• The Apple electric car destined never to hit roads.
• In truth, no one ever asked for an Apple electric car, and its projected price-point was absurd.
• Apple will now focus on generative AI.

Anyone remember that Apple electric car idea? One of the company’s most ambitious projects has finally been canned, much to the surprise of some 2000 employees working on it. The effort has been decades long but an internal announcement on Tuesday finally put the project to bed.

Chief operating officer Jeff Williams and vice president in charge of the electric car effort, Kevin Lynch, informed employees – who have remained anonymous given that the information isn’t yet public – that the project will begin winding down and staff shifted to the artificial intelligence division.

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The Apple electric car team was known as the Special Projects Group (SPG). Given the scale of AI hype, it’s no wonder that team is growing under executive John Giannandrea. AI projects are an increasingly key priority at Apple and, let’s face it, there weren’t many people still holding out for an Apple car.

Work on the idea began in 2014, the multi-billion-dollar effort called Project Titan would have catapulted Apple into a whole new industry. At its conception, the Apple electric car would have a limousine-style interior and voice-controlled navigation.

The project was never smooth sailing – at all. The team’s leadership and strategy was changed several times: Lynch and Williams only took the reins a few years ago, following the departure of Doug Field, who’s now a senior executive at Ford.

Publicly, Apple contemplated many designs. You could almost be forgiven for thinking that this was a major issue for the company in realizing its electric vehicle, but self-driving technology was also a concern. Apple began road-testing its system in 2017 with dozens of vehicles on US roads – all inside the interior of a Lexus SUV.

The Apple car system gets tested in an SUV shell. Via the Financial Times.

Just one month ago, it was reported that the Apple electric car project had reached a make-or-break point. More secretive components were tested on a track in Phoenix – the latest internal strategy had been to delay the car’s release until 2028 and reduce its self-driving specifications from Level 4 to Level 2+ technology.

One idea, scrapped earlier than the whole project, was a car with no steering wheel or pedals. Time also went into the development of a remote command center that could take over for a driver. The SPG included employees from across the car industry, with designers from Aston Martin, Lamborghini, BMW and Porsche.

The car had been imagined at a cost of $100,000 but executives worried the vehicle wouldn’t achieve the profit margins Apple typically enjoys on its other products. There were also concerns from the board about spending millions of dollars every year on a project that might never be realized.

The move is a relief to investors, who sent Apple shares up on Tuesday after the news broke. Elon Musk has also celebrated the move – less competition for his Tesla – in typically graceless fashion, by posting a saluting emoji and a cigarette emoji on his platform X. If only there were a good verb for posting to what used to be Twitter.

Oh stop, our sides are splitting…

The move from Apple may just reflect the cooling of the EV market. Sales growth has wavered thanks to high prices and poor charging infrastructure discouraging mainstream buyers. Not that any new Apple product is viable for the mainstream buyer when it’s first released…

Still, the entire EV industry is pivoting, with General Motors and Ford shifting their attention to hybrid vehicles thanks to a lack of EV demand and too many manufacturing bottlenecks. Across the industry, automakers are slashing battery-electric car prices, production targets and – crucially for Apple – profit forecasts.

Apple is still heavily investing in other areas: it has spent $113 billion on research and development over the past five years with an average annual growth rate of 16%. Of course, it also launched the Vision Pro headset, its first new product category in almost a decade, with remarkable – not to say baffling – success.

Ultimately, focusing on AI may be a better bet, Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Anurag Rana and Andrew Girard said in a note. “Apple’s decision to abandon electric cars and shift resources toward generative AI is a good strategic move, we believe, given the long-term profitability potential of AI revenue streams versus cars.”

Ultimately, then, the Apple electric car isn’t a huge loss, but it does prove that the technology industry is increasingly making cuts in other major project areas to keep up with AI development.

The post Apple’s electric car plans driven out by AI appeared first on TechHQ.

• EV charging stations becoming increasingly unreliable or broken.
• Electrify America’s EV charging stations are designed for user convenience.
• Could Electrify’s prototype be the future of EV charging stations?

Owning an electric vehicle is a clear 21^st century choice when it comes to lightening your carbon footprint – but it goes hand in hand with finding out-of-commission charging stations or broken chargers. You’re in desperate need of charging your car and you see a third-party charging station coming up, but lo and behold, it’s out of service.

This is unfortunately a pretty common occurrence across the US right now, leading many of these third-party charging companies, like Electrify America, to regularly change and update their charging stations.

Repairing EV charging stations

In response to these issues, the US government is investing $100 million to repair the nation’s broken EV charger network. Coupled with Tesla’s superior NACS (North American Charging Standard) connectors, we could be witnessing a new, reliable dawn of EV charging.

In fact, the future of EV charging may look a lot like Electrify America’s new charging station at 928 Harrison Street in the SoMa (South of Market) neighborhood of San Francisco. Instead of engaging in a competition centered around reliability, companies may now focus on the overall customer experience.

Right now, the majority of charging stations are located within or close to shopping malls or restaurants, for convenience. That means people can get on with daily chores or have a shopping spree while their car charges. But Electrify America has opened a station, dubbed “the nicest in America,” where customers can relax in comfort and wait for their vehicles to charge.

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The new flagship indoor location looks more like a VIP airport lounge than an EV charging station, boasting two lounge areas featuring food and drink vending options, restrooms with baby changing facilities, complimentary fast wi-fi, and 20 fast 350kW chargers. It is open seven days a week, 24 hours a day, with security and monitoring services, promising safety for vehicles and customers at all times.

The Electrify America vision

President and CEO of Electrify America, Robert Barrosa, released a statement explaining how the company’s history had led up to this moment.

“Our expertise in building over 250 stations in California and more than 900 in North America uniquely positions us to bring high-quality charging infrastructure directly into communities where people live and work and support EV adoption across the state.” Mr. Barrosa went on to describe the lounges as “nice, sleek, and comfortable,” comparing them to “Priority Pass” airport lounges.

This luxurious opening follows a design concept from Electrify America in 2022, known as “The charging station of the future, today.” The concept’s aim was to create comfortable spaces for customers to relax in, enhancing the EV driver experience, with distinct community-centric design strategies put in place.

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While Electrify America has opened outdoor flagship charging stations in Santa Clara and Baker, California, this latest site is the first to reflect its 2022 strategy. One main difference is that the San Francisco station sports 20 chargers, compared to the 10 in the earlier opened sites; seemingly a direct response to the nation’s growing demand for EV chargers.

Tesla still has the largest network of charging stations across the US, with 2,128 Superchargers locations as of January 2024. Most of those, though, are outdoors, and not in the most desirable locations. For instance, many are found next to gas stations, with nothing much for drivers to do while waiting for their car to charge (unless you love spending time in gas stations, of course!)

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This latest charging station from Electrify America is a welcome move. The company, a subsidiary of Ford, has also announced plans to add NACS capacity to Ford, as well as other automakers. Some sources believe Electrify America has plans to switch from the Combined Charging System (CSS) entirely. The new facility may be a sign of things to come, not only for Electrify America, but for the EV charging industry as a whole.

Electrify America may proceed to convert existing charging facilities into something more upscale, like its San Francisco site. After all, Mr. Barrrosa says the company is “committed to making EVs accessible to all, particularly in dense urban areas like San Francisco.”

With the growing demand for EV chargers, customers may soon be able to experience charging stations like Electrify America’s across the country. Hopefully, they’ll be as reliable as they are stylish.

The post Electrify America’s luxurious EV charging station is turning heads – but does it live up to its impressive appearance? appeared first on TechHQ.

Responsible product designers are aware of the need to engineer items that are repairable and straightforward to recycle once devices reach end of life. Even Apple, which has a history of making smartphones that are tricky to take apart, has made concessions with its more recent iPhones (smartphone refurbishers were surprised to find a removable front and back on the iPhone 14 to aid repair). There are a number of factors at play in the circular electronics economy, and one that’s sure to be getting more attention is battery circularity.

Developers are scrambling to secure battery materials. Tesla broke ground on its in-house lithium refinery in May 2023, highlighting how integral battery supply chains are to the success of electric vehicle (EV) makers. What’s more, the race to dominate EV production could be about more than just eliminating tailpipe emissions.

Chinese EV maker BYD recently made headlines by beating Tesla to become the world’s largest producer of battery-powered automobiles. BYD is similarly vertically integrated, having its own battery production division and lithium mine operations. And once those batteries have been produced, they can provide a source of revenue many times over for firms.

In fact, it would not be a surprise to see large EV producers also become significant players in the energy sector. Once batteries have served a useful life in vehicles they can be repurposed into other energy storage applications – adding a further decade of service. For example, Volvo Group – which produces around 300,000 vehicles per year and expects those to be electrically powered in the future – has set up an Energy division to explore these opportunities.

Towards battery circularity

Decarbonizing transportation by replacing fossil fuel powertrains with electric motors is going to require – at first – mining vast amounts of battery materials. But digging lithium and related feedstocks out of the ground won’t continue at scale forever. Economists and technology experts believe that there will come a point when the battery value chain becomes independent of raw materials.

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“In all scenarios, China will be the first to realize a circular battery value chain, doing so more than ten years earlier than Europe and the US for lithium and nickel and seven years earlier for cobalt,” write Stephan von Delft and colleagues in a recent study.

Sourcing lithium, nickel, and cobalt from recycled batteries reportedly saves 70% of the emissions compared with mining. And closed-loop recycling methods mean that the water used in the materials reclamation – which includes plastics from the casing, as well as aluminum and copper from the battery internals – doesn’t end up as waste.

Popular types of lithium-ion batteries

Considering the automotive sector, popular types of lithium-ion batteries include so-called LFP and NMC designs. LFP batteries feature lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO₄) cathode material. NMC designs, on the other hand, are based on mixed metal oxides of lithium, nickel, manganese, and cobalt.

LFP batteries have the advantage of a much longer cycle life in comparison with other lithium-ion chemistries. And the materials system is said to support several thousand charging/discharging cycles compared with a couple of thousand for NMC cells.

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Plus, the economics of making LFP batteries are more favorable for producers as their non-lithium feedstocks are more abundant. However, users will notice that EVs with LFP battery packs are either heavier or have less range than vehicles powered by other lithium chemistries, such as Li-NMC, due to energy density constraints.

Battery circularity beyond vehicles

As well as containing thousands of individual energy cells, EVs feature comprehensive battery management systems to keep everything running smoothly and maximize device performance. Data gathered from the battery management system can tell operators when it’s time to swap out the battery and give it a second life – for example, to support vehicle charging infrastructure or help optimize building power supplies and microgrids.

Used and refurbished EV batteries are capable of storing power gathered from solar panels or wind power. And tracking back to how automotive firms are realizing that battery packs can be useful outside as well as inside the vehicle, battery circularity enables those organizations to grow their customer base.

Companies that have traditionally targeted vehicle buyers can widen their appeal and meet the needs of people looking for energy storage more broadly. And the welcome reality that EV batteries can have many lives gives rise to the idea of having a battery passport [PDF], which can help buyers determine the provenance of devices that they are considering purchasing. Other stakeholders benefit from having this information too, such as battery collection firms and recyclers.

Design for remanufacture

Clever battery recycling technology capable of digesting EV power packs whole, avoiding the need for manual disassembly, is impressive and keeps valuable electrode materials in circulation. However, one of the most significant things that battery developers can do is to prioritize the repairability and remanufacturability of their designs.

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“Investing in this at an earlier stage can minimise or eliminate issues further down the line, while helping to achieve circularity goals, as batteries remain in use for longer to maximise the potential environmental benefits on offer,” comments Autocraft – an OEM partner with expertise in EV battery manufacturing and remanufacturing – on its website.

Key to the success of battery circularity will be investment in remanufacturing and recycling infrastructure worldwide, extending the useful life of Li-ion products globally, and enabling the widespread recovery of secondary materials.

The post Battery circularity – another reason to speed ahead with EVs? appeared first on TechHQ.

• Used EVs are piling up in scrapyards as a lack of resales has a knock-on effect on new vehicle sales. 
• New is deemed inherently better than old in a rapidly evolving technological era.
• Electric cars do more than just drive – one might save you in an emergency!

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In south-east Queensland, storms and flash flooding on Christmas day caused power outages. If extreme weather caused by climate change wasn’t enough of a motivator to switch to more climate-friendly electric vehicles, maybe their potential to save you in the event of a climate disaster is.

Without power, residents of south-east Queensland couldn’t get through electric gates, septic tanks began to fill, air conditioners didn’t run and in the heatwave that followed the storm, refrigerated food went bad.

Owners of electric vehicles equipped with “vehicle to load” systems, the backup power system that allows the cars to act as emergency generators, stepped in to help out. One of those owners, Kristy Holmes, used her BYD electric car to power her 11-year-old son’s dialysis machine.

Holmes said she had known she could “use my car for good things” since she made slow-cooked mulled wine for a movie night using the car’s electric system.

As you do…

“It’s the most amazing car I’ve ever owned. Now it’s been able to save my son during a storm, I don’t think I’ll ever go back to a petrol (gas-powered) car again.”

Everybody loves a feelgood story, and these tales of EVs to the rescue will certainly warm the cockles of the industry’s heart. Sadly, it needs all the good news it can get, because it’s running into a new and serious hurdle: it turns out drivers don’t want used EVs.

The draining battery of used EV values

In the $1.2 trillion second-hand market, prices for EVs are falling faster than those of vehicles running on planet-burning fossil fuels.

We can look to China for a cautionary tale: lucrative subsidies turned the country into an EV giant, but the lack of second-hand sales produced “weed-infested graveyards” of abandoned vehicles. That’s had a knock-on effect on new EVs, too, and the worry is that if similar graveyards crop up in the US and Europe, it’ll strengthen calls from conservative politicians to roll back aid for the industry.

One of those weedy graveyards in China… Image via Bloomsberg.

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Warning signs appeared early in 2023, when Tesla started aggressively cutting prices in an effort to prop up sales. That spurred a price war as other manufacturers followed suit, and profitability dropped for some, while others saw already steep losses increase.

Because most new vehicles in Europe are sold via leases, the automakers and dealers who finance the transactions are trying to recover losses from plummeting valuations by raising borrowing costs.

Some of the biggest buyers of new cars, including rental firms, are cutting back on EV adoption because they’re losing money on resales, with Sixt dropping Tesla models from its fleet.

“When a car loses 1% of its worth, I make 1% less profit,” said Christian Dahlheim, who heads VW’s financial services arm. The issues with used EVs, he said, have the potential to destroy billions of euros in earnings for the broader industry.

“There isn’t used-car demand for EVs,” said Matt Harrison, Toyota’s chief operating officer in Europe. “That’s really hurting the cost-of-ownership story.”

Value issues with used EVs.

Mobility offerings and ride-sharing startups took up much of the sales of EVs, but their demand is limited. As the technology used in EVs is continuing to evolve, few want the older model because new is markedly better. Also, the usual boundaries apply to second-hand EVs: things like poor charging infrastructure mean people – even those worried about their emissions – don’t want to switch to electric.

Prices for used EVs slumped by around a third in 2023, compared to a decline of just 5% in the overall used market. Even after significant price cuts, EVs take longer to sell than their gasoline competitors.

“One has to slash prices significantly just to get customers to look at EVs,” said Dirk Weddigen von Knapp, who heads a group representing VW and Audi dealers.

The growth of graveyards

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In Germany, Europe’s biggest auto market, most new vehicles are first sold as company or fleet cars and then re-enter the private second-hand market one to three years later. But with orders slowing even for new EVs, more and more used models are sitting on lots longer than 90 days, meaning they’ve become “risk inventory,” according to the Deutsche Automobil Treuhand market research company.

Another issue is the fact that this is the first time the industry has had to handle used EVs. While it’s easy to price a second-hand combustion-engine car by looking at its age and mileage, there isn’t yet a widespread use of tests to determine the quality of an EV’s battery.

Some EVs are still performing well years after their introduction, with less-than-expected battery degradation, said Mike Tyndall, an analyst at HSBC. Teslas can sell quickly in the second-hand market because of the brand’s reputation as a technology leader and its regular wireless software updates.

There’s also a cult following of the i3 electric car BMW introduced a decade ago that keeps them selling on the second-hand market.

A happy i3 owner via CAR magazine.

Ayvens, a fleet management company handling around 3.5 million vehicles, said the uncertainty around EV technology will convince more customers to lease rather than buy — accelerating a shift away from owning a car to driving it for a fee.

“EVs are a booster of the transition of ownership to usership,” said Annie Pin, Ayvens’ chief commercial officer.

What that means for profits is one thing, but the environmental implications of single-use cars, electric or not, means that should be a cause for concern.

The graveyards seem set to grow.

The post Why does no one want a used electric vehicle? appeared first on TechHQ.

• Distributed energy resources may hold the key to managed charging for electric vehicles.
• Various approaches to managed charging need to be explored.
• But limited individual savings and benefits may make owners of electric vehicles slow to get on board.

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No one needs a crystal ball to see that various approaches to electric vehicles managed charging will play critical roles in the future power grid landscape. DERs (distributed energy resources), and battery storage systems will undoubtedly be crucial, but effectively managing and coordinating these resources is required to maximize their benefits for the grid. Proper management is also key when achieving maximum cost savings. However, this is still a work in progress and is yet to be perfected.

As the last few years have shown, power grids are not always reliable. In the US, there have been some high-profile power outages caused by extreme weather conditions. For instance, a winter storm in December 2022 caused mass power outages in North Carolina and Tennessee, similar to Texas in February 2021. In August 2020, a heatwave caused power outages in California, highlighting vulnerabilities within the grid’s infrastructure and operational systems.

Blackout! Anyone seen the candles?

With challenges come opportunities though, and DERs are viewed as possible solutions in the long run. DERs have the potential to be more reliable, cost-effective, and offer a more sustainable power system.

Aggregation may be the fundamental answer. By combining multiple DERs into one large-scale resource, they could be integrated into the power grid more effectively.

Unlocking the potential of charging for electric vehicles

A complex infrastructure of transmission, distribution, and power generation work together to deliver electricity to consumers via the power grid. To power the grid, significant investments in clean electricity are needed, as well as proportional investments in transmission infrastructure to improve and meet system requirements are also necessary to deliver that power. This ensures they align with the necessary upgrades or expansions needed for an efficient and reliable grid.

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With a growing demand from electrified transportation systems and buildings, further transmission, generation, and distribution system upgrades will be required to deliver the elevated power usage.

Initially, well-managed unidirectional charging for electric vehicles could help stave off the immediate need for extra generation and transmission infrastructure. In turn, that could ease strain on the power grid. Planning for long-term grid upgrades is essential, yet bidirectional charging with EVs seems to offer some promise.

These EVs, when functioning as mobile batteries, could offset the demand for utility-scale battery storage. This could potentially reduce reliance on fossil-fuelled plants and distribution system infrastructure.

Various studies have shown that just 23% EV participation in bidirectional charging could slash the need for utility-scale battery storage by nearly 15 GW, resulting in a substantial cost-saving opportunity and a way to cut reliance on polluting gas plants.

Adding up each individual EV’s charging capacity may seem like a way to determine how much power can be generated from the power grid to aggregated EVs, but it’s sadly not that simple, because an EV can be physically plugged in but, at the same time, fully charged. Therefore, it cannot accept any more charge.

Electric vehicles need a distributed charging network.

In a group of aggregated EVs, if the system assigns charging to these already fully charged vehicles, it is likely to create an overestimation of how much charging the combined EVs can actually accommodate. The resulting inaccurate estimations may go on to affect the grid’s ability to effectively manage power demands in a cost-efficient manner.

To address this issue, operators would need to send charging signals that can be adjusted individually for each EV, matching their actual charging capabilities. To maintain sought-after properties for power grid interaction, scaling factors can be utilized with aggregated EVs.

When applied, certain scaling factors may limit the ability of EVs to adjust their charging rates (either up or down) and slow down the rate at which their batteries collect energy by around 50%. This method promises to help aggregated EVs meet more charging requests and reduce unmet energy demands.

Cost-efficient charging management for electrical vehicles

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To achieve grid stability that is convenient to users and cost-effective, good EV charging management is needed. Coordination among EVs will become crucial. Widespread adoption could cause uniform responses that would strain the grid with new peaks in demand. This method may be adopted instead of only encouraging each electric vehicle to charge when electricity prices are lower.

It must be pointed out, however, that while the overall benefit across many EVs is significant, the individual incentive for each driver to alter how they charge their vehicles might be relatively small, typically around $25 to $100 per year in the US. Understandably, such small incentives raise questions about how willing drivers will be to change their charging behaviors.

Electric vehicle owners could save nickels and dimes by choosing wiser charging methods – not perhaps the incentive for which they’re looking.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is currently working on ways to help energy and utility stakeholders make educated, informed decisions that could impact the power grid. Ultimately, studies and indications point to low cost automating managed charging as the most effective method to leverage EVs to benefit the power grid.

EV charging: the suck factor.

The post Empowering the future grid: different approaches to managed charging for electric vehicles appeared first on TechHQ.

• Your electricity bill – at home and at work – is probably higher than it needs to be.
• Energy disaggregation technology can help by pinpointing inefficient appliances in your network.
• It’s an easy way of monitoring your power spend in times of economic uncertainty.

Energy disaggregation might not be the first phrase that you’d type into a search engine – or use to prompt your generative AI assistant – to discover how to save money on your electricity bill. However, if you do, it soon becomes clear how the approach leads to energy savings for users.

Business owners may be interested to know that energy disaggregation – which breaks down power consumption by appliance or into usage categories – has been used for some time by chain restaurants such as KFC and Dunkin’ Donuts.

Understanding your electricity bill

Chain restaurants tend to have the same appliances in each location, which simplifies the data analytics. But today, energy disaggregation firms such as Voltaware have appliance libraries capable of recognizing a huge variety of electrical goods based on power consumption signatures.

So-called ‘Non-intrusive Load Monitoring’ (NILM) works by deciphering the various appliances operating in the home or at a workplace from power consumption data, which can be captured using a clip-on current transformer (CT) sensor.

Sensor kit: Voltaware’s hardware features a current clamp, voltage sampling cables, and wireless electronics. Image credit: Voltaware.

The CT sensor is clamped around the line cable between the electricity meter and the fuse box. It detects power consumption through changes in the magnetic field around the wire carrying the mains supply together with voltage sampling across the circuit breaker.

Firms helping businesses and consumers to reduce their electricity bill

• Voltaware
• Plotwatt
• Bidgely
• Smappee

Speaking with TechHQ, Sergey Ogorodnov – CEO and co-founder of Voltaware – commented that users typically save around 30% on the cost of their electricity bill using the firm’s sensor and companion app. The company has been providing electricity monitoring services to corporate customers for several years and has recently launched a smart home product for the B2C market.

The sensor, which is non-intrusive and quick to connect, should be installed by a qualified professional, given that it’s measuring mains power. And once it’s up and running, the energy disaggregation solution has a number of advantages over using a smart socket, including being able to categorize electricity consumption throughout the whole premises.

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“The main advantage is that users can see where the majority of their money is going,” said Ogorodnov, pointing out how energy disaggregation helps consumers prioritize savings on their electricity bill.

Voltaware’s data is displayed on a companion app, which is available for iOS and Android devices. When users run the app for the first time, they are prompted to enter basic details about the property so that the algorithm can provide not just a breakdown of local energy use, but also benchmark that performance. “A monthly report is available in the app and can be sent via email,” Ogorodnov adds.

According to the firm, the most common disaggregated electrical appliances and usage types are air conditioning, boilers, cooking, EV charging, fridges, electric heating, heat pumps, lighting and electronics, dishwashers, washing machines, tumble dryers, standby/always-on products, kettles, and electric showers.

Predictive maintenance for home appliances

On TechHQ we’ve written about how self-powered Bluetooth sensors in clothes could interact with users – for example, by alerting them to items they’ve not worn in a while. And similarly, disaggregated appliance data could prompt users when a product may benefit from repair or servicing, based on changes in power consumption.

App data alerts users to vampire devices that consume large amounts of power on standby and switching off these appliances will help to reduce your electricity bill. Image credit: Voltaware.

NILM isn’t a new idea – a PhD thesis by Daniel Kelly of Imperial College’s Department of Computing (available to read online) offers a great description of the field. And he points to resources such as an open source toolkit for NILM and links to open energy monitoring hardware.

However, firms such as Voltaware are extending what’s possible using the data and opening the door to applications beyond being able to reduce your electricity bill. For example, Ogorodnov shares details on Voltacare – the energy insights firm’s monitoring solution for the elderly and people with critical conditions.

Rather than having to use additional hardware beyond the power monitoring sensor, energy disaggregation can be leveraged to send an alert to a relative or carer when behavior that’s out of routine is detected. According to the firm, Voltacare offers an unobtrusive, privacy-friendly, and simple way of checking that elderly parents are active in their home.

3⃣But it's not just about numbers. We explored solutions for making these predictions understandable and user-friendly. #xAI

As a bonus, we discussed beyond the competitions – think energy disaggregation, demand response programs, and more!

— Direnc Pekaslan (@DirencPekaslan) November 8, 2023

Once the algorithm has learned the typical appliance routines in the home, it can generate two levels of alert – caution and critical – based on differences from baseline values.

Power consumption readings are useful for more than just helping consumers to reduce electricity bills. Ogorodnov gives an example of how anonymized data could help to plan the location of public EV chargers.

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Also, he makes the point that other data feeds add to the picture. Weather and time-of-day information can help energy disaggregation algorithms to separate cooking from heating, when assigning power consumption to usage categories.

The National Grid has a WhenToPlugIn app that shows a live carbon intensity forecast and lets users know when the electricity will be cleanest over the next 48 hours. And it’s clear that energy disaggregation tools can tap into this information too.

With the right information at their fingertips, consumers can save on their electricity bill and reduce their carbon footprint. Businesses that make use of resources such as electricity maps can take enterprising approaches to cutting carbon in the cloud.

The post Energy tip: appliance signatures cut electricity bills by 30% appeared first on TechHQ.

• Black mass is a by-product of EV battery recycling.
• Recovering and processing the chemicals can be costly.
• Recycling though could help improve the eco-credentials of EVs.

A Google search for “black mass” results in a slew of information on Satanic groups. So you might be surprised that the term has become well-used among those in the electric vehicle industry.

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Although some anti-EV evangelists might like to imagine that the companies manufacturing the eco-friendly vehicles are practicing dark magic, the reality is less dramatic. As far as we know…

Actually, “black mass” is just a very literal description of the intermediate product that comes from recycling electric vehicle batteries, or scrap from battery plants. It’s a dark powdery mix of metals including lithium, cobalt and nickel that’s emerging as a commodity in and of itself.

With the expansion of the EV industry, interest in battery recycling has grown. In fact, black mass is even being mentioned in company earnings – including recent instances from Glencore, a commodities trader, and chemicals giant BASF.

The next big thing?

“There is definitely increasing interest from automakers in black mass now,” said Jesline Tang, analyst at S&P Global Commodity Insights. Some have already announced partnerships or joint ventures to explore EV battery recycling opportunities, such as BMW, Ford and Mercedes-Benz.

The power of a black mass

The metallic powder is made by crushing and shredding batteries or battery cells, extracting unwanted elements, then refining the remainder. The majority of the input material, as things currently stand, is factory scrap from the production of batteries.

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S&P Global Commodity Insights estimate that recycled materials will account for 15% of the global supply of lithium, 11% for nickel and 44% for cobalt by the end of the decade.

The adoption of EVs has been spurred by the improved performance and growing popularity of lithium-iron-phosphate cells (LFP), as well as reduced costs. However, it’s less profitable for recyclers.

At recent prices, nickel-cobalt-manganese batteries contain an average metal value of around $10,040 for every ton of cells, according to Fastmarkets.

EV batteries are comparitively eco-friendly – but can black mass recycling make it better?

Materials based on LFP chemistry have a much lower value of $3,935 per ton but can be more costly and technically challenging to process into black mass. That means less room for recyclers to make profit.

Hazardous cargo?

Further, some countries, including in Europe, classify open trading of black mass as hazardous. This is a key concern in terms of packaging, transporting and trading it.

“We’ve got lots of factories in Europe where we can shred batteries to make black mass but then it’s kind of stuck,” said Julia Harty, London-based analyst at Fastmarkets. “It’s a shame, as there’s so much attention on sustainability at the moment but yet the red tape makes lithium-ion battery recycling harder in Europe.”

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Black mass becoming more mainstream might improve the environmental friendliness of EVs. Naysayers often point out that mining the battery metals is a huge sunk cost that would need tens of thousands of miles driven to offset.

If the elements are used and reused, with upwards of 99% of the battery materials useable in multiple generations of batteries, that might help address those sunk cost issues.

The nuance of black mass

“There is a nuance in battery recycling where companies that shred end-of-life batteries, and companies like RecycLiCo, that recover the valuable materials locked within the black mass – are both referred to as ‘recyclers,’” explains RecycLiCo Battery Materials CEO and Director, Zarko Meseldzija.

If battery materials can be recycled, then companies can “close the loop” on their lifecycle, reducing the carbon footprint of new mining activities. As demand for EV batteries grows, this could be critical in ensuring the sustainability of a new era of car manufacturing.

The post Ritual and recycling: black mass in manufacturing appeared first on TechHQ.

Robots have been elbowing employees out of manufacturing jobs for years. And now there’s another automation trend in town – generative AI. Large language models (LLMs) have transformed chatbots from rule-based customer agents into powerful knowledge tools, such as ChatGPT, which are capable of reshaping operations across a wide range of industries. At the same time, text-to-image creation enabled using Stability AI’s Stable Diffusion or OpenAI’s DALL-E2 – to give just a couple of examples of generative AI tools capable of producing jaw-dropping photos and artwork from a sequence of text prompts – open design studio doors to anyone. And these developments beg the question, will generative AI take our jobs?

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It only takes a few minutes of using ChatGPT to realize that there’s now a different way of discovering information online. And finding answers by scrolling through pages of search engine results feels pedestrian in comparison. Google isn’t about to roll over and surrender its customer base to OpenAI, but the rapid success of advanced chatbots has wobbled tech giants who’ve found themselves to be on the back foot. And OpenAI isn’t just making waves in internet search, API access allows developers to integrate advanced chatbot and imaging capabilities into all kinds of software, and these products will radically change the workplace.

Automation is hard to ignore

Lawyers, contract negotiators, contact center workers, photographers, designers, content makers, authors, and even models – the list of professions impacted by generative AI is a long one. But there’s another side to the question of whether AI will take our jobs. Automation is hard for companies to ignore. The benefits of integrated LLMs, which can be fine-tuned on enterprise data to make their output even more relevant to organizations, can be huge. For example, Logikcull is applying GPT-4 functionality to electronic discovery (eDiscovery) – the practice of collecting, processing, reviewing, and producing information in response to a legal request or requirement. And the firm claims that the integration of AI-enabled and other automation features could reduce the workload that goes into discovery activities by 90%.

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Platforms can ingest a variety of enterprise data – including spreadsheets, documents, emails, and instant messages – and combine all of the information channels into a single, searchable resource. Users can rapidly query millions of Slack and Teams messages, for example, and apply a variety of search filters, including sorting by reaction emojis, to navigate to conversations of interest. And when it comes to redaction, sensitive details can be removed globally across all channels. There are plenty of time-saving opportunities up for grabs, and eDiscovery tools have many other features worth noting, including the capacity to summarize documents and spreadsheets.

Algorithms and deep learning models that can take the drudgery out of routine tasks are hard to object to. Providers are busy developing speech-to-text systems that can make sense of meetings – auto-generating minutes, and reminding attendees of key action points. Sometimes AI solutions become a necessity. For example, Summize – a UK firm that provides a range of contract lifecycle management (CLM) solutions powered by generative AI – was founded to address the backlog of requests made to organizations’ legal front door teams.

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Bringing technology to the legal front door

Businesses have much more to explore when it comes to using generative AI. GPT-4 – the latest version of OpenAI’s LLM, which can recognize images as well as text – is capable of recommending recipes based on a photograph of the inside of your fridge or food cupboard. It’ll also generate a shopping list for you and provide step-by-step details on food preparation. And it’s not a stretch to imagine how these features could extend into industrial settings – warehouse management, maintenance and troubleshooting of equipment, and the interpretation of insurance details are just a few possibilities.

Earlier this year, ProovStation announced that it had raised EURO 10.4 million to roll out a time-saving network of AI-assisted testing stations for the sale of used cars. Digital cameras capture a 360-degree view of the vehicle and, combined with magnetic tire sensors, can generate accurate inspection data in seconds – many times faster than human experts. Automation has long been a theme in the car industry, and the tension between employment and technological progress continues. For example, the production of electric vehicles (EVs) still needs human workers, but fewer than for models fitted with an internal combustion engine.

Biases and stereotypes

The application of AI is a thought-provoking topic, and surfaces a range of issues beyond whether machines are taking our jobs. Writing in MIT Technology Review, Melissa Heikkilä, reminds readers of the tendency of AI to amplify harmful biases and stereotypes. And her commentary points out that as generative AI tools are rolled out in a greater number of products, the danger of harmful biases being reinforced increases. Hugginface, which helps users share machine learning models and data sets, has built tools to quantify social biases in image generation algorithms. Its Diffusion Bias Explorer web app can compare different models and the images that they generate for a given profession. And the output highlights that there’s progress to be made, but there are brighter points too.

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For example, Levi Strauss has teamed up with Lalaland.ai – a digital fashion studio in the Netherlands, which uses generative AI to enable clothing brands to show 3D designs on lifelike digital models. The partnership, which was announced this month, could accelerate the number and diversity of models that feature in apps and online catalogs and gives shoppers the means to customize their experience as they browse for products. Levi Strauss explains that it is planning tests of the technology to supplement its use of human models. “We know our customers want to shop with models who look like them, and we believe our models should reflect our consumers, which is why we’re continuing to diversify our human models in terms of size and body type, age and skin color,” said the firm.

Levi Strauss has a strong track record in using technology to improve its business operations. For example, the denim company was an early adopter of digital twins to manage the whereabouts of its jeans and other clothing products in-store. As mentioned, the advantages of automation are too strong for firms to ignore, especially when systems are highly scalable.

Generative AI has mastered text, speech, and images, with text-to-video rumored as being next on the list. So this won’t be the last we’ll hear on the topic of will AI take our jobs.

The post Will AI take our jobs? Yes and… appeared first on TechHQ.

Drivers shopping for new electric vehicles (EV) are on the rise. Appetite for EVs – buoyed in the US by clean vehicle credits of up to $7,500 available from 2023 – has never been higher, according to Electrek, a site that’s been tracking the transition towards zero-emission vehicles since 2013. In the showroom, customers are drawn to EVs from makers such as Tesla, Ford, Hyundai, GM, and others, based on various criteria such as vehicle price, battery range on a single charge, and cabin size – to list just a few buyer considerations. Typically, automakers are only too happy to fill their vehicles with features to enable safer driving and provide improved comfort. But, increasingly, there’s one accessory that’s stopped appearing on new EVs rolling out of the factory – an AM radio. And the safety concerns of such an EV AM radio omission may have caught car manufacturers by surprise.

EV AM radio omission concerns

The Wall Street Journal has been following the EV AM radio omission trend for a few years now – pointing out in 2018 that ‘Your Tesla can go zero to 60 in 2.5 seconds, but can’t get AM radio’. And objections to new EVs being sold without an AM radio have been growing more vocal lately on grounds of safety. “Broadcast AM radio remains a crucial, cost-free source of news, sports, and weather, and, more importantly, is an essential medium for public safety officials — including the president — to communicate with the public during emergencies,” wrote US Senator Edward J Markey to multiple automakers in December 2022, including heads of BMW, Mercedes Benz, Honda, Mazda, Mitsubishi Motors, and others (a PDF link to the 60-page submission can be found here).

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Putting yourself in the shoes of an EV designer, it’s straightforward to see why AM radio may have been removed from the spec sheet. Compared with alternatives such as FM or DAB radio, the sound quality of AM broadcasts are often poor. AM radio waves travel further and are better able to penetrate buildings and other objects, but the crackly, hissy audio isn’t to everyone’s taste. And, according to manufacturers of EV models, electric motors present in the vehicles can interfere with AM radio frequencies to produce an annoying buzzing sound, adding to the audio interference.

But that preference for digital technologies could soon change if a storm hits. Brook Long, who served as the Administrator of the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and was responsible for coordinating the federal response to the damage done by Hurricane Harvey in 2017, has good things to say about AM radio. And his words emphasize why EV AM radio omission could be problematic in the event of an emergency. Put simply, it turns out that nothing is more reliable than broadcast radio. And, as Senator Markey writes, “Despite innovations such as the smartphone and social media, AM/FM broadcast radio remains the most dependable, cost-free, and accessible communication mechanism for public officials to communicate with the public during times of emergency.”

Communications backup

As FEMA explains on its website, the Emergency Alert System (EAS) is a national public warning system that requires radio and TV broadcasters, cable TV, wireless cable systems, satellite and wireline operators to provide the US President with capability to address the American people within 10 minutes during a national emergency. For this reason, many radio stations – which offer good coverage across the US – are equipped with backup power to allow them to continue broadcasting in the event of a power cut.

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Leading the charge towards satellite smartphones

A 2022 consumer study, carried out by market analyst firm Edison Research – which specializes in media-related technologies – reports that radio still dominates the in-car listening environment. And its findings apply to not just older listeners, but also the Gen Z demographic (aged 13 – 24), which have grown up in an age of the internet and social media. Across all listening locations, mobile audio has surpassed radio. But not inside vehicles, where AM radio and other broadcasts still dominate. In fact, the Edison Research data suggests that younger listeners spend almost half of their time listening to AM/FM radio when travelling in cars.

Certainly, the healthy consumer appetite doesn’t explain EV AM radio omission. And there’s some confusion, too, on the automaker side. EV producers such as Tesla supply vehicles that lack AM radio, and F-150 forum members are disgruntled about Ford’s decision to omit AM radio from the 2023 electric version of its popular truck. But not all EV makers leave out the option – for example, Hyundai offers AM radio on all of its vehicles in the US, including electric models.

The capability for EVs to feature AM radio is there. But, as mentioned, the enduring popularity of listening to talk shows and sports radio in the car may have caught EV manufacturers by surprise. Focusing on audio quality alone, it’s easy to see how AM radio dropped off the design table. But even if you’re not a fan of talk radio, you’ll likely appreciate it during an emergency, and that’s a big reason to reverse EV AM radio omission and put it back on the feature list for future EVs.

The post Emergency fail for EV AM radio omission appeared first on TechHQ.

• Toyota is looking to achieve an output of over 10,000 EVs monthly by 2026.
• Toyota may announce plans to build an EV assembly facility in Kentucky, US.
• The company also aims to sell about one million EVs globally by 2026.

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Toyota outsells General Motors for the first time in US history

Toyota is long known for its hybrid vehicles and its cautiousness in investing in fully electric vehicles (EVs). Until 2021, the Japanese automaker made little to no progress on its intention to build EVs even as the global auto industry transitions to a battery-powered future. 

Then finally, in April 2021, Toyota announced an EV strategy, and it started with a goal of 15 new battery EVs (BEVs) by 2025.

By December 2021, Toyota, one of the world’s largest automakers, revamped its EV strategy and shared its plans to invest 4 trillion yen (US$35 billion) to build a full lineup of 30 battery-powered EVs by 2030. It aims to increase global battery EV sales by 3.5 million units annually by the decade’s end. The target was a 75% expansion on its previous goal of two million.

But those aspirations were set during Toyota’s era under the helm of CEO Akio Toyoda. In January this year, the company announced that Toyoda would step down as president and chief executive to become chairman from April 1. Japan’s biggest automaker would be led by the company’s top branding officer, Koji Sato. One of Sato’s earliest orders of business was pledging to reform the company’s EV strategy too “drastically.”

Toyota’s new CEO, Koji Sato
Source: AFP

Sato’s move came when Toyota was criticized by investors, environmental activists, and EV enthusiasts for falling behind in the global EV race. Therefore, he aims to accelerate the rollout of new EVs to reinvent the world’s largest automaker as a mobility company.

Sato said he is prioritizing a three-pronged strategy after he takes over from Akio Toyoda as CEO on April 1. The priorities will be to ramp up the carmaker’s EV strategy, strengthen its Woven-related software-first initiatives, and focus on achieving carbon neutrality in Asia. “I don’t think a one-size-fits-all solution works,” Sato told Automotive News. 

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He noted that the renewed focus on EVs is not in reaction to increased competition from US and Chinese start-ups, but traditional rivals like General Motors and Volkswagen. Sato’s top priority is to rethink Toyota’s electric battery product plans. “The first is business reform starting with next-generation BEV. To deliver attractive BEVs to more customers, we must streamline the car’s structure, and with a BEV-first mindset, we must drastically change how we do business,” he said.

Toyota and its plan on EVs and SUVs in the US

According to a report by Nikkei Asia this week, Toyota will begin producing mid-to-large-sized electric sports utility vehicles (SUVs) at its Kentucky plant as early as summer 2025. The report stated that the Japanese automaker is aiming for a monthly output of more than 10,000 by the year’s end.

Nikkei even shared that Toyota aims to sell about 1 million EVs globally by 2026. The company has yet to announce full details because a decision has still to be made as to when EV production would start in the US. Toyota has invested US$3.8 billion in a battery plant in North Carolina that’s expected to become operational in 2025.

After selling a mere 1,220 units of its first electric SUV, the bZ4X, in the US last year, the company could use some help scaling production. After all, as Electrek puts it, producing electric SUVs in the US would allow Toyota to streamline production and get EVs into customers’ hands more quickly while avoiding expensive transport fees. In that case, ramping up EV manufacturing production in the US would be a big step for Toyota.

The post Toyota may debut EV production in the US by 2025 as CEO accelerates pace appeared first on TechHQ.