Grand Rapids, Michigan — General Motors is recalling all Chevrolet Bolt electric vehicles sold worldwide to fix a battery problem that could cause fires, expanding a previous recall. The company last month told owners of 2017-2019 model year vehicles to park outdoors and not charge them overnight after two vehicles repaired in the earlier recall caught fire.
The recall and others raise questions about lithium ion batteries, which now are used in nearly all electric vehicles. Ford, BMW and Hyundai all have recalled batteries recently. President Joe Biden will need electric vehicles to reach a goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions in half 2030 as part of a broader effort to fight climate change.
The GM recall announced Friday adds about 73,000 Bolts from the 2019 through 2022 model years to a previous recall of 69,000 older Bolts. GM said that in rare cases the batteries have two manufacturing defects that can cause fires.
GM recalls some electric Chevy Bolt vehicles
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The Detroit-based automaker said it will replace battery modules in all the vehicles. In older versions, all five modules will be replaced.
The latest recall will cost the company about $1 billion, bringing the total cost of the Bolt battery recalls to $1.8 billion.
GM said owners should limit charging to 90% of battery capacity. The Bolts, including a new SUV, also should be parked outdoors until the modules are replaced.
The original recall was blamed on a manufacturing defect at a South Korean factory run by LG Chemical Solution, GM’s battery supplier. But the company said an investigation showed that the defects are possible in batteries made at other sites. Most newer Bolt batteries are made at an LG plant in Holland, Michigan.
GM issued the first Bolt recall in November after getting reports of five of them catching fire. Two people suffered smoke inhalation and a house was set ablaze.
At first the company didn’t know what was causing the problem, but it determined that batteries that caught fire were near a full charge. It traced the fires to what it called a rare manufacturing defect in battery modules. It can cause a short in a cell, which can trigger a fire.
GM said it began investigating the newer Bolts after a 2019 model that was not included in the previous recall caught fire a few weeks ago in Chandler, Arizona. That raised concerns about newer Bolts.
That fire brought the total number of Bolt blazes to 10, company spokesman Dan Flores said.
GM says it is working with LG to increase battery production. The company says owners will be notified to take their cars to dealers as soon as replacement parts are ready.
Flores said he is not sure when that will be.
The company said it will not produce or sell any more Bolts until it is satisfied that problems have been worked out in LG batteries, Flores said.
“Our focus on safety and doing the right thing for our customers guides every decision we make at GM,” Doug Parks, GM product development chief, said in a statement.
Batteries with the new modules will come with an eight year, 100,000 mile (160 kilometer) warranty, the company said. GM will replace all five battery modules in 2017 to 2019 Bolts. Defective modules will be replaced in newer models.
GM said it will pursue reimbursement from LG.
The Bolts are only a tiny fraction of GM’s overall U.S. sales, which run close to 3 million vehicles in a normal year. But they are the first of an ambitious rollout of electric models as GM tries to hit a goal of selling only electric passenger vehicles by 2035.
Other automakers are also announcing additional electric models worldwide to cut pollution and meet stricter government fuel economy standards.
Shares in General Motors Co. were down about 2% in extended trading following the recall announcement.
Some Tesla owners could get $625 each to settle claims that an over-the-air update, pushed to their Model S electric sedans in May 2019, reduced their battery’s charging speed, maximum capacity and range temporarily.
According to documents filed with a U.S. District Court in San Francisco, and obtained by CNBC, the proposed settlement would have Tesla paying $1.5 million into a fund that would pay owners for the reduced vehicle performance they experienced due to battery throttling, and would cover the plaintiffs’ attorney fees and costs.
Reuters first reported on the new filings in the class action, David Rasmussen v. Tesla Inc.
According to the filings, 1,743 Tesla Model S owners were impacted by the software update.
Read more about electric vehicles from CNBC Pro
In May 2019, Tesla was facing negative publicity after one of its Model S vehicles caught fire in Hong Kong. Tesla issued a statement at the time, saying:
“Out of an abundance of caution, we are revising charge and thermal management settings on Model S and Model X vehicles via an over-the-air software update that will begin rolling out today, to help further protect the battery and improve battery longevity.”
A Model S owner who had been carefully tracking his battery’s performance over time, David Rasmussen, complained to the court in August 2019 after that software update.
By October 2019, Tesla and the owners moved to try to reach a settlement agreement and attorneys stayed the litigation. Tesla rolled out another software update in March 2020 to restore impacted owners’ batteries to their maximum voltage over time as they drove their Teslas.
The court filings this week say that 1,552 of the affected Tesla Model S sedans have already seen their batteries’ voltage fully restored, and 57 received full battery replacements. Other Tesla owners who experienced battery throttling should see their Model S’s maximum voltage restored as they continue to drive the cars.
As part of the proposed settlement, Tesla would also have to “maintain diagnostic software for in-warranty vehicles to notify owners and lessees of vehicles that Tesla determines may need battery service or repair for certain battery issues.”
The owners in the class include U.S. residents who owned or leased a Tesla Model S experiencing the battery limitations due to Tesla’s over-the-air update in May 2019. A hearing to finalize the proposed settlement is scheduled for Dec. 9, 2021.
Tesla owners were represented by Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, along with Ed Chen’s YK Law. Attorneys fees amount to about 25% of the settlement funds. They have proposed that Angeion Group serve as settlement administrator.
The Miami-Dade County building inspector was concerned. Buckley Towers, a high-rise condominium in the Ojus section of Miami, had not filed its comprehensive safety assessment in 2009, as required, and had not made necessary repairs. Now, in January 2011, the inspector was back before a county oversight board arguing for action.
It was the second time the inspector had brought Buckley Towers to the attention of the quasi-judicial entity charged with keeping buildings safe across Miami-Dade County. Two years earlier, the inspector had recommended that the board require the 564-unit property to certify its safety in 30 days and bring it up to code within six months.
Back then, the board had given Buckley Towers more time to comply. Now, the building’s attorney said it did not have money for the work and needed five more years for repairs, records show. The building “does take the matter very seriously,” the former condo association president said at the time.
The result: Buckley Towers got another reprieve from the oversight group, known as the Miami-Dade Unsafe Structures Board. In mid-January 2011, it gave the condo four and one-quarter more years to finish repairs. It agreed with the building official’s request to make Buckley file periodic safety reports with the county and outline its progress. County officials later gave the complex even more time to complete the repairs based on its incremental progress.
A decade later, the work is not finished. Days after the Champlain Towers South condo building collapse killed at least 97 people in nearby Surfside, Buckley Towers appeared on a list of 24 residential properties in unincorporated Miami-Dade County that are deficient and have not been recertified as safe. Most buildings on the list were due for recertification within the past three years; Buckley Towers and one other were initially due in fall 2008.
While Buckley Towers’ residential buildings have been certified as safe, a pool deck, the clubhouse roof and parking lot lighting still need attention. The county said its engineer had not deemed the buildings’ pending structural and electrical repairs to be imminent life safety hazards.
In twice allowing Buckley Towers more time than building officials wanted to fix its problems, the Unsafe Structures Board’s decisions were not unusual, an NBC News investigation has found. From 2010 to 2021, public records of the board’s meetings show, it overrode building officials’ recommendations in so-called heard cases almost twice as often as it ruled in favor of them.
Less than a month after the Surfside tragedy, it remains unclear what caused the massive condo building to fall. The disaster has brought increased scrutiny to the structural soundness of buildings across Florida — and the U.S. — and to the work municipalities perform to keep buildings safe.
In Miami-Dade County, with a population topping 2.7 million, the Unsafe Structures Board is central to that effort — a last line of defense against risky buildings. The board’s volunteer members — professionals in real estate and related businesses for the most part — operate under the county code, reviewing decisions by municipal officials about structures in violation of the building code and hearing appeals from owners.
In cases heard by the board, building officials make specific recommendations to bring problematic properties up to code and owners or their representatives argue against them, typically asking for more time to comply. In the vast majority of such cases, both sides agreed that the property was in violation of the building code and therefore considered unsafe.
In the 72 such matters during the period, the Unsafe Structures Board overruled building officials 47 times and supported them 25 times, according to meeting minutes published on the county website. In overruling officials, the board granted building owners extra time to submit 40-year recertification reports, put off demolition, secure permits and perform other work to bring properties up to code, the minutes show.
Jason Trauth, a lawyer, chairs the Unsafe Structures Board. In an interview, he said the board listens to both sides — building officials who provide the worst-case scenario and the owners who need to complete the work. He declined to talk about specific cases heard by the board.
“Certainly, the first consideration is safety of any occupants,” he said. “In the heard cases, we do try to give extra time where it is warranted. We review the reports and documents [building officials] provide, and we’ll weigh that against what the owners have to say.”
Udonis Haslem of the Miami Heat and Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava arrive at a memorial June 30 after the Champlain Towers South building collapse in Surfside, Fla.Joe Raedle / Getty Images file
None of the cases involving additional time from the board in the past 10 years appear to have resulted in catastrophic events.
Still, an unsafe structures board should be wary of kicking the can down the road, said Ken O’Dell, a veteran structural engineer and spokesman for the National Council of Structural Engineering Associations.
“I don’t want an appeals panel to say: ‘We know you agree this has to be done. We’re going to give you two more years to do it,'” O’Dell said. “You don’t want it to get into building owners’ heads that they can go to the appeals panel and get an extra couple of months to just ignore this damage, because damage builds upon itself.”
‘Manipulate the system’
Since 1975, Florida has required buildings to recertify for safety and soundness when they reach 40 years of age and then every 10 years thereafter. Brought about largely because the state is subject to intense weather events and the effects of sea and salt air, the requirement means Florida’s building code is more stringent than most others.
Still, given the Surfside calamity, 40 years might be too long to wait for reassessments, O’Dell said.
Miami-Dade published the list of 24 deficient buildings in an emergency audit after the Surfside collapse, said Tere Florin, spokeswoman for the county Department of Regulatory and Economic Resources. While not all of the buildings’ deficiencies may be structural, they still must be corrected “to ensure safe and comfortable living conditions,” she said. Only buildings in the unincorporated parts of Miami-Dade, home to 40 percent of the county’s population, are on the list. Municipalities like Coral Gables, Hialeah and Miami Beach have their own building departments to conduct investigations.
After the disaster, municipalities in Florida have been ramping up oversight. Early this month, the city of North Miami Beach ordered Crestview Towers Condominium to be evacuated after an inspection report found it to have unsafe structural and electrical conditions. And residents at a condominium building in Kissimmee had to relocate after an inspection found the structure unsafe because its walkways might collapse.
Miami-Dade inspectors have more than 1,000 buildings with overdue recertifications, Florin said, including commercial and industrial buildings. Not all of the cases will be heard by the Unsafe Structures Board, she said. Neither Crestview Towers nor Champlain Towers went before the board.
Friction is a natural outcome when municipal officials enforce building codes. Residents rarely welcome high-cost repairs, especially of unseen infrastructure elements like aging cement, steel and roofs. Before it fell, the Champlain Towers condo was assessing its owners for multimillion-dollar repairs identified as necessary in a report prepared for its 40-year recertification. The cost of the repairs had caused consternation among residents, according to reports.
Monitoring buildings for deterioration is a crucial activity for cities and towns. In some places, like New York and Chicago, disputes over safety issues are heard by the courts. Many states, including Florida, Kentucky, Minnesota, New Jersey and Ohio, allow for appeals boards to hear from property owners about building officials’ decisions.
The boards essentially act as referees between those responsible for enforcing rules and property owners faced with repairs they may not be able to afford. The Unsafe Structures Board in Miami-Dade County says it “ensures the safety of buildings and structures through conducting a fair and open public hearing process, where testimony is heard and evidence reviewed to make a determination that serves to safeguard the community.” Local building departments enforce its decisions.
Property owners asking for extra time to bring their buildings up to code can officially receive only one extension from the board, said Trauth, the chairman. But it has granted lengthy periods for compliance, meeting minutes show, some lasting years — extending previous grants of additional time.
After a fire damaged a commercial building on Harbor Drive in Key Biscayne in 2017, the Unsafe Structures Board ordered the building’s owner to repair or demolish it. It gave the owner 60 days to obtain a permit and 180 days to complete repairs, in April 2018.
Two months after the repair deadline had passed, the building inspector returned to the board citing “lack of progress” by the owner. In February 2019, the inspector advised the board not to grant additional time for repairs, as that “would not achieve compliance,” and accused the owner of continuing “to manipulate the system,” minutes of the meeting show.
The board granted the owner an extension of 150 days to complete construction. The renovated building is now up to code, the owner said.
James Cueva was a member of the Unsafe Structures Board for 21 years and chairman for most of that time until he resigned in February. In an interview, he also said safety is the board’s No. 1 concern.
Asked about the board’s tendency to overrule building officials, he agreed that it voted to give buildings more time in most cases, in part because demolition was often the alternative, but characterized the decisions as modifications, not overrides.
“I always put it on the property owner to tell us, if a building official says 180 days, how much time do you think you need?” Cueva said. “Ultimately it became a debate about what’s reasonable, how quickly can we get this structure into compliance given whatever the reality is of the scope of work that has to be done.”
In cases involving overdue recertifications, city officials typically asked that they be produced within 30 days, meeting minutes show. In three cases for which there are details in the minutes, the board allowed for at least twice as much time to recertify.
In those cases, Cueva said, no one questioned that the structures were unsafe. “I asked that question: Can we agree here the structure is unsafe? Yes. Let’s move on to what the real issue is — how much time is needed to complete the repairs?” he said. “Sometimes scope of work is an issue. Sometimes condos don’t have the money to do it.”
‘A financial issue’
Another complex overdue on recertification according to Miami-Dade’s list last month is part of the Beach Club at Fontainebleau Park in Miami. It, too, had gotten extra time to fix problems from the Unsafe Structures Board.
In 2011, records show, the county began working with the complex to bring several structures up to code. But ongoing electrical problems were presenting hazards, a building official told the Unsafe Structures Board in a meeting in July 2014. “A financial issue” had “delayed the process,” an attorney for the condo said at the time, meeting minutes show.
The building official recommended that the 40-year recertification be filed within 30 days and that repairs be completed in six months. If the county’s demands were not met, it should demolish the structures “as soon as possible,” he said.
A majority of Unsafe Structures Board members disagreed. In a 7-2 vote, they gave the complex 60 to 170 days to recertify for soundness and eight months to a year to finish repair work.
Today, said Alfredo Lopez, the president of the condo’s 12-building association, it is working toward full recertification and has provided engineers’ reports to the county stating that all the structures are livable and safe. Six have been fully recertified, he said, two are almost complete, and four more have two years of work left. “We’re complying,” Lopez said.
O’Dell, the structural engineer, said one lesson from Surfside is that building codes do not focus enough on maintenance. He pointed to an international property maintenance code created by the International Code Council as a potential model. It establishes minimum requirements for the maintenance of existing buildings; about 1,000 jurisdictions in Maryland, New York, Rhode Island, Tennessee and other states follow the code, a spokeswoman for the council said.
“We all maintain our cars, change the oil, rotate our tires,” he said. “A building needs the same attention. If you have a really bad building, somebody will eventually complain, and you will be cited through these municipal codes based on unsafe structures. At that point, it’s a little too late.”
The Miami-Dade Unsafe Structures Board meets monthly in a public forum, except in August. It has 13 seats; three are vacant.
Each member is appointed by a separate Miami-Dade County commissioner. Board members generally serve for four years and are often reappointed, board staff member Kathy Charles said. Vacancies can be a problem, said Cueva, the former chairman. “Getting commissioners to timely appoint members to the board — that’s been an issue from time to time,” he said.
According to Miami-Dade code, the board “shall include a registered engineer, registered architect, a general building contractor, an electrical contractor, an attorney, a plumbing contractor, a real estate appraiser, a real estate property manager, and a citizen with experience and background in the field of social problems.”
Three board members are supposed to represent the public, Charles said; one of those seats is vacant, as are seats designated for an architect and a plumber.
At least seven members must be on hand to make determinations, Charles said. In recent years, even before the coronavirus pandemic, meetings of the board were sometimes canceled because of lack of member attendance, records show. During 2018 and 2019, two of the board’s 11 scheduled meetings were canceled, putting off safety rulings for at least a month.
The board has no attendance requirements, Charles said. Other boards do. The New Jersey Administrative Code, for example, states that if members of its Construction Board of Appeals miss more than 50 percent of meetings during a year, their attendance records will generally be considered “good cause for removal.”
New requirement
On Wednesday, the Unsafe Structures Board held its first meeting after the tragedy in Surfside. One case came before the panel — another condo overdue on its 40-year recertification report and listed as deficient by the county.
At the meeting, a county building official recommended that the condo submit the report within 30 days, obtain a permit for required repairs within 120 days and submit a final inspection on permits and a revised recertification report within 180 days.
The county also recently added a new requirement in all overdue 40-year recertification cases, the building official said. Every building working with municipalities to come to agreements about code violations now must provide engineers’ letters stating that the buildings are structurally and electrically safe within five days.
The attorney representing the condo at the meeting agreed to the terms. This time, the building official had prevailed.
Apple and Sony have teamed up to offer PS5 owners a great promotion on the Apple TV Plus streaming service. New and existing subscribers can get six months of service for no charge by simply opening the Apple TV Plus app on PS5 (and signing in with your Apple ID, if you aren’t a current user). After six months, you’ll be charged the normal rate of $4.99 per month to continue with the service.
The timing of this promotion is no coincidence. Ted Lasso, Apple TV Plus’ runaway hit show starring Jason Sudeikis, is beginning its second season Friday, July 23rd. There are other things to look forward to with this subscription, like catching up on two fantastic seasons of Mythic Quest and getting ready for a promising-looking adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation. The Problem with Jon Stewart is launching in September.
If you have a PS5, this is a no-brainer. Tab over to the “Media” section on the main PS5 homescreen and download Apple TV Plus from there. The offer begins today and lasts through a year from now, giving you until July 22nd, 2022 to activate your six-month trial. You can see more details, terms, and eligible countries right here at the PlayStation website.
Don’t have a PS5 yet? We know they’re still tough to find, but stay tuned for upcoming opportunities. Restocks will likely become more plentiful as we near the holiday season.
Melina, Narasha, and Yelena hearing the news.Image: Disney+/Marvel
Though Marvel Studios’ Black Widow was at the top of the box office when it premiered simultaneously in theaters and on Disney+ (with “Premiere Access”), it fell to the second spot this past weekend as Warner Bros.’ overstuffed Space Jamspiritual successor took the lead.
While Black Widow’s initial $80 million domestic theatrical box office was nothing to sneeze at by covid-19 pandemic-era standards, the movie made just $26.3 million the following weekend—a steep drop that has many theater owners apoplectic. In response to Black Widow’s second weekend box office drop, the National Association of Theater Owners (NATO) released a public statement detailing the organization’s concerns about the movie’s “stunning collapse” and how Disney+’s Premiere Access stunts revenue by depressing theater turnout.
“Why did such a well-made, well-received, highly anticipated movie underperform,” NATO rhetorically pondered in the incendiary statement. “Despite assertions that this pandemic-era improvised release strategy was a success for Disney and the simultaneous release model, it demonstrates that an exclusive theatrical release means more revenue for all stakeholders in every cycle of the movie’s life.”
Along with Black Widow’s $80 million box office, Disney also proudly touted the $60 million the movie initially made from Disney+, where subscribers could purchase access to the movie for $30 day-and-date with its theatrical debut. NATO was careful to point out in its statement that Disney has to cede a percentage of its Premiere Access revenue to the various other platforms where Disney+ is made available. But the larger issue NATO sees with Disney’s Black Widow releasing strategy is how immediate Disney+ access both encourages piracy and cuts into box offices sales that might have otherwise come from repeat theatergoers who tend to flock to theaters for Marvel tentpoles. For all of Black Widow’s Premiere Access success, NATO insisted, there are questions left about how much more money the movie could have made in a world where people don’t share login passwords.
“Combined with the lost theatrical revenue and forgone traditional PVOD revenue, the answer to these questions will show that simultaneous release costs Disney money in revenue per viewer over the life of the film,” NATO said. “Piracy no doubt further affected Black Widow’s performance, and will affect its future performance in international markets where it has yet to open.”
G/O Media may get a commission
From NATO’s perspective, Disney’s strategy with Disney+ should be considered “a pandemic-era artifact that should be left to history with the pandemic itself.” What’s important to bear in mind is that while we may want to think of the pandemic as history, it is still ongoing and affecting people on a daily basis. At the same time that theaters are re-opening and film studios are getting back to reporting box office numbers as if things are back to normal, covid-19 cases are once again on the rise in the U.S. as the delta variant of the virus has begun to spread. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Disney declined to respond to NATO’s statement, but the studio has undoubtedly heard concerns like this before, and this won’t be the last of them. What Disney and the other major Hollywood studios are going to have to do going forward is weigh those concerns against its their financial interests, while also being cognizant of the fact that this is exactly the kind of response that tends to come from major tectonic shifts in the market.
Black Widow is now in theaters and streaming on Disney+ with Premiere Access.
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This weekend, Tesla started offering their long-awaited Full Self-Driving subscription package for $199/month. Along with the package, Tesla is offering a $1,500 hardware upgrade for early owners who have old hardware that is not capable of full self-driving tasks.
The problem is, Tesla previously told those same owners that their cars were capable of full self-driving tasks, and isn’t allowing those owners to take advantage of the new subscription scheme without paying again for a hardware upgrade that they already paid for.
All Teslas currently come with “Basic Autopilot,” a slate of driver assist and safety features. These include automatic lane keeping, traffic aware cruise control, and other standard safety features like emergency brake assist. These can help reduce the stress, particularly of highway driving, and enhance safety of the vehicle.
The “Full Self-Driving” package takes this further and adds other driver assist features that allow the car to make more decisions on its own. These include:
Navigate on Autopilot
Auto Lane Change
Autopark and Summon
Traffic Light and Stop Sign Control
Eventually this package will offer full autonomy, but the software is not there yet and still requires driver attention at all times.
Tesla’s Full Self-Driving package can be bought for $10,000 upfront, or $199/month with the new subscription scheme. It has cost less in the past, but as Tesla has rolled out more and more capabilities through software updates, the price has continually increased.
Since 2016, Tesla has said that all Tesla cars have Full-Self Driving hardware built in, but the software is what costs the extra money. At press time, Tesla’s blog where they announced this is still up on their website. In case it goes down, we’ve screenshotted the contents of the blog for posterity:
Owners who bought Tesla vehicles between late 2016 and mid-2019 were sold a bill of goods that was capable of full self-driving with the hardware included in the vehicle. They were told that no further hardware upgrades would be required.
Since that post, Tesla found that their previous computers, designated Hardware 2.0 and 2.5, weren’t quite up to the task of full self-driving. So they designed their own chip, alternately described as “Hardware 3.0” or “FSD Computer,” which was more capable. Cars built since mid-2019 have this new hardware included.
As part of this change in hardware, Tesla said that all owners with the old hardware could upgrade to the new hardware for free, provided they had paid for Full Self-Driving. Tesla has a blog describing the process for upgrading your computer to FSD Computer/Hardware 3.0.
This was all fine and dandy – owners who would make use of the FSD Computer got a hardware upgrade along with their purchase of the software, and owners without Full Self-Driving weren’t missing out on anything since they didn’t have the software anyway.
But now the much-awaited subscription scheme offers a lower barrier to entry. Tesla owners with cars from late 2016-mid 2019 might want to try out the software and see what it can do, especially since it has improved since they purchased their car. Maybe they don’t know if they’ll like it enough to want to spend $10,000, maybe they don’t think they’ll have the car long enough for it to be worthwhile, any number of reasons.
But to get that subscription, Tesla is demanding that those owners pay $1,500 upfront for the hardware upgrade that was previously given to all Full Self-Driving purchasers for free. Remember, this is an upgrade which all Tesla owners since late 2016 already paid for by purchasing a vehicle that Tesla said included Full Self-Driving hardware. Here’s the notice showing up in the Tesla app for older car owners who want to use the new subscription:
As this information has percolated through Tesla forums and by word-of-mouth, many owners are showing their anger with Tesla over the changes. We’ve received several tips and messages, and read lots of furious comments over this change, with some comments even calling for legal action.
Electrek’s Take
This isn’t the first time Tesla has broken a promise to early customers.
Tesla told early customers that prices would gradually rise for Full Self-Driving capability, and to lock in their price now before it goes up. Then, before any Full Self-Driving features actually rolled out, Tesla pulled a bait-and-switch and lowered the price, despite the software never having been delivered yet at that time. Some might say that this is analogous to buying a product that later dropped in price, but the difference is that the early purchasers heregained no benefit from owning the software early, since the software didn’t do anything yet at the time.
Tesla also recently broke a promise with Tesla Solar Roof customers, hiking prices on already-signed contracts after stringing along those early customers for a year or more about Solar Roof availability.
This sort of thing seems to happen a lot with Tesla. In fact, even prior to the aforementioned events, many early Model 3 owners purchased their vehicles with Full Self-Driving, even though the software didn’t do anything yet, because they thought doing so would obligated Tesla to upgrade their computers for free if they later found out the hardware was not capable enough. So this sort of behavior is common enough from Tesla that many owners anticipated this happening years in advance.
But despite this, the company has loyal customers because they make a good product and because they truly are pushing the industry forward. Tesla has been a major cause of the shift towards electric vehicles, which is necessary if we are to avoid the worst effects of the climate emergency we are all currently facing. They’re innovating a lot and the rest of the industry is finally starting to race to catch up.
But the same fast-and-loose pace of innovation leads to a lot of basic errors like this. Someone within the company should have remembered that this promise was made and should have noted that it would be unethical and unwise to charge your loyal, early customers $1,500 for a product they already purchased. But that employee probably quit working at Tesla a while ago because the company overworks everyone, which leads to high turnover and little institutional memory, even for things that are still up on the website.
Tesla has gotten a certain amount of slack from owners and media, as the company is a “startup” in a difficult industry, and is trying to change that industry significantly, and doing a reasonable job of it.
However, Tesla was founded in 2003, 18 years ago. It’s an enormous company with over 70,000 employees, making ~$10 billion in revenue every quarter and it’s even part of the S&P 500. It’s not a “startup” anymore. It doesn’t get to use that excuse when it does stupid stuff like this. It needs to grow up and stop lying to its customers. And we’re getting tired of having to say this.
There is a simple solution here: remove the $1,500 charge for hardware that owners already paid for. We hope this change happens swiftly.
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Samsung’s return to an Android-based operating system for its smartwatches is happening later this year, with the Galaxy Watch 4 and Galaxy Watch 4 Active set to run Wear OS instead of Samsung’s Tizen OS. This move is going to, among other things, bring much needed access to a wider selection of apps for Samsung’s smartwatches, but the company will not be switching over existing watches running Tizen to Wear OS, a move that has attracted criticism from some of its diehard fans.
No more apps for you if you continue to use Android on your Galaxy Gear
This is in stark contrast to what Samsung did when it moved from Android to Tizen for its smartwatches. The first Galaxy smartwatch, the Galaxy Gear, which ran a custom version of Android, was given an update to Tizen. And, well, Samsung thinks customers who are still hanging on to that watch have had enough time to do the operating system switch and is going to require them to upgrade their watch to Tizen in order to continue using the Galaxy Store for downloading apps, at the same time it’s going to switch back to Android with its new watches.
Come August 5, Samsung will stop offering Galaxy Store support on the Galaxy Gear, meaning apps and other services will cease to be a thing. However, Samsung says customers can upgrade to Tizen to continue using the Galaxy Store. It’s hard to say how many folks out there are still rocking a Galaxy Gear — which came out in 2013 — and haven’t installed the Tizen OS update in all these years, but the number clearly isn’t zero or Samsung wouldn’t be making this announcement all these years later.
If you do own a Galaxy Gear and update it to Tizen, your watch will be reset and all its data removed, so if you took any covert pictures or videos with its camera, you might want to back them up before performing the upgrade. Some apps will also not be available or work after Tizen is installed, which is one of the biggest reasons why Samsung is returning to Android in the first place. Talk about irony, eh?
Do you own the Galaxy Gear and continue to use it to this day?
ByEuropean Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases June 30, 2021
COVID-19 is common in pet cats and dogs whose owners have the virus, according to new research being presented at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) held online this year.
Cases of owners spreading the disease to their dog or cat have been documented before but are considered to be of negligible risk to public health. However, as vaccination and other measures reduce human-to-human transmission of the virus, it is becoming imperative that we understand more about the potential risk posed by animal infections.
To find out more, Dr. Els Broens and colleagues at Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands, studied dogs and cats of people who had tested positive for COVID-19. A mobile veterinary clinic visited the homes of owners who had tested positive in the past two to 200 days and oropharyngeal and rectal swabs and blood samples were taken from their cats and dogs.
The swabs were used in PCR tests, which provide evidence of current infection, and the blood samples were tested for antibodies, which provide evidence of past infection.
Some 156 dogs and 154 cats from 196 households were tested in total. Six cats and seven dogs (4.2%) had positive PCR tests and 31 cats and 23 dogs (17.4%) tested positive for antibodies.
Eleven of the 13 owners whose pets had positive PCR tests agreed for them to undergo a second round of testing one to three weeks after they were first tested. All 11 animals tested positive for antibodies, confirming they had had COVID-19. Three cats still had positive PCR tests and were tested for a third time. Eventually, all PCR-positive animals cleared the infection and became PCR negative.
Eight cats and dogs that lived in the same homes as the PCR-positive pets were also tested again at this second stage to check for virus transmission among pets. None tested positive, suggesting the virus wasn’t being passed between pets living in close contact with one another.
With pets in 40/196 households (20.4%) having antibodies for the virus, the study reveals that COVID-19 is highly prevalent in pets of people who have had the disease.
The researchers say that with other studies showing COVID-19 rates to be higher in pets that have been in contact with people with the virus, than in pets without such contact, the most likely route of transmission is from human to pet, rather than the other way round.
Dr. Broens adds: “If you have COVID-19, you should avoid contact with your cat or dog, just as you would do with other people.
“The main concern, however, is not the animals’ health — they had no or mild symptoms of COVID-19 — but the potential risk that pets could act as a reservoir of the virus and reintroduce it into the human population.
“Fortunately, to date no pet-to-human transmission has been reported. So, despite the rather high prevalence among pets from COVID-19 positive households in this study, it seems unlikely that pets play a role in the pandemic.”
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This article is based on oral presentation 606 at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) Annual Meeting. The material has been peer reviewed by the congress selection committee. The research has not yet been submitted for publication.
ROME (AP) — Italian restaurant owners and others angry at having their businesses shut for weeks due to a virus lockdown clashed with police Tuesday during a protest outside Parliament in Rome, while in the south, hundreds of demonstrators blocked a major highway.
One officer was injured in the scuffling, the Italian news agency LaPresse said. RAI state TV said seven protesters were detained by police.
Many in the crowd of a few hundred protesters outside the Chamber of Deputies lowered their masks to shout “Work!” and “Freedom!” Some hurled smoke flares or other objects.
Dining and drinking at restaurants, bars and cafes is currently banned through at least April. Only takeout or delivery services are permitted.
Officers charged some protesters after they tried to breach a police cordon. Members of a far-right political group joined the business owners at the protest, according to the Italian news agency ANSA.
Among the demonstrators was Hermes Ferrari, owner of a restaurant in Modena, a city in northern Italy. He boasted that he has defied authorities for months in opening his establishment to diners in breach of government decrees.
Even as the fines piled up “I was able to pay my workers,” Ferrari said, by keeping the business open.
Ferrari shouted to fellow restaurant owners at the protest to follow his lead.
“You have to open because nobody can tell you to close,” he yelled.
Italy’s current and previous governments have allocated millions of euros in aid to categories particularly hard-hit by pandemic restrictions.
The business owners insist they need to re-open permanently. Restaurants and cafes in regions with lower incidence of cases and less critically impacted hospital ICUs — so-called yellow zones — have been allowed at times to have sit-down dining and drinking before evening.
But a current surge in infections, driven mainly by virus variants, has seen daily new caseloads in the tens of thousands and hundreds of COVID-19 deaths a day now for months. That prompted the Italian government to temporarily eliminate the yellow zone designation from before the Easter holidays through the rest of April.
Expressing solidarity with the injured police officer, Interior Ministry Undersecretary Carlo Sibilia said “violence won’t be tolerated.”
Still, Sibilia, from the populist 5-Star Movement, called on the government, besides concentrating on the vaccine rollout, to provide “immediately, new compensatory funds for economic activities closed or penalized by the recent restrictions.”
Sibilia pressed for government guarantees of loans, a moratorium on mortgage payments, a stop to evictions, and compensation for income lost due to COVID-19 measures.
Hours earlier, near the southern city of Caserta, another protest blocked traffic on the A1 Highway. Among the hundreds of demonstrators were those who work in outdoor markets and owners of gyms and restaurants, the Italian news agency LaPresse said. Gyms have been closed for months.
Interior Minister Luciana Lamorgese decried as unacceptable protests that turn violent or that inconvenience citizens.
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AP journalist Gordon Walker in Rome contributed to this report.
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Follow all of AP’s pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic, https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-vaccine and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak
The NFL will undergo its first significant regular-season schedule change since 1978, as the owners approved to add a 17th game to the schedule beginning in 2021. The change was a year in the making as the owners had the option in the new collective bargaining agreement to increase the number of regular-season games per club to 17 — but not more — at any time. The change will also result in the league reducing preseason games from four to three — the maximum amount of games the new CBA allows.
“This is a monumental moment in NFL history,” said NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. “The CBA with the players and the recently completed media agreements provide the foundation for us to enhance the quality of the NFL experience for our fans. And one of the benefits of each team playing 17 regular-season games is the ability for us to continue to grow our game around the world.”
One of the biggest changes to the schedule will be the interconference alignment for the 17th game. Teams will play five interconference games instead of four as AFC teams will get the home game for the 2021 season (which will rotate to the NFC the following season). The NFC East will play the AFC East, NFC West vs AFC North, NFC South vs. AFC South, and NFC North vs. AFC West — as the matchups are determined from division finish from the 2020 season.
Here are the matchups for the 17th game:
Packers at Chiefs Bears at Raiders Vikings at Chargers Lions at Broncos Seahawks at Steelers Rams at Ravens Cardinals at Browns 49ers at Bengals Saints at Titans Buccaneers at Colts Panthers at Texans Falcons at Jaguars Washington at Bills Giants at Dolphins Cowboys at Patriots Eagles at Jets
Under new the scheduling formula, every team plays 17 regular-season games with one bye week. Clubs will host 10 games overall – either nine regular-season games and one preseason game or eight regular-season games and two preseason games.
Home and away against its three division opponents (six games).
The four teams from another division within its conference on a rotating three-year cycle (four games).
The four teams from a division in the other conference on a rotating four-year cycle (four games).
Two intraconference games based on the prior year’s standings (two games). These games match a first-place team against the first-place teams in the two same-conference divisions the team is not scheduled to play that season. The second-place, third-place and fourth-place teams in a conference are matched in the same way each year.
One interconference game based on the prior year’s standings on a rotating four-year cycle (one game). These games match a first-place team from one division against a first-place team in an opposite conference division that the team is not scheduled to play that season. The second-place, third-place and fourth-place teams in each division are matched in the same way each year. The home conference for this game will rotate each season.
The league will keep one bye week during the season, so the regular season will expand from 17 to 18 weeks — pushing the conclusion of the regular season to Jan. 9. The season will begin on Sept. 9.
The NFL postseason would start the weekend of Jan. 15-17 and Super Bowl LVI would be played on Feb. 13, 2022 — the latest Super Bowl kickoff ever. The 2022 Pro Bowl will be played on Sunday, Feb. 6 — a week before the Super Bowl.
In addition, 32 clubs will play internationally at least once every eight years. The scheduling of up to four neutral-site games per year in a country outside the United States will focus initially on Canada, Europe, Mexico, South America and the United Kingdom.
The 2021 NFL schedule will be announced later this spring.
