six months to come up with new AI policies after revoking President Joe Biden’s signature AI guardrails on his first day in office.The unveiling is co-hosted by the bipartisan Hill and Valley Forum and the All-In Podcast, a business and technology show hosted by four tech investors and entrepreneurs who include Trump’s AI czar, David Sacks.The plan and related executive orders are expected to include some familiar tech lobby pitches. That includes accelerating the sale of AI technology abroad and making it easier to construct the energy-hungry data center buildings that are needed to form and run AI products, according to a person briefed on Wednesday’s event who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.It might also include some of the AI culture war preoccupations of the circle of venture capitalists who endorsed Trump last year. Blocking ‘woke AI’ from tech contractors Countering the liberal bias they see in AI chatbots such as ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini has long been a rallying point for the tech industry’s loudest Trump backers.Sacks, a former PayPal executive and now Trump’s top AI adviser, has been criticizing “woke AI” for more than a year, fueled by Google’s February 2024 rollout of an AI image generator that, when asked to show an American Founding Father, created pictures of Black, Latino and Native American men.“The AI’s incapable of giving you accurate answers because it’s been so programmed with diversity and inclusion,” Sacks said at the time. Google quickly fixed its tool, but the “Black George Washington” moment remained a parable for the problem of AI’s perceived political bias, taken up by X owner Elon Musk, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, Vice President JD Vance and Republican lawmakers.The administration’s latest push against “woke AI” comes a week after the Pentagon announced new $200 million contracts with four leading AI companies, including Google, to address “critical national security challenges.”Also receiving one of the contracts was Musk’s xAI, which has been pitched as an alternative to “woke AI” companies. The company has faced its own challenges: Earlier this month, xAI had to scramble to remove posts made by its Grok chatbot that made antisemitic comments and praised Adolf Hitler. Streamlining AI data center permits Trump has paired AI’s need for huge amounts of electricity with his own push to tap into U.S. energy sources, including gas, coal and nuclear.“Everything we aspire to and hope for means the demand and supply of energy in America has to go up,” said Michael Kratsios, the director of the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, in a video posted Tuesday.Many tech giants are already well on their way toward building new data centers in the U.S. and around the world. OpenAI announced this week that it has switched on the first phase of a massive data center complex in Abilene, Texas, part of an Oracle-backed project known as Stargate that Trump promoted earlier this year. Amazon, Microsoft, Meta and xAI also have major projects underway.The tech industry has pushed for easier permitting rules to get their computing facilities connected to power, but the AI building boom has also contributed to spiking demand for fossil fuel production that will contribute to global warming.United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday called on the world’s major tech firms to power data centers completely with renewables by 2030.“A typical AI data center eats up as much electricity as 100,000 homes,” Guterres said. “By 2030, data centers could consume as much electricity as all of Japan does today.” A new approach to AI exports? It’s long been White House policy under Republican and Democratic administrations to curtail certain technology exports to China and other adversaries on national security grounds.But much of the tech industry argued that Biden went too far at the end of his term in trying to restrict the exports of specialized AI computer chips to more than 100 other countries, including close allies.Part of the Biden administration’s motivation was to stop China from acquiring coveted AI chips in third-party locations such as Southeast Asia or the Middle East, but critics said the measures would end up encouraging more countries to turn to China’s fast-growing AI industry instead of the U.S. as their technology supplier.It remains to be seen how the Trump administration aims to accelerate the export of U.S.-made AI technologies while countering China’s AI ambitions. California chipmakers Nvidia and AMD both announced last week that they won approval from the Trump administration to sell to China some of their advanced computer chips used to develop artificial intelligence.AMD CEO Lisa Su is among the guests planning to attend Trump’s event Wednesday. Who benefits from Trump’s AI action plan There are sharp debates on how to regulate AI, even among the influential venture capitalists who have been debating it on their favorite medium: the podcast.While some Trump backers, particularly Andreessen, have advocated an “accelerationist” approach that aims to speed up AI advancement with minimal regulation, Sacks has described himself as taking a middle road of techno-realism.“Technology is going to happen. Trying to stop it is like ordering the tides to stop. If we don’t do it, somebody else will,” Sacks said on the All-In podcast.On Tuesday, 95 groups including labor unions, parent groups, environmental justice organizations and privacy advocates signed a resolution opposing Trump’s embrace of industry-driven AI policy and calling for a “People’s AI Action Plan” that would “deliver first and foremost for the American people.”Amba Kak, co-executive director of the AI Now Institute, which helped lead the effort, said the coalition expects Trump’s plan to come “straight from Big Tech’s mouth.”“Every time we say, ‘What about our jobs, our air, water, our children?’ they’re going to say, ‘But what about China?'” she said in a call with reporters Tuesday. She said Americans should reject the White House’s argument that the industry is overregulated and fight to preserve “baseline protections for the public” as AI technology advances. Associated Press writer Seung Min Kim in Washington contributed to this report. Matt O’Brien and Ali Swenson, Associated Press
Category:
E-Commerce
Its been said that online dating killed the meet cute. Now, as people struggle with dating app burnout, some are supposedly resorting to stealing mens lunches for a chance at creating their own. In a now-viral post, one TikTok user claims shes heard of single women nipping into Sweetgreen locations in Midtown Manhattan during the workweek and stealing finance bros salads for lunch. She explained that they will then look up the name on the order on LinkedIn and message something along the lines of Hey, oh my God. So sorry, I grabbed your salad. Let me just make it up to you and buy you a new one. @nicoleee461 Its rough out here #nyc #nycdating #dating original sound – Nicole Or As the caption of the video reads: Its rough out here. Even Sweetgreen felt the need to comment on the state of dating in 2025. Guys please this is really stressing me out, the salad chains official TikTok account commented. No one in the comments admitted to using the tactic themselves, but they didnt hold back from sharing their thoughts. Hey! all of that sounds insane! one person commented. Hear me out, what if you went up to them, another suggested. Whether the story is true or not, it speaks to a broader issue with modern dating. A 2024 Forbes survey found that more than 75% of Gen Zers are burned out on dating apps like Hinge, Tinder, and Bumble. Despite the amount of time spent on the apps, those surveyed said they dont feel as if theyre able to find a genuine connection. Now desperate times are calling for desperate measures. Why cant [guys] just come up to us at a bar? the TikTok user who revealed the salad-stealing caper questioned in her video. Why is it getting to this point? A 2023 study found that almost 50% of men ages 18 to 25 have never made the first move and approached a woman romantically in person. Fear of rejection and fear of social consequences were the two most commonly cited reasons why. As one man commented on the original TikTok video, But have you been a man in NYC who tries to talk to a girl at a bar? While it might not be the meet cute they had in mind, at the very least the TikTok shows people are keen to put themselves out there. Or, next time your lunch goes missing, make sure to check whos been viewing your LinkedIn profile.
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||