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EV sales just hit a new record in the U.S.: This month, theyre on track to make up 12.2% of new car sales, according to J.D. Power and Associates. Meanwhile, gas car sales dropped compared to the same month last year. Buyers are racing to get new electric vehicles before the $7,500 federal tax credit goes away on September 30. When the Trump administration pushed to eliminate the credit in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, it inadvertently helped nudge some consumers to switch to EVs earlier that they otherwise might have. Theres nothing like a deadline to get people paying attention, says Josh Boone, executive director of Veloz, a nonprofit focused on electrifying transportation. The organization has seen a surge of traffic on its digital platform that helps consumers choose an EV. The end of the credit also helped temporarily push EV prices down. In August, the average transaction cost for an EV was $44,908a little less than the average gas vehicle, at $45,521. Thats because manufacturers added generous incentives to help sell cars before the deadline. The tax credit has been in place since 2008, under the Bush administration. Now that its disappearing, EV sales are likely to plummet next quarter. Automakers are slowing production and canceling some models. But electric cars arent dead in the U.S., and sales are still likely to grow next year. How much does the tax credit matter? Even though the end of the incentive has spurred sales, the tax credit generally hasnt been the deciding factor for most buyers, says Loren McDonald, who runs an EV data and analysis firm called Chargeonomics. I’ve always believed that its importance has been overplayed, he says. For most people, it was more of a discount than it was an actual incentive to get people over the hump. Most people using the tax credit have had higher incomes, and probably could have afforded the vehicles on their own. Thats still the case now. For a lot of people, if theyre considering the difference of a $50 or $100 a month payment, its like I can deal with that, he says. “What it means is that people with lower income brackets still arent interested. In a recent survey with Morning Consult, analysts at Cox Automotive found that 65% of respondents who were in the market for a new EV said they would still consider an EV without the tax credit. I thought that was a good data point to show that it’s important, but not for everyone, says Stephanie Valdez Streaty, director of industry insights at Cox. The number of affordable EVs keeps growing As EV production scales up and battery costs fall, that helps push cost down. The number of more affordable models is growing. The next-generation Chevy Bolt will enter production later this year. The new Nissan Leaf will start at just under $30,000, with a 300-mile range. Slate Auto, a startup backed by Jeff Bezos, will release an electric truck in the mid-$20,000s next year. (With the tax credit in place, it would have been less than $20k.) Toyota is releasing a new electric C-HR next year. Volvo has said that its new crossover, the EX60, is aiming to get as close as possible to price parity with gas cars. In China, it’s worth noting, EVs are already cheaper than gas cars without subsidies. Plug-in vehicles now make up more than half of new sales in China, with battery electric vehicles alone representing one-third of the market. Technology continues to improve. CATL, the largest EV battery manufacturer, plans to soon release new sodium-ion packs that cost $40 per kilowatt-hour, 20% less than its current lithium iorn phosphate batteries (which are already cheaper than standard lithium-ion batteries). Automakers are increasingly adopting platforms that support multiple EV models, boosting economies of scale. All of this will help, although automakers are also facing headwinds from tariffs. If you consider the total cost of ownership, many EVs are already less expensive than equivalent gas vehicles. They need less maintenance, and charging is cheaper than buying gas. Still, that’s harder to communicate than the sticker price. “The auto industry needs to start educating buyers to be more like fleet buyers, which is they get out their Excel spreadsheet and they calculate the total cost of ownership of the truck over the lifetime,” says McDonald. “They need to do this with electric vehicles. The problem is, if you’re also selling gas vehicles, you’re basically selling against your own cars. And that’s always been one of the problems with the legacy automakers: if they go too far in selling how great EVs are, they’re basically saying, sorry, [gas cars] aren’t that good.” The number of used EVs is also continuing to grow1.1 million EVs were leased over the last few years and will soon be available for resale. The upfront cost of a used EV is already typically comparable (or cheaper) than an equivalent gas car. Those sales have also been surging. Some state and utility incentives are also still available. All of this means that even without the tax credit, the cost of EVs may not necessarily be a large barrier. Charging infrastructure is also improving, and the average range of an EV is already big enough that range anxiety isn’t the challenge that it used to be. Automakers will need to get better at marketing As the tax credit goes away, automakers may have to rethink marketing. McDonald argues that car brands have overrelied on incentives and rebates from the government and utilities. “They’ve focused on all these incentivesnot that it’s a really great car, and it doesn’t require maintenance, and it’s fast, and convenient,” he says. “My hope is that they’re going to do a better job marketing and targeting.” One automaker he recently spoke with said that the brand is now beginning to target likely buyers, such as suburban families with a large garage and income. “They’re finally waking up and realized that doing Super Bowl ads is a waste of time,” he says. “What you really need to do is target the people who are considering a Tesla, and get them to buy yours.” Automakers may continue to offer strong incentives next quarter to help offset the loss of the tax credit. “I think they’ll step in and offer more now,” says Tyson Jominy, senior vice president of data & analytics at J.D. Power. (GM declined to comment on its plans for this story, and Rivian said that it is still working through its incentive plans.)
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E-Commerce
Artificial intelligence is infiltrating every corner of professional sports, from scouting and injury prevention to scheduling. Now, it looks like golf has its most sophisticated AI adoption yet, and it’s happening in the bag of Bryson DeChambeau, the sport’s most notorious tinkerer. “We’re building an AI golf coach,” DeChambeau says. “Essentially, it will be a golf coach that, based on data, will be able to tell you exactly what you’re doing, how to practice, and how to improve your game. We can take a golf swing, compile the information, upload it, and within a minute, it will give me what’s different from my gold standard set of swings.” The setup is deceptively simple: a smartphone on a tripod gathering data via video, paired with Google’s Gemini AI to interpret said data. Combined, they create a swing coach so intuitive that DeChambeau uses it even moments before teeing off in a tournament. The mental game is something I’ve always struggled with, he says. But whenever I become a little more confident and comfortable with my feel, my mental game goes extremely positive. And this assistant has helped me become a lot more confident with my golf swing. AI + AI = Coach DeChambeau’s coaching system starts with SportsBox, an AI-powered 3D biomechanical analysis app that analyzes over 30 key points on the body, club, and ball per golf swing. It measures everything from rotational range of motion to kinematic sequencingthe precise order in which different body parts accelerate and decelerate through the swing. This data is then processed by Gemini AI to turn those measurements into actionable coaching insights. Think of SportsBox as the measuring tool, Gemini as the AI coach agent, and Google Cloud as the platform hosting it all. The system starts by building and maintaining a database of DeChambeaus optimal swings from recent years to create his gold standard set. So, when he hits a poor shot, the AI immediately measures that shot against his gold standard set and ranks the factors most likely contributing to the miss. “We can take a golf swing, then upload it, and within a minute, it will give me what’s different from my gold standard set of swings,” he says. It will give me a rundown list of the top [deviations] that are correlating to whatevers causing me to miss. According to Granville Valentine, managing director of AI go-to-market at Google Cloud, its Gemini’s multimodal capabilities that bring the SportsBox data to life, creating the interactive coaching agent. “Gemini is very differentiated on multimodalitythe ability to ingest the combination of video, audio, text, and voice, and even livestreaming some of those capabilities into the model, he says. The combination of really deep video understanding plus core reasoning comes out in differentiated coaching guidance.” The devil’s in the details The granular nature of DeChambeau’s AI coaching reveals just how sophisticated modern sports analytics has become. The system uses Z-scoresstatistical measurements showing how many standard deviations a movement is from the mean of a data setto identify exactly where problems occur. Previously, DeChambeau would capture swing data but wait hours or days for analysis. With this technology, he gets feedback within a minute, allowing for real-time adjustments before a round. We were going through [the data] by hand in an Excel spreadsheet, he says. It was a manual process, very difficult. So youre talking about months and months of trying to study the golf swing, now done in minutes. The data is also surprisingly precise. Let’s say it’s a radial deviation at P6, DeChambeau says. That’s too much, meaning I’ve got too much wrist hinge, which makes the club come more outside in. So it’s very specific. For us non-DeChambeaus who got lost at radial deviation and checked out at P6, thats where Gemini comes to the rescue. The AI’s ability to adapt its communication style allows users to train it to explain complex biomechanical concepts in terms appropriate for any skill level. Like other large language models, you can ask it questions, such as what specific terms mean, and as your understanding grows, it will adapt to give you more granular, technical data, meeting each golfer where he or she is at. Old dog, new tricks When he began using this technology earlier this year, DeChambeau found one of his fundamental beliefs about his swing challenged. For years, he says, he thought he needed to stay more centered over the ballmore on top of itwhen hitting his driver. The AI consistently told him otherwise, saying he was too on top of the ball. It told me to keep swaying my chest just a bit back on the backstroke to get my center mass more behind the golf ball so I can allow the club to release through the impact more, he says. So that just blew my mind at how precise this assistant is. It was kind of a kick-in-the-butt moment of, wait, you gotta start trusting this thing. Eventually, he realized the AI’s objectivity as its strength. Its unbiased, he says. It doesnt tell you what it thinks you should do. Its literally based on what you do when youre doing your best, and keeps you in check with that. Democratizing elite-level instruction The rapid evolution of AI coaching technology suggests we’re witnessing the early stages of a broader transformation in sports training. Valentine points to each new release of Gemini, which shows consistent step-function improvements in spatial awareness and reasoning capabilities. “With each subsequent release, breakthroughs are happening,” he says, comparing Geminis current moment to the early days of Waymo self-driving cars, which needed time to become trustworthy enough for widespread adoption. That level of trustthat level of breakthrough in the model itselfis now kicking over to a place where humans have the confidence to rely on this as a coach relative to a human coach. Still, Valentine says, the ultimate goal is not to replace human coaches, but to democratize access to elite-level instruction. I don’t think the objective is to get rid of coaches, he says. I think its to deliver access to those folks who don’t have access to coaches. There are lots of folks in the world who would probably be very well served to have access to coaching, it just hasnt been available to them.” At the PGA Tour level, DeChambeau believes there are further use cases for the tool, and that widespread adoption is inevitable once other players experience the results hes seen. When these [other golfers] see what the capabilities are, they’ll immediately latch onto it, hesays. Because it’s not about some theoretical idea. It’s about what works best for them as an individual. I cant wait for a day when its a full-on coach, club fitter, you name it. Were just at the beginning.
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E-Commerce
Following the Trump administrations cuts to foreign aid, two-thirds of Mercy Corps U.S.-funded programs have been rescinded. CEO Tjada DOyen McKenna shares how shes leading her team amid immense pressurescrambling to find new ways to help those in need, even as she resorts to layoffs to keep the business afloat. McKenna reveals what shes hearing from her team of aid workers on the ground in Gaza, and why she isnt running away from burnout but embracing it. Like many business leaders experiencing political or economic volatility right now, McKenna is faced with a complex conundrum: fight, flight, or freeze. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with todays top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. U.S. government funding accounted for half of your funding, right? Exactly. About two thirds of your programs were rescinded. I mean, it’s like an existential crisis, a true existential crisis for the organization. So what did you do? I mean, you faced a slew of urgent decisions. They were urgent decisions, and I have to say it was very clumsy, right? Usually when you work with the government, there are definitions for every single thing, so very specific definition for stop or very specific definition for freeze. And in this case, the guidance wasn’t there. When they said we had to stop doing everything, our first concern was safety for people. If I have people in a remote area of a country or in charge of delivering food to a school feeding program next day, that community didn’t understand that we weren’t showing up the next day, and they certainly didn’t understand it was because the U.S. government told us not to, but we had to go to work. Once it was clear what was going to be cut or what wasn’t going to be cut, we had to go about shutting down those programs across 40 different countries, lots of different labor laws to that. We consolidated some of our regions, we closed some country offices. We just got to work to say, “If the funding wasn’t there for that program, we’ll shut it down in the most responsible way possible and we’ll keep moving and then address what we have to do with the U.S. government to see what we can preserve, make sure our other funders are okay, and still be prepared in case if another hurricane or earthquake had hit during that period, we still had to be prepared to respond.” I mean, the irony is your organization is all about responding to crisis when it emerges and now the crisis becomes you. And in some ways in some of these communities you’re sort of creating the crisis because they’ve become used to having you there. Yes, yes, yes. And I worried a lot about staff safety, particularly in remote places where we were a source of survival for people where we provided access to food, and that continued to plague me. We’d hear reports from colleagues of government officials trying to stop their country director to make sure everyone got paid before they left. And my staff in Sudan, almost all of them are displaced from their homes themselves. So they’re working for us in temporary shelters, still going through the same problems that everyone else is going through. And so this was a weird situation where our organization was the one that had to be the emergency patient, but we also knew . . . You almost felt guilty for feeling bad because people have it so much worse than you do. There were a lot of weird mental gymnastics that were happening for all of us. We’re now months in, past that initial shock. How much do you look at 2025 today as an inflection point, sort of a new normal for USAID orgs like Mercy Corps? Are you kind of holding your breath in a way in hopes that, “A next administration maybe will reinstate things?” No, we know nothing’s going back to the way it was, but we don’t know exactly what that looks like going forward. The other thing that was surreal is there was this demonization of aid or demonization of aid agencies. A lot of misinformation about the work we were doing and how we were doing it. And then theres the third and fourth effect. So in a lot of places, we rely on UN airplanes to get in and out of certain areas, and so a lot of UN organizations we’re also facing the same U.S. cuts that we were. So we are still digging out of the aftermath. We know the world is fundamentally changed, and right now we are trying to embrace that and move into the future while also knowing the future’s still quite uncertain. I have to ask you about Gaza. There are all the reports about famine in Gaza where you’ve had teams on the ground. Your Mideast director was on this show in October of 2023 soon after Hamas’s October 7th attack as the initial Israeli military action was underway. Are your teams still active on the ground there now? What are they seeing and what might our listeners be missing in the news reports that they’re getting? We have about 35 staff that are still on the ground living and working in Gaza. We’ve had about 1,300 trucks stuck at a border that have not been able to get in. We’ve had some food in those trucks expire in that time period. And even without those trucks, our teams on the ground we’re working with water desalination plants and supplying clean water to people. It’s so dire right now. Our own team members are hungry. They are worried about where their next meal is coming from. We have a staff member that is able to go in and out, and she talks about the weight loss that she’s seen in her colleagues. About a million people are under evacuation orders in Gaza City. A lot of them, this is the fourth, fifth time they’ve moved. And what’s different lately, which really concerns us, is that sense of hope is really eroded. I think people feel like they’ve been just left. This is as tough as it’s ever been, and our own staff are fighting for their own survival. We talk about the lack of food, but 95% of households there just don’t have enough water. And so someone said, “A choice you’re making every day is, do I wash my hands? Do I drink a glass of water? Do I bathe the kids? The little water I have, what do I do with it?” And we just can’t imagine. It’s just been horrific and to feel so powerless, especially when we know there are trucks waiting across the border that could get in. There are people like us that are really eager to do the work, like my staff who are looking for food themselves, who want to get out and do things, and we just know it’s political will that’s stopping that. I spoke to another humanitarian aid leader recently off the record, who shared that starting years ago, they chose not to provide services in Gaza because they were worried and believed that Hama would inevitably infiltrate their efforts. And obviously this is what the Israeli government or military at least is kind of saying, did you have worries about that? Does that matter when you’re trying to just feed people? Gaza has always been one of the most difficult places in the world to work. I mean, we all are under U.S. anti-terrorism laws. Our staff are vetted. We check the names, we check the lists because the risk of having a staff member be a part of Hamas is too great to bear. We have not seen mass aid diversion from Hamas. That just has not been our experience, and most of our colleagues have not experienced that either. So that has been talked about as a threat. You do see looting, you do see hungry people, crowds of hungry people swarming to every truck and you see children and people throwing themselves in front of trucks. The way to address people stealing aid or making food valuable is to flood the zone with food, and then it’s not as valuable. I think more importantly, there have been anonymous Israeli defense forces in COGAT, which is the border authority officials saying that they’ve seen no mass aid diversion. U.S. government reports, internal former USAID audit reports said they have no evidence of mass diversion of aid. So we work in difficult environments and we all take vetting very seriously, but we know how to do this. We know how to work in these environments.
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E-Commerce
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