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U.S. employers added a substantial 4.8 million jobs in June, and the unemployment rate fell to 11.1%, as the job market improved for a second straight month yet still remained far short of regaining the colossal losses it suffered this spring.
The nation has now recovered roughly one-third of the 22 million jobs it lost to the pandemic recession. And with confirmed coronavirus cases spiking across the Sun Belt states, a range of evidence suggests that a job market recovery may be stalling. In those states and elsewhere, some restaurants, bars and other retailers that had re-opened are being forced to close again.
The re-closings are keeping layoffs elevated: The number of Americans who sought unemployment benefits barely fell last week to 1.47 million. Though that weekly figure has declined steadily since peaking in late March, it's still more than double the pre-pandemic peak set in 1982. And the total number of people receiving jobless aid remains at a sizable 19 million.
California has re-closed bars, theaters and indoor restaurant dining across most of the state. Florida has also re-closed bars and beaches. Texas has reversed some of its efforts to reopen its economy. New York has paused its plans to allow indoor dining.
VIDEO: See how a popular Islip restaurant has fared during the pandemic:
Credit and debit card data tracked by JPMorgan Chase show that consumers reduced their spending last week after having increased it steadily in late April and May. The reversal has occurred both in states that have reported surges in COVID-19 and in less affected states, said Jesse Edgerton, an economist at J.P. Morgan.
Nationwide, card spending fell nearly 13% last week compared with a year ago. That’s worse than the previous week, when year-over-year card spending had fallen just under 10%.
And Kronos, which produces time management software, has found that in the past two weeks, growth in the number of shifts worked has slowed in the Southeast and is now rising at just half the rate of the Northeast.
“The pace of recovery is starting to slow,” said Dave Gilbertson, an executive at Kronos. “We are expecting to see more of a plateauing over the next couple of months.”
Thursday’s jobs report is based on data gathered in the second week of June, which helps explain why the figures reflect an improving trend. Last week’s plateau in work shifts will instead affect the July jobs figures, to be released in early August.
McDonald’s has paused its reopening efforts nationwide, and Apple says it will re-close 30 more of its U.S. stores, on top of 47 that it had already shut down for a second time.
Economists have long warned that the economic benefits of allowing businesses to reopen would prove short-lived if the virus wasn’t brought under control. Until most Americans feel confident enough to dine out, travel, shop or congregate in groups without fear of infection, restaurants, hotels and retailers will lack enough customer demand to justify rehiring all their previous workers.
Still, some bright spots in the economy have emerged in recent weeks. Manufacturers expanded in June after three months of shrinking, the Institute for Supply Management, a trade group, said Wednesday. New orders are flowing in, and factories are adding more jobs, the ISM said.
And record-low mortgage rates are encouraging more home buyers. Purchases of new homes rose sharply in May. And a measure of signed contracts to buy existing homes soared by a record amount, a sign that sales should rebound after falling for three straight months.
Sportset in Rockville Centre had to furlough over 100 staff members when the pandemic hit. With the Paycheck Protection Program, it was able to bring back employees, but with different job descriptions as they try to prepare for reopening.
Some have become movers, relocating machines for social distancing. Others have been part of tech support for virtual classes or builders to add a second story for equipment in the aerobic room.
Sportset workers say they are ready to welcome back clients, including using contactless temperature check machines, glass panels around their welcome booth and more.


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3Com became the latest company to scoop up technology for preventing attacks on computer networks, announcing on Monday that it was acquiring TippingPoint Technologies for US$430 million in cash.
The deal will add TippingPoint's UnityOne line of network-based IPS (intrusion prevention system) hardware and software to 3Com's stable of enterprise security products, and will give 3Com a leg up in the growing market for technology to serve converged networks of voice and data, 3Com said in a statement.
3Com will pay $47 in cash for each outstanding share of TippingPoint stock, adding TippingPoint as a new division within 3Com. Kip McClanahan, TippingPoint's current chief executive officer (CEO), will be the division president.
Companies use TippingPoint's technology to protect their networks from a variety of threats, including DOS (denial of service) attacks, and infections from worms and viruses. TippingPoint's UnityOne IPS appliances use a custom chip to inspect network traffic at high speeds, spotting attacks aimed at software applications, as well as routers, switches, DNS (Domain Name System) servers and other critical network infrastructure. The UnityOne Security Management System allows companies to centrally manage and control IPS appliances across the network, according to TippingPoint.
The UnityOne technology will strengthen 3Com's enterprise product portfolio, giving the company a foothold in the intrusion detection and prevention hardware and software markets which, together, are expected to be worth $1.24 billion by 2008, according to IDC.
The purchase will also give the company technology for securing VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) traffic, as well as traditional network traffic, on so-called converged networks, 3Com said in a statement.
3Com has taken steps in the last year to build its profile as a provider of network security technology. In Nov. 2003, the company unveiled a partnership with Crossbeam Systems to market and sell that company's security services switches to medium-size and large enterprises worldwide.
In January, the company released the 3Com Security Switch 6200, a new switch that uses Crossbeam technology and provides firewall, anti-virus, content-filtering and intrusion detection features on a single device. In September, 3Com added the Security Switch 7245 and 7280 to that line, targeting large enterprises and Internet service providers with features like VPNs (virtual private networks), intrusion detection, virus scanning, antispam and secure remote access via SSL (secure socket layers) VPN.
3Com is just the latest company to buy its way into the IDP (intrusion detection and prevention) market.
In a megadeal announced in February, Juniper Networks Inc. bought security vendor NetScreen Technologies for stock worth approximately US$4 billion, adding NetScreen's network security products, including IDP appliances, to Juniper's portfolio.
In March, Cisco Systems bought Riverhead Networks for US$39 million in cash, picking up technology to protect networks from DDOS (distributed denial of service) attacks.
Security software companies are getting into the IDP business, also. McAfee Inc. laid out US$220 million in April, 2003, for two companies: IntruVert Networks, a maker of hardware-based firewalls and network intrusion detection systems, and Entercept Security Technologies, which made host IPS technology.
More recently, Symantec signed a deal on Dec. 3 to purchase Platform Logic, a maker of the AppFire host-based intrusion detection software for an undisclosed sum.

domain: news


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Who doesn’t like having a steady stream of income? Having a way to earn some extra cash can give you the opportunity to vacation, relax, and worry less about your financial situation, which is important for having a healthy and relaxed lifestyle.
There’s a real risk that office culture could devolve into a class system, with on-site employees favored over remote workers. WeWork CEO Sandeep Mathrani recently insisted that the “least engaged are very comfortable working from home,” a stunning indictment that discounts working parents everywhere and suggests that those who might need flexibility—like those caring for relatives—couldn’t possibly be ambitious.
Tech companies are disrupting the traditional methods of investing and allow people to invest in fractions which is more affordable. Real estate and stocks are crowdsourced and this makes investing more affordable.
Join a content creator network - This kind of platform helps bloggers and social media influencers find relevant brands to partner with. Check out IZEA or AspireIQ.
Item enhancers are the bigger issue, and where the “to win” part of the equation comes in. Players can give their Pokémon items that grant persistent and sometimes team-wide boosts to health, attack and defense; these items can be leveled up with enhancers, which are purchasable with real money. YouTube personality MoistCr1TiKaL highlighted the issue last week, spending roughly $100 on item enhancers that he then used to boost three items. The result was a series of lopsided victories.
The most common type of bonus offer that you get at an online casino is a welcome bonus. When a casino has this offer – typically by matching your starting deposit or free spins on selected games – take full advantage of all offers included therein.
Researching your competitors and customers Finding new products and services Looking for new leads and prospects Handling sales
His tax avoidance is even more striking if you examine 2006 to 2018, a period for which ProPublica has complete data. Bezos’ wealth increased by $127 billion, according to Forbes, but he reported a total of $6.5 billion in income. The $1.4 billion he paid in personal federal taxes is a massive number — yet it amounts to a 1.1% true tax rate on the rise in his fortune.
One of the first offers you’ll see from MyPoints is a $10 welcome bonus. However, the fine print can get dicey. You’ll need to spend $20 within 30 days to access the $10 welcome bonus.
Sponsorship के जरिए मिलता है पैसा
Making the most of your money – budgeting, keeping track of your budget, ways to pay, value for money, spending.
This guide will answer common questions on how to make money blogging – from ways successful bloggers earn their income and how to start a profitable blog, to the 12 best monetization methods.
It is easy to imagine a facile narrative in which people essentially tell themselves, ‘Slavery was bad. The good guys won the Civil War. And now racism is over.’
While social media is a highly competitive space for influencers, it is not impossible to join their ranks and often requires a unique selling point that followers will be engaged with. The first step for becoming an influencer is to build a dedicated community that regularly engage and follow your online content. Networking with other influencers will also likely push this along in the right direction.
12 Best Websites to Make Money Online
Other states have name, image and likeness laws that take effect in 2022 and later, including New Jersey, Maryland, California and Minnesota. All these state laws could help shape a federal name, image and likeness law in the near future.


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Seven injured in Thailand explosion
Seven people have suffered minor injuries on the popular tourist island of Koh Samui in Thailand after a vehicle exploded, local media say.
The explosion happened at about 23:30 local time (16:30 GMT) in the Central Festival shopping mall.
Six Thais and a 12-year-old Italian girl suffered injuries.
Local officials believe the vehicle may have been brought to Koh Samui from one of three southern Thai provinces where Islamist militants operate.
However, officials say the exact provenance of the vehicle has yet to be established.
"The authorities are still investigating the scene to find out more details before linking it to any insurgency groups,'' said the island's disaster prevention chief Poonsak Sophonpathumrak told the Associated Press.
There were reports of other fires starting nearby at a shopping centre and convenience shop at the same time as the explosion.
The Samui Times said those injured have been treated for shrapnel wounds and shock.
— ST Foreign Desk (@STForeignDesk) April 11, 2015
Poonsak Sophonpathumrak said the bomb went off after a fashion show in the basement of the mall near the popular Chaweng beach.
He said a number of vehicles had been damaged.
Koh Samui is in Surat Thani province, further north from the three provinces which have seen repeated Islamist violence since 2004.
More than 5,000 people have been killed since the Islamic insurgency began, seeking more autonomy for the ethnically-Malay region.
Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha ordered security in the capital, Bangkok, to be ramped up in February after two bomb blasts outside a luxury shopping centre injured one person.
Koh Samui, one of the country's top island destinations for tourists, has not been a target of militant attacks in the past.


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Gov. Gavin Newsom is expected to announce modifications to his order later this week and allow more businesses to safely open.
More info on San Diego businesses are preparing to reopen
San Diego businesses are preparing to reopen - BingNews Search results
New faucets, plastic barriers, hand sanitizer: How San Marcos is preparing to reopen city buildings
City offices are still closed to the public but public safety director Chase Stapp says they have two teams conducting site visits to discuss when reopening might happen and how to do it.
Live Blog: San Diego Seals Will Not Complete Rest of Season, Look To Next Year
The National Lacrosse League and its local affiliate the San Diego Seals announced Thursday the league is focusing its attention and efforts on preparing for the next season and has decided not to ...
Top San Jose news: Businesses prepare to reopen, told to 'board up'; NAACP hold rally; more
Read on for the most recent top news you may have missed in San Jose. Some South Bay businesses preparing to finally reopen amid pandemic, told to 'consider boarding up' Some businesses in Santa Clara ...
San Carlos Jewelry Store Ransacked Day Before It Was Set To Reopen
Designated as non-essential and shut down for months during the pandemic, Geoffrey’s Diamonds and Goldsmith was set to reopen this week. But on Sunday, the night before the family-owned business ...
San Diego’s Hair Salons, Gyms Cautiously Prepare to Reopen for Business
Hair salons and barbershops are preparing to reopen across the county, though San Diego business owners say it will be nothing like business as usual.
As the U.S. death toll hits 100,000, theme parks and casinos prepare to reopen
Las Vegas casinos and Florida theme parks are set to begin opening next month as states balance health concerns with lost tourism revenue.
SeaWorld, Legoland and other San Diego attractions await state approval of planned July 1 reopening
Theme parks had a joint call Wednesday with county health officials to unveil reopening plans, which now must be blessed by the state ...
San Diego Businesses Prepare To Reopen
The San Diego County Board of Supervisors voted to move further into phase two and reopen restaurants for dine-in service and some retailers with modifications.
San Diego restaurants, shops poised to reopen but who will be ready this week?
Restaurants and retail shops, which for the last couple of months have been shut down or experimenting with takeout and curbside sales, are now hastily reconfiguring their venues and hiring back ...
Businesses in North Park prepare to reopen
SAN DIEGO (KUSI ... spend on food and alcohol if she’s not sure about how much business she’ll have when the doors reopen. Worm said she’ll also have to think about the rules regarding ...
As SD Businesses Prepare to Reopen, Shoppers Can Expect to Stay in Their Cars
Gavin Newsom announces a modification to the current stay-at-home orders that will allow more businesses to safely reopen. According to officials with the County of San Diego, after the state ...
Some San Diego Small Businesses Preparing for Reopening
The framework – outlined at a Monday news briefing by San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer and County Supervisor Greg Cox – includes five criteria for local businesses to follow as they reopen.


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Kemba Walker has teamed up with Vistaprint for a new auction that will include a special Air Jordan 35 and a unique trading card.
Vistaprint has helped millions of small businesses around the world and considering National Small Business Week is upon us, it should be no surprise that they are teaming up with Boston Celtics star Kemba Walker for a brand new collaboration that will help out black-owned businesses in the New England area.
On Sunday, the Celtics are dedicating their game to the small businesses that are in the city and during that game, Walker will be wearing a new custom pair of Air Jordan 35s designed by Soems who is a black artist in Boston. The shoes are modeled after some of Walker's favorite business in Boston, such as Mobar Cuts, The Urban Grape, Zaz, and Murl’s Kitchen, After the game, these shoes, as well as a special Panini trading card, will be sold as part of a special auction, with all of the proceeds going to the Power Forward Small Business Grant program, which empowers black-owned businesses. Vistaprint and the Celtics have already pledged $1 million to this cause, which just goes to show their commitment to the city and its entrepreneurs.
“It’s clear Vistaprint is committed to leaving its imprint in the Boston and greater New England communities and I am excited to team up with them for this capsule collection which will support Black-owned small businesses,” said Walker in a press release. “Between the exclusive gear and the great cause, you won’t want to miss this auction.”
The auction itself will begin at 9 AM on Sunday, May 9th and will last until just before midnight on Wednesday, May 12th. This auction will be done through the "I Got It" mobile app so if you want to try and get these, make sure to get the app.


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Silicon Valley-based accelerator 500 Startups is having its Demo Day for Batch 10 today. In total, twenty-seven companies will be pitching for glory, including Toronto-based Uplette.
For those unfamiliar, Uplette is a mobile marketing solution that empowers brands and agencies to easily deliver relevant mobile ad content to increase campaign conversion rates. Its real-time technology fills the gap between ad exchanges, DSPs and consumers by leveraging data, machine learning and predictive algorithms to power a better user experience.
Amanda Parker, Co-Founder and CEO of Uplette, stated in an email to us that “The business acceleration Uplette has achieved as part of 500 Startups has been phenomenal. San Francisco is a hot spot for ad tech companies and investors, and we’ve been able to use that to our advantage during the past 3 months. We’ve built multiple partnerships with DSPs and major media agencies that are going to help take us to the next level and work with more brands on a massive scale. Uplette has now powered more than 40 million user experiences with a 50% month over month user growth rate, and we’ve been able to work with brands like 20th Century Fox, Universal Music Group, and Samsung. The 500 mentors network has been an amazing resource, but also being a part of a community of like-minded founders has been incredibly beneficial to our development.”
The other startups to participate in Demo Day for Batch 10 are GymTrack, CareLuLu, Rain, Promolta, UXCam, TrustCloud, Uplette, myTips, Revivn, StudySoup, Remoov, Mind My Business, Shopline, Silkroad, Neighbot.ly, Whim, LendSquare, Shakr, Giveurance, WeDidIt, Rover, Uguru, ProductBio, Feesheh, Vantage Sports, YogaTrail, and Monkimun.
Source: Product Hunt


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African Press Organization 2014-04-18 CAPE-TOWN, South-Africa, April 18, 2014/African Press Organization (APO)/ -- DHL (http://www.dpdhl.com) are... ...http://www.bizwireexpress.com/showstoryAPO.php?storyid=6675
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In yet another sign that Telegram is increasingly becoming a thriving hub for cybercrime, researchers have found that threat actors are using the messaging platform to peddle phishing kits and help set up phishing campaigns.
"To promote their 'goods,' phishers create Telegram channels through which they educate their audience about phishing and entertain subscribers with polls like, 'What type of personal data do you prefer?'," Kaspersky web content analyst Olga Svistunova said in a report published this week.
The links to these Telegram channels are distributed via YouTube, GitHub, and the phishing kits that are developed by the crooks themselves. The Russian cybersecurity firm said it detected over 2.5 million malicious URLs generated using phishing kits in the past six months.
One of the prominent services offered is to provide threat actors with Telegram bots that automate the process of generating phishing pages and collecting user data.
Although it's the scammer's responsibility to distribute the fake login pages to targets of interest, the credentials captured in those pages are sent back by means of another Telegram bot.
Other bot services go a step further by advertising options to generate phishing pages that mimic a legitimate service, which are then used to lure potential victims under the pretext of giving away free likes on social media services.
"Scammer-operated Telegram channels sometimes post what appears to be exceptionally generous offers, for example, zipped up sets of ready-to-use phishing kits that target a large number of global and local brands," Svistunova said.
In some cases, phishers have also been observed sharing users' personal data with other subscribers for free in hopes of attracting aspiring criminals, only to sell paid kits to those who wish to pull off more such attacks. The scammers further offer to teach "how to phish for serious cash."
Using free propositions is also a way for scammers to trick cash-strapped and newbie criminals into using their phishing kits, resulting in double theft, where the stolen data is also sent to the creator without their knowledge.
Paid services, on the other hand, include advanced kits that boast of an appealing design and features like anti-bot detection, URL encryption, and geoblocking that threat actors could use to commit more advanced social engineering schemes. Such pages cost anywhere between $10 to $280.
Another paid category entails the sale of personal data, with credentials of bank accounts advertised at different rates based on the balance. For example, an account with a balance of $49,000 was put up for $700.
What's more, phishing services are marketed via Telegram on a subscription basis (i.e., phishing-as-a-service or PhaaS), wherein the developers rent the kits for a monthly fee in return for providing regular updates.
Also promoted as a subscription is a one-time password (OTP) bot that calls users and convinces them to enter the two-factor authentication code on their phones to help bypass account protections.
Setting up these services are relatively straightforward. What's more difficult is earning the trust and loyalty of the customers. And some vendors go out of their way to assure that all the information is encrypted so that no third-parties, including themselves, can read it.
The findings also follow an advisory from Cofense earlier this January, which revealed an 800% increase year-over-year in the use of Telegram bots as exfiltration destinations for phished information.
"Wannabe phishers used to need to find a way onto the dark web, study the forums there, and do other things to get started," Svistunova said. "The threshold to joining the phisher community lowered once malicious actors migrated to Telegram and now share insights and knowledge, often for free, right there in the popular messaging service."


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El Segundo, CA, United States (AHN) – She has been a ballerina and a doctor. She has been a flight attendant and a fashion icon. In 2009, she celebrated her 50th birthday. And in 2011, Barbie got tattooed.
The iconic American doll manufactured by Mattel has received a complete makeover. The limited edition $50 Barbie doll has been given a pink bob haircut with trendy bangs, leopard print leggings and has floral and Magna cartoon-style motifs inked across her left arm, neck and chest.
Many have voiced complaints about the tattooed Barbie, saying it sends the message to children that tattoos are cool and okay. Others say it makes Barbie more human and that the tattoos are more realistic than her disproportionate body measurements.
Mattel has no plans to bow to public pressure. The company said in a statement that it has no intention to discontinue the doll, adding that “the doll gives girls a chance to express themselves and be creative.”


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Members of the beverage and liquid food industry will be gathering from around the globe this September to showcase their products and services at DrinkTec 2017, in Munich, Germany.
Held at the Neue Messe München Exhibition Centre, the trade fair runs for 5 days, from 11-15 September and provides a huge networking platform for all sectors of the drinks industry, including manufacturing, packaging, marketing and much more.
DrinkTec runs every four years and promises to be the world’s leading trade fair for the beverage and liquid food sector. With approximately 67,000 visitors from over 180 countries attending the last exhibition in 2013, DrinkTec is certainly not one to be missed.
SPL will be in attendance this year, exhibiting on a shared stand with the BFBI (Brewing, Food & Beverage Industry Suppliers Association), located in Hall B1, Stand 323. We are very much looking forward to discovering new opportunities at the exhibition as well as the chance to network with other members of the alcoholic drinks industry.


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The MercuryNews.com 2008 Silicon Valley 150 rankings show Data Domain making the biggest annual percentage sales gain out of all the IT companies in the list at 122 per cent to $274.1m. Symantec made the biggest loss of all at -$6.6bn.
The SV150 rankings compare companies on their 2008 versus 2007 performance. Looking just at the IT companies 3PAR was the seventh highest percentage sales gainer overall, at 83 per cent to $171.1m.
Rackable was ranked number 10 in the largest percentage sales drop category, at -30 per cent to $248m. For those Silicon Valley residents worried about jobs, third ranked HP had the largest workforce rise at 87 per cent to 321,000. Apple grew its headcount 48 per cent to 32,000 and BlueCoat Systems 46 per cent to 1,033.
The largest IT supplier percentage workforce falls were Adaptect at -35 per cent to 391, Quantum -29 per cent to 2,050 and Rambus -25 per cent to 330. Continuing the dismal numbers, Sun ranked six in the biggest dollar sales drop category, with -$696m to $13.3bn. SanDisk ranked ten with a $545m slump to $3.3bn.
The largest losses in 2008 compared to 2007 were Symantec, ranked first of all at -$6.3bn, AMD number two through losing $3bn, SanDisk at number three with -$2.1bn and Sun was in fourth place, losing $1.8bn. Then Palm comes in at number nine with a loss of $681.7m, followed by number ten LSI with its loss of $622.3m.
On a much more cheerful note, HP was the biggest dollar riser of all in revenue terms, at $11bn. Apple was second with $6.5bn, Google third with $5.2bn, Oracle fourth with $2.6bn, and Cisco sixth with a rise of $1.89bn.
Looking at the SV150, the good news for some was very good but the bad news for others was very bad. The ones hit by the double whammy of major business performance problems, worsened by the recession saw sales speeding south. They'll be looking very hard indeed for green shoots of recovery. ®


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In this guest blog, Micki Nguyen, director of Product Management, Cash & Logistics, Fiserv, talks about the importance of having a reliable cash strategy during mass sporting events such as the Rio Olympics.
Despite a constantly evolving payments landscape as digital and technology continue to grow, cash remains the leading payment method around the globe. In fact, cash transactions make up 85 percent of all payment transactions made across the world, according to MasterCard. Therefore, ahead of mass sporting events such as the imminent Rio Olympics in Brazil, it is essential that a reliable cash strategy is implemented in the country.
‘Preparation, communication, cooperation’
Thousands of people are expected to descend on to Rio for the games, which will greatly impact its resources. Large-scale sporting events put a great amount of pressure on a wide range of public services, so it is imperative that there is sufficient infrastructure to manage the influx of people and consequent spike in cash usage. Cash remains a convenient and flexible payment method making it a popular choice for large events, therefore ATM service providers, banks and others in the supply chain must endeavour to work together to meet and manage this demand.
The 2016 Olympics in Rio must follow and build on the careful preparation, communication and cooperation that were key to the success of the Games four years ago in London. Brazil is home to one of the largest ATM networks with 160,000 ATMS and by working in collaboration with one another, Banks and ATM deployers can ensure that these are managed efficiently, and that there is sufficient cash available to meet consumer demand across the whole event.
‘Empty cash machines create negative brand experiences’
In today’s society customers demand access to their money wherever and whenever they want. Expectations have changed with customers requesting services that integrate seamlessly into their everyday lives. When it comes to cash, expectations are no different. Financial Institutions (FIs) must make sure that there is sufficient cash available in all cash points – including branches, vaults, ATMs and other automated devices.
For the Olympic Games in Rio to be remembered as a success, Brazil must integrate technology to help them to predict currency levels, monitor self-service devices and track cash usage. The increase in cash demand and usage must be closely and accurately monitored, and FIs must take appropriate action when necessary to manage the reputational risk that could come should there not be enough cash. Empty cash machines create a negative brand experience and customers are inconvenienced; both of which could damage the legacy of the Games.
Maintaining, or indeed increasing, customer satisfaction and reducing operational costs and risks at the Olympics are two of the most important factors for this to be considered a triumph; successfully deploying a thorough and integrated cash management and device strategy is essential. Institutions that are able to quickly resolve problems in real-time stand a better chance of avoiding customer disappointment, and speed of response will inevitably be front of mind for FIs during the Olympics.
Cash is simple, that’s why it’s dominant
Visitors also have a role to play in the success of the payment infrastructure that is implemented. Cash usage is particularly high in Brazil. Boa Vista released data that showed 65% of Brazilians still prefer to pay with cash over other payment methods, while 70% still do not have a bank account. Local food vendors, taxi drivers and other businesses in and around Rio will only deal with cash, and having enough Brazilian Real to ensure payments can be made is incredibly important for fans to get the most out of the Games.
The reliability and simplicity of cash ensures that it remains dominant, despite advancements in the payments landscape. Implementing the correct cash and currency strategies are vital to meet the expectations of the visitors to Rio. Banks and FIs must be ready for the spike in demand for cash and manage its usage, as well as ensuring that the infrastructure is in place to process the cash once transactions have taken place. Developing a reliable and efficient cash and logistics model is essential in rendering the Games a success. As long as all sporting fans have access to their money when and where they need it, their Olympic experience will be one they will never forget.
Micki Nguyen is the director of Product Management, Cash & Logistics, at Fiserv
Just as Visa is making the most of a popular sporting event, so too is MasterCard as the company has announced plans to introduce new payment technology to The Barclays gold tournament.
Visa's contactless payment ring has been a hit with athletes at the Rio Olympics.
With the Rio 2016 Olympics in full flow, Visa and Barclaycard have worked together to kit out all 366 British athletes competing with a Team GB-branded wearable payment device.
The 2016 Olympic Games kick off in Rio de Janeiro with a payment innovation as the capital's public transit operator, RioCard has revealed that it will provide residents and visitors with contactless wearable devices that will work on buses, ferries, the subway and trains.


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“Our friends at CEDIA understand the value of events like Capitol’s CLI Expo, where we give our customers a soup-to-nuts education and exposition on the technologies and trends affecting their business on a daily basis,” said Jeff Kussard, Capitol’s director of strategic development. “We’re thrilled to have them take a featured role in what is shaping up to be one of the most beneficial events for CI professionals on the front line.”
In addition to being a featured exhibitor in the CLI Expo’s Technology Showcase, CEDIA’s senior director of technology, Dave Pedigo, will present two essential classes: “The Economic Outlook and Why Your Business MUST Change” and “Top Ten Technology Trends.”
Pedigo leads CEDIA’s Technology department, which works to assess current trends in the industry and develop technical white papers to support electronic systems professional businesses. Pedigo’s responsibilities include overseeing CEDIA’s Technology Advisory Group, which forecasts emerging trends and technologies that may impact the residential electronic systems industry and CEDIA members. His CLI Expo classes will focus on how a changing business environment and upcoming technology trends are forcing professionals to continue to adapt and respond to an ever-changing marketplace.
Among the consumer technology trendsetters that will present their innovations at a special Technology Showcase will be such brands as Panasonic, Monster, Russound, OmniMount, and Lutron, to name a few. More than 70 classes from over 50 vendors will be presented over the course of the two-day event.


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After undergoing a massive revamp from a curry house to a Thai eatery, Night Market has officially reemerged in Chinatown.
Eater previously reported that owner Mike Tran had announced that the restaurant was set to arrive this week, and now the doors are officially open. The restaurant announced its debut at 9630 Clarewood in a subtle Instagram post, which featured little more than an illuminated “open” sign in the accompanying photo. Over the past few months, Tran has been teasing diners with photos of Thai favorites like duck in red curry and stacks of house-made jerky.
Tran, known for beloved eateries Tiger Den and Mein, closed up shop at Night Market in April, but didn’t disclose why the restaurant needed a new focus. He opened Ohn Korean Eatery in the interim, which has racked up praise for its inventive Korean fare.
Night Market is now open to satisfy any cravings for Thai cuisine, from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. every day of the week except Monday, when the restaurant is closed.


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NEW YORK - Cement. Railroads. Trucking. Steel. These aren’t sexy businesses, but they have something that adds to their appeal in the current investing climate: Pricing power.
Unloved for years, old economy industries have piqued the interest of value-minded investors who say there’s a growing need for the goods and services they provide. Asia’s humming economic growth is the most obvious factor, but there’s another point in their favor — their own troubled pasts. Hard times have left only a few survivors in these deeply cyclical industries, so there’s not a lot of competition as business heats up. But there’s not much buzz about their future, either.
‘‘If you were to get 1,000 investors together today and say, ‘How many of you would like to hear about Burlington Northern Santa Fe?’ you wouldn’t have many takers because the image of the railroad industry is based on what it used to be,’’ said Don Hodges, president of Hodges Capital Management in Dallas. ‘‘But if they make money year to year to year, that image will improve.’’
Flashback to the year 2000: Wall Street was bored with old economy stocks; growth and high-tech were an obsession. But as competition grew, pricing pressures developed, margins declined and it became more difficult for the new economy names to make money. The legacy of that time can be seen in the communications industry today, where many players are scrabbling for the same business, and it’s unclear which will survive. There’s almost no doubt some will fail.
Compare that with oldfashioned industries that for years had too much capacity. As these businesses flagged, their infrastructure declined and many companies went broke. ‘‘It’s almost a selfcorrecting process,’’ Hodges said. ‘‘One day you wake up, and there’s a shortage of capacity, a shortage of plants and products that you need to service industry. So all the sudden those companies that are left begin to have pricing power.’’
It’s happening in cement, steel and transports, Hodges says. But it might be a while before you hear about it from your broker, because Wall Street just isn’t that excited about it yet.
‘‘My contrarian antenna goes up when I see areas of the market where price action is strong, where earnings trends have been favorable and Wall Street hasn’t jumped on board,’’ said Bernie Schaeffer, chairman of Schaeffer’s Investment Research in Cincinnati. ‘‘Sometimes it takes a while between the time a beaten down industry starts to really regain its health and Wall Street re-orients its thinking ... and it’s in this environment that investors have opportunities for good returns.’’
Wall Street hasn’t hurried to paste ‘‘buy’’ ratings on these stocks, in part because many analysts believe rising demand for basic materials, pricing power commanded by railways and tightness in the trucking industry are temporary conditions. Some also think the stocks are already overvalued — a point Hodges and others dispute. But given the pace of global growth, economists say business is likely to be strong for a while.
‘‘I think these conditions will linger,’’ said Michael Gregory, senior economist at BMO Nesbitt Burns of Chicago.


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2020 was a year like no other. Here are six of rddmag.com's most-read articles, curated by our editors.
After the COVID-19 pandemic forced the closure of indoor dining at restaurants and other foodservice operations nationwide, many businesses had to quickly shift gears and figure out if revenues from takeout and delivery would be enough to sustain the company through stay-at-home orders or if it made better financial sense to close completely.
Back in May, rd+d took a look at how operators were responding to the changing landscape. We took a look at how the new normal impacted restaurant design.
With its exaggerated curves, sleek geometric influences and bright colors, art-deco oozes modern luxury.
Art deco is enjoying a resurgence, but designers are opting to incorporate elements of the iconic lines in all sorts of ways, from faithful interpretations to thoroughly modern takes.
This article looks at how three restaurants took the classic style for a modern spin.
Naturally, cleanliness is the No. 1 concern of consumers today, with great taste coming in second, according to a report, COVID-19: Into the Home by Datassential.
Consumers’ fears are strong and they are real. So, how are restaurants alleviating guests’ fears and keeping their pickup and delivery options safe?
We found that perfecting to-go packaging, overcommunicating with customers and understanding that when it comes to hygiene, there's no such thing as too much hand sanitizer.
Steakhouse concepts are typically “masculine” spaces with dark woods, low lighting and heavy, dark leather upholstery. Meat Market is a different beast.
This Florida-based concept has four locations, all hip and high-end, with a look that eschews traditional steakhouse design, according to Anthea Bosch-Moschini, founder and principal designer with Studio ABM Design, the firm that created Meat Market’s look.
“Being a female design firm in the hospitality industry, [when first approached about the concept] we suggested doing a steak restaurant that feels softer and more feminine. It can’t only be a guys-night-out kind of place, which is what steakhouses have been known for,” says Bosch-Moschini.
If ever there was a time when the soothing, healing touch of nature on the human spirit was needed, it could be now.
Designers are perfectly positioned to help deliver that magic touch. Bringing the outdoors in for desk- and tech-tethered consumers, designers are embracing biophilic design for its enduring aesthetic appeal and, increasingly, for its well-documented benefits to the human psyche.
Located in a rehabbed apartment building that once housed Detroit’s carpenters’ union headquarters, Hammer & Nail is cocktail bar with a decidedly mid-century modern aesthetic that reflects the building’s original design.
The centerpiece of the design is the neon light display behind the bar, which features a hammer striking a nail. Previously, two such pieces were on the top of the building’s exterior, highlighting the connection to the carpenters’ union and serving as an icon on the Detroit skyline.
Take a look inside to see how designers honored the history of the building while creating a space that our editor in chief hasn't stopped talking about since May.


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New Latin Focused .UNO Domain Available to the Public on March 19
The internet is about to get a lot bigger, come mid-March, when another batch of gTLDs (generic top level domains: various alternatives for the ".com" or ".org" that follows a web address) hit the public. On March 19, one of those gTLDs up for grabs is .UNO, the first dedicated domain for Spanish-speakers.
As we previously reported, .UNO was created for Latinos, Latin Americans, and Spanish speakers worldwide, as part of the effort by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to create new gTLDs suffixes for websites.
The .UNO domain was officially announced late last year as one of nearly 1,400 new domains that ICANN, the official registration organization for internet domains, plans to add to the internet. ICANN's expansion of top level domains comes in response to the phenomenon that should be familiar to anyone that has been active on the internet for five years or more: the proliferation of the internet, and the websites that run on it. With so many people adding new content and addresses to the world wide web, but so few top level domains, like ".com", ".org", and ".net," the actual web addresses "before the dot" have had to get longer and more complicated, since each one has to be unique for its top level domain.
That won't be the case soon, as more gTLDs are added by the week. Soon, .UNO will become available for the general public to register their websites, after being made available first to Trademark Clearinghouse, a venture partly operated by IBM that sought to reserve already-registered trademarks for the new gTLD expansion, and GoDaddy, a registration company that is using the .UNO expansion to grow their Latin American presence and help get Latino and Latin American entrepreneurs' businesses registered under .UNO.
On March 19, it will be your turn, and everyone else's, to get your hands on a .UNO top level domain. The .UNO domain is touted as "the first global web extension dedicated to Spanish-speaking businesses, consumers and individuals online" which will "provide a unique opportunity for Hispanic and Latino web users to communicate and transact business together, in one space, online," offering "differentiation to Spanish-speaking businesses and entrepreneurs," and a "voice and a platform within a community environment which transcends geography and citizenship," according to introductory announcement of the top level domain.
One could also see it as a useful tool for non-Hispanic businesses that want to reach out to the Spanish-speaking audience online too. According to a release by Dot Latin LLC, the company launching the .UNO domain extension, marketing in the U.S. directed at Latinos has grown up to $7.9 billion in 2012, as companies try to advertise and appeal to the growing spending power and tech savvy of Latinos.
For businesses that are primarily English, but want to grow beyond their primary audience, a .UNO extension on their current web address -- as a signal that this is a web page "en español", rather than having a link or button somewhere on the main English page that Spanish-speakers have to search for -- could be a boon to these marketing efforts. This is already happening, according to Dot Latin, as major brands like McDonalds, Amazon, and Apple have already registered .UNO.
Beyond .UNO, there are a plethora of domain extensions coming into existence or freshly available on the web for any number of interests and uses, ranging from ".photography" to ".menu" and ".ninja." The world wide web is about to get a lot wider.


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IRA FLATOW, host:
This is Talk of the Nation: Science Friday. I'm Ira Flatow. The big three Detroit automakers flew back home in their private jets this week stunned and bewildered, as the price of their stock dropped below that of a cup of coffee. They had hoped to wring out of Washington lawmakers enough money to keep them going - money on the order of 25 billion perhaps 50, 75, who knows? But it became embarrassingly clear to Congress that the automakers who came had in hand - had no plan in their pockets.
This got us to thinking: why give all that money to people with no clear pathway to an electric-car future? Why not give that money to people who not only have a plan, but they have the cars on the road or ones that are ready to go? For example, General Motors has made a lot about the fact that in 2010 they will have their Chevy Volt car on the road, which can get 40 miles on a charge. That is, of course, if the company is still around. But Tesla Motors already has a car that can get over 200 miles on a battery charge, and more than one company is selling a modification to get to previous owners, which turns that car into a plug-in that they can charge overnight and get 100 miles per gallon today.
Why don't we take some of those billions, give them to Tesla, for example, and have them ramp a production of the cars and bring down their hefty price for a vehicle? Why not bailout GM by just selling it to Tesla? Let them take over the company. Turn those assembly lines into making greener plug-in cars that are made here in America with American autoworkers. If a small startup company can engineer these technologies, let's show them the money. Or if big auto companies can't say, yes, I can, let's help out the other car companies like the Mini, which will have a new electric car in the road next year, getting 150 miles on a charge. Why don't we help them expand build more factories in this country to make those cars, to take over the factories of the cars companies that go bankrupt? Mini took just 10 months to modify its car to get 150 miles. Detroit, well, you know, the story.
What do you think? Our number, 1-800-989-8255, if you like to get in on the conversation. If you're on Twitter, we have a new name. Yes, you can follow us at scifri. That's scifri. You can also tweet us your questions, just type the @ sign followed by scifri. Also on Second Life, we're also broadcasting it to Second Life and taking your questions on Science Friday Island. Let me introduce my guest. Sherry Boschert is the vice president of Plug In America, author of "Plug-In Hybrids: The Cars That Will Recharge America." She joined us from KQED in San Francisco. Welcome back to Science Friday.
Ms. SHERRY BOSCHERT (Vice President, Plug In America; Author, "Plug-In Hybrids: The Cars That Will Recharge America"): Hello, Ira.
FLATOW: Hi, there. Daniel Sperling is co-author of "Two Billion Cars: Driving Towards Sustainability, " a new book out in January. He is also professor of engineering and environmental science and policy at the Davis Campus at UC Davis and director of the Institute of Transportation Studies there. He joined us from Sacramento. Welcome to the show, Dr. Sperling.
Dr. DANIEL SPERLING (Director, Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California-Davis): Thank you. Pleasure to be with you.
FLATOW: Sherry, what do you think of this idea? Why not give the money to people like those other car companies like Tesla and they become the car companies of the future? They say they could make this stuff.
Ms. BOSCHERT: Well, I think it's certainly worth considering. Since I was last on your show a year and half ago, we've gone from one major car company, GM, saying that they're going to put a plug-in car on the road in the next few years, to 14 major car companies saying they're going to put plug-ins on the road. Not all of them for sale; some of them in test fleets. But that's a huge change. But we also have at least 11 small startup companies that are planning to put them on the road.
So, I think it's worth considering that the one thing that we in Plug In America insist on is that if the government gives any bailout money to the major car companies, they have to come with strings attached. I mean, right now, the car companies are lobbying to change the rules on $25 billion that already has been approved by Congress in September to retool the industry, to make clean plug-in cars. Well, they want to use that money just to plug the gaps, basically, no strings attached. Business as usual. So, even on the blink of bankruptcy, the resisting changed. It's really amazing.
FLATOW: We're actually going to have the chief technology officer of Tesla Motors, JB Straubel, come on later. We'll ask him that question whether he could take over GM or they could be sold and build those plug-in cars there. What's your reaction, Dan?
Dr. SPERLING: Well, you know, I generally agree there's - first of all, you know, the real point is there's great opportunity, lots of opportunity for improving our vehicles with electric-drive vehicles, battery-electric vehicles, plug-in, fuel-cell electric vehicles. All of these are far superior to what we have now. And most of the car companies, the CEOs themselves will say that this is the future. And so, the challenge really is how to get from where we are here to that future time where they are actually deploying a lot of this advanced technology, because most of these companies have pretty good experience with these technologies in the lab and demo vehicles. So, it's really a step of - I think the role for policy is, how do we get them to get these vehicles out of a lab and onto the street?
FLATOW: But we've had them out for awhile. Sherry, you drive an electric car, don't you?
Ms. BOSCHERT: Yeah, the idea that this technology is so new, we're not ready, or still needs to be tested in - it doesn't fit my scenario. I have not driven with gasoline for six years and 69,000 miles in a Toyota Rav4-EV. We have thousands of electric cars on the road when state regulators required clean cars and then they backed down in 2003. On the way to the studio this morning, I was privileged to stop by our local utility, PG&E, because they just took delivery of the first Mitsubishi iMiev electric vehicle in this country.
FLATOW: What is that? What car, describe that for us?
Ms. BOSCHERT: It's a little compact car. It's sort of a city car. It can go 80 miles in its current configuration. It's shaped sort of like a VW Beetle, that size, maybe seats four. I rode in the back with another passenger when we took a spin around the block, very comfortable and it has fast charging. You can charge it on your regular outlet at home, or it can charge in half an hour instead of five hours on the fast charging. The differences in Japan, the car companies and utilities have all agreed on a standardized fast-charging configuration. In this country, the society of automotive engineers is working on standardizing. But Mitsubishi says they're willing to bring it over here and sell it in 2010. They just want to know exactly what we want.
FLATOW: And I mentioned the many people, Mini Cooper people, are on buy Volkswagen, right? And they're having this Mini E coming out. Next year, they're going to be releasing some of them, and this car gets 150 miles on a charge. It seems like - it took them reading an article from the New York Times by Jerry Garrett, he said it just took them 10 months to bring this car to market.
Ms. BOSCHERT: Yeah, I don't think it's - the technology is not the issue. It's getting the car companies to do it; that's the issue. And you know, history shows us that the automotive companies have never made an improvement that is environmental or cleaner unless regulators force them to. And now, you know, they're behind the consumer demand, too. So, we've got consumers and government coming on board saying you've got to do something here.
FLATOW: Dan, you said, in an editorial in the New York Times, you argued for a $3.50-per-gallon minimum on gasoline. Would that help pay for these things?
Dr. SPERLING: Yeah, that's exactly right. You know, I think what we need to be thinking about is not government picking winners. You know, we've had enough mistakes in the past doing that. And so, we need to put in place these policies that provide a framework for a change that encourage these companies to move forward, and so, the idea of a price floor, which actually in reality would be probably connected to the world oil price - because if you did a gasoline price floor, the local gasoline stations and companies could just manipulate their prices. So, you'd link it to the world.
But their concept is, yes, that if you have that price floor, now the companies like Tesla that make electric cars, the battery companies, the advanced biofuel companies - all of these, these companies are now going broke. They're the ones that are going out of business now, and we need to support them. And so, if there's some certainty there that they know the price is going to stay at a certain level and not going to plummet, then it provides them an opportunity to compete better.
FLATOW: Let me bring in Tony Markel, senior engineer at Center for Transportation Technologies and Systems at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado. Welcome to Science Friday, Dr. Markel.
Dr. TONY MARKEL (Senior Engineer, Center for Transportation Technologies and Systems, National Renewable Energy Laboratory): Hello. How are you?
FLATOW: Tell us about your 2006 Toyota Prius hybrid and what you did to it.
Dr. MARKEL: Sure. We've been working with the U.S. Department of Energy to research plug-in hybrid technology. And right now, we're working with a 2006 Toyota Prius that has a large battery pack in it. Basically, a battery pack from a company called High Motion has provided us with a large lithium-ion battery pack to allow that vehicle to be a plug-in hybrid vehicle.
FLATOW: And so you plug it in at night and charge it up?
Dr. MARKEL: We sure do.
FLATOW: And how many miles a gallon do you get?
Dr. MARKEL: Right now, when you're in the charge depleting mode, when you've got lots of energy in that battery pack, you are operating at somewhere around 85 to 100 miles a gallon. And then after that battery pack's depleted, you're back to about 50 miles a gallon like a normal Prius.
FLATOW: So, you can run it totally on the battery for awhile?
Dr. MARKEL: You have a mixture of mostly battery.
Dr. MARKEL: Yeah, mostly battery and a little bit of engine during that charge-depleting mode.
FLATOW: So, when Chevy said its Vault is going to get 40 miles on a charge, you've already got that?
Dr. MARKEL: It's not quite the same as what they're working with, certainly.
FLATOW: Can anybody do this modification to their Prius?
Dr. MARKEL: Yeah, and this is actually a product that is available right now from that company. Several companies out there have done things like this. It's not a perfect implementation, but it's certainly one step closer to getting us - reducing how much oil we use.
FLATOW: What about using the batteries in long-haul trucks? Would that make sense?
Dr. MARKEL: That would definitely be a challenge to use batteries, at least, for the primary propulsion, but we can certainly use batteries in those vehicles to implement hybridization where we're using a variation in the driving profile to gain some efficiency.
FLATOW: And I'll ask all the three of you this. So, when T. Boone Pickens says we've got to have natural gas to those 18 wheelers, we really don't need to have that natural gas to drive those 18 wheelers.
Ms. BOSCHERT: Well, no. This is Sherry. And really, for long-distance freight shipment, we should be thinking of electric rail and rebuilding our rail system. I mean, T. Boone backed off. Originally, he was campaigning with the Pickens plan and here in California on one of our state battle initiatives. He was talking cars and now he's saying, oh, I really just meant trucks. That's because people saw through his smoke screen and saw that it doesn't make sense. On the Plug In America website, we have posted studies from Argonne National Laboratory and the American Council for Energy Efficient Economy showing that if you compare natural gas - compressed natural-gas vehicles to electric vehicles, electric vehicles are twice as efficient. So, we need to look at the big picture here if you look at the well-to-wheel scenario.
FLATOW: All right. We're going to take a quick break and come back and talk lots more. I want all my guests to hang on - Sherry Boschert, Daniel Sperling and Tony Markel. And your questions, 1-800-989-8255. Talking about plugging cars, future electronic cars and how to get them on the road. Why wait for Detroit? We'll be right back after this short break.
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FLATOW: I'm Ira Flatow. This is Talk of the Nation: Science Friday from NPR News.
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FLATOW: You're listening to Talk of the Nation: Science Friday. I'm Ira Flatow. We're talking this hour about the future of plug-in cars and how you can (unintelligible) up the batteries of your hybrid plug-in. You can plug into the grid if you'd like to, with my guests Sherry Boschert, author of "Plug-In Hybrids: The Cars that Will Recharge America;" Daniel Sperling, co-author of "Two Billion Cars: Driving Toward Sustainability;" Tony Markel, senior engineer at the Center for Transportation Technologies and Systems at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado. And just a quick correction on my own part. I said that Volkswagen is owned by BMW. So, I did want to make sure I corrected that. Let's go to the phone, because we have lots of people with questions about this. Let's go to Jesse in Hartford. Hi, Jesse.
JESSE (Caller): How are you?
FLATOW: Hi, there.
JESSE: Good, good. I think there's this fantastic idea. I'm a big supporter. I just want to play devil's advocate for a second. Maybe your experts can tell us. What's going to happen, you know, if 10 or 20 million plugged their cars in at night? What's going to happen to the grid?
FLATOW: Are we going to melt the grid, Sherry?
JESSE: That's my question.
FLATOW: Good question.
Ms. BOSCHERT: Well, it's a very - it's an important question, and the Department of Energy looked at that in a 2007 study that, again, is on the Plug In America website. And if we magically created plug-in hybrids for everyone tomorrow, the existing capacity in the U.S. electrical grid at night - which is when people plug in, that's what's convenient; you go home, you plug in your car, you go to sleep, you wake up and it's charged - the existing capacity could already charge 73 percent of every car, truck, van and SUV in America in their commutes to and from work. That's over 170 million cars, and it takes a long time to get that many cars on the road. So, let's get them on the road and start planning for our future of greater energy efficiency and more renewables on the grid, but let's get the cars now.
FLATOW: Dan Sperling.
Dr. SPERLING: Well, in theory, that's correct that if you charge the vehicles off peak, there's tremendous capacity for them. The challenge we have is to make sure people do charge off peak, and there's going to be a tendency from people to charge during the day. And there's going to be - you drive somewhere, you light your electrical vehicle or your plug-in hybrid vehicle, you want to use electricity, so there's going to be a tendency to want to plug in. There's going to be a tendency - you know, the Wal-Marts or Costcos and employers are going to want to provide this as a fringe benefit to their customers and their drivers to provide that during the day, during peak times in the afternoon. And so what we need to do is come up with pricing and other strategies to encourage people to charge off peak, because if they charge on peak, then we lose much of the advantage.
Ms. BOSCHERT: I agree with Dan on that for sure. I mean, here in California, anyone with an electric car can have time of use metering, and I do that also because I have solar panels on my home. So, during the day, I'm feeding electricity to the utility at a premium, and at night, I charge for about a fifth of that cost. So, those price points are very important.
FLATOW: Tony, how do you feel about it?
Dr. MARKEL: Oh, I think the best thing we can do is provide the infrastructure so that folks can recharge those vehicles. Our best opportunity for displacing fuel is to be charging those vehicles with electricity. And with just a tiny bit of control in the system, we can charge those vehicles throughout the day without a whole lot of infringement on the utilities' operations. And we looked at that with studies with the local utility, and also I know that other utilities have duplicated some of this work to see that even just a curtailment on a couple of days of charging those vehicles during the middle of the day gets us to large displacements of petroleum with little need for extension of our natural resources.
FLATOW: Let's say you parked at Wal-Mart, which now has its flat roof covered with solar panels and uses that huge area of solar panels to trickle charge all those cars there in the parking lot.
Dr. MARKEL: The ultimate goal is to get to where we have renewable resources on the grid that are then feeding into these vehicles and we get the best CO2 emissions reduction as we can.
Ms. BOSCHERT: But Ira, even today, it's cleaner to drive on electricity than on gasoline - even with 52 percent coal in our grid. So, there's no downside to start to get those cars on the road now.
Dr. SPERLING: And the other dream and - you know, for the future here is to connect the vehicles into the grid - into the household and into the grid, because if you can use all of this capacity in all of these vehicles to make it available to utilities, they don't need to build more capacity at peak times. They can, at those few hours of the day when they need extra electricity, they can get it and you can provide this especially from the battery-electric vehicles, but also the fuel-cell electric vehicles, because they will have a tremendous amount of energy on board.
Ms. BOSCHERT: I want to go back to something Mr. Sperling said earlier, that it's not the role of government to pick winners. Well, I actually disagree. I think it is the role of our elected and appointed representatives to pick winners, and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are a perfect example. I mean, this is pie in the sky dreaming that's been (unintelligible) by the federal government and the California state government for years at the expense of plug-in vehicles. It's topsy-turvy. I mean, hydrogen vehicles aren't going to be around for decades, if ever, to the average consumer. The technology is not ready and plug-ins are.
So, the encouraging thing is that some governments are catching on to this. I mean, the City of Portland and its utility, Portland Gas & Electric, held a conference earlier this week - a press conference - saying that they're collaborating to get the cars there. Nissan will put its first electric cars in Oregon, and they're building up the electric-charging infrastructure. And yesterday in San Francisco, the mayors of San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose held a press conference saying they, too, want the Bay Area to be plug-in car central and they will help to build up the infrastructure. So, people are catching on to this.
FLATOW: Is the battery technology ripe enough? We keep hearing, well, the batteries aren't good enough. We've heard that from Detroit for years that we're seeing these cars with batteries. And your car, Sherry, has a battery that seems to be working well. Do we need new batteries - new battery technology? I'm not saying...
Dr. SPERLING: Yes.
FLATOW: Of course, you don't want to stop it. But of course, it can hurt. Was that you, Tony?
Dr. MARKEL: That was Dan.
Dr. SPERLING: It was Dan.
FLATOW: I'm sorry, Dan. Go ahead.
Dr. SPERLING: Yeah. We definitely need better batteries. I mean, I agree that the batteries are good enough for some applications right now, especially some of the plug-in hybrids where you have a small battery. But these batteries - these advanced batteries- first of all, the lithium-ion batteries which everyone is looking to as for all of these vehicles; they're not even commercial yet. They're not - they will be coming available soon, but they're not. And the early costs of those are something like about $1,000 per kilowatt hour and the Vault, for instance, has 15 kilowatt hours. So, you're talking about a cost premium of $15,000.
Now, that cost will come down over time, but we need a better battery - at least we need to get the lithium-ion batteries out there and make them safe. The reason that they're being delayed is there are some safety concerns about them. And learn to manufacture them better, bring the cost down, get to scale economies. So, we are not - the only way we can do battery-electric vehicles right now in a way that's available to the mass market is if you have it in a smaller vehicle with a little less performance. And those are the kinds of vehicles you're seeing now - the Smart, the BMW Mini, the Nissan and Mitsubishi are all smaller, city-car type vehicles.
Ms. BOSCHERT: But the prices Dan is talking about, you know, what we need is battery factories. We need a commitment from a major car company or a big order from a small company so that the battery manufacturers are guaranteed that it's worth their investment to produce that many batteries. I mean, the price will come down as we make more. There is a number of good chemistries out there. We've had good batteries. Heck, we could be doing it with lead-acid batteries. Yes, it wouldn't go as far ,but people are hungry for these cars. They're buying little golf carts to get off the gasoline.
FLATOW: And you would think that if we actually did what we call a moon shot, in comparison, that in ten years, we could come up with the right kind of batteries. With all these, we pour money into the research on this, is this what you think?
Ms. BOSCHERT: Batteries will continue to improve, but they're already good enough.
Dr. MARKEL: Yeah. I was just going to say that both Dan and Sherry are correct, that we have battery technology that's available and ready to go. It's also very promising that we've had so many developments and improvements in the battery technology. We're definitely on the road for improvement, and those costs are coming down. We're working on lots of technology that will bring those costs down. As we go forward, one of the greatest things we can do to make sure that we have the industries growing and developing is strong, consistent energy policy and consistent prices. And I think you were talking about that earlier. That will help certainly keep these industries alive. The battery manufacturers need that to be able to sustain themselves.
FLATOW: Here's a question from Ash Forana(ph) coming in on SciFri Twitter. What about the environmental impact of having all these batteries which typically expire - the batteries expire after a few years? Where will we put them all, I guess, if this goes on?
Dr. MARKEL: We actually - there's actually discussion about using some of these batteries for secondary use. They're - even after they're finished in their vehicle application or vehicle life, there's secondary use for those. And we also have recycling industries that are set and ready to go to recycle ultima(ph) on battery technology.
FLATOW: Tony, I understand that you have to go.
Dr. MARKEL: Sure.
FLATOW: Thank you for taking time to be with us. Tony Markel, senior engineer at the Center for Transportation Technologies and Systems at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden. One question before you go, Tony. Anything new - anything else you want to do on Prius, soup it up at all?
Dr. MARKEL: Sure. It leads into what Dan was talking about, about being able to connect these vehicles to the renewables on the grid. We have the potential to sort of work electricity in both directions with something called vehicle de-grid, where you can connect that energy storage to renewable resources - it might be somewhat intermittent. So, that's the next step with the vehicles, working with - using energy storage and intermittent resources together.
FLATOW: Thank you, Tony. Good luck to you.
Dr. MARKEL: You're welcome. Thank you.
FLATOW: You're welcome. Dan, do you want to jump in with something there?
Dr. SPERLING: Well, I would support the - reinforce that. I don't think the environmental concerns with the batteries are what many people would think, and that's partly because these batteries are big and heavy. You don't just take these batteries and throw them in trash. You know, they have value. You know, they have a set value for a secondary market. They have value, some of the batteries and materials. And, so you know, the - this is not something like from your laptop where you can just, you know, these are hundreds of pounds they weigh.
FLATOW: Well, I was thinking, you know, you were talking about $15,000 batteries. And if you take - if you get a million people at $15,000 batteries, that's $15 billion. Is it, are my zeroes right or wrong on that? That's all good - that's the kind of money you could take from a bailout and give it to people to buy a battery-powered car.
Ms. BOSCHERT: Uh-huh.
FLATOW: Instead of giving it into the car companies and then, you know, we keep you hearing in the car companies that 25 billion may not be enough. They may come back for 50 and 75 or more. I mean, why not give it to the people to buy the cars?
Dr. SPERLING: Yes, and exactly right, and that's why I say, you know, why - let's not pick the winners. Let's provide incentives for people to buy low-carbon vehicles, fuel-efficient vehicles. Provide these incentives. You know, we're already starting - the recent energy act provides some incentives. But that's exactly right. Let's create the market for it. And in fact, this would help all of the car companies. It would support companies like Honda and Toyota and Nissan that are actually doing something and making good progress. That would support them as well.
Ms. BOSCHERT: But meanwhile, let's not pretend that all options are equal. I mean, the federal government lopsidedly gives way much more money to hydrogen fuel-cell research than to plug-in-vehicle and battery research. The state of California lopsidedly incentivizes car companies to put a handful of hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles on the road, so that they don't have to build plug-in cars. I mean, let's - let's not pretend corn ethanol is as good as some other kind of ethanol environmentally. I mean, let's talk reality here.
Dr. SPERLING: OK. This is where Sherry and I differ. We agree on the corn ethanol. And that's - is an example of government picking winners, and that's why it's in the stake. And you know, what we need to be looking to in the future is somehow, making our transportations system more efficient, lower oil use, less carbon. And to sit here now, I don't think anyone can predict or forecast what exactly is going to be the winner technology. And in fact, I would argue, it's probably going to be a mix of a number of these. There's going to be a mix of biofuels; it's going to be mix of electricity and hydrogen. In some places, electricity will be more dominant. In other places, the bio-fuels, in other places, the hydrogen. So, that what we need to be doing is encouraging all of them. You know, this sectarian strife between, you know, the EV people that say hydrogen is the devil, as I heard at a recent conference. It's just not productive, and is just wrong.
Ms. BOSCHERT: So, then, let's have...
FLATOW: We're talking with - wait, wait Sherry, let me just interrupt to...
Ms. BOSCHERT: OK, go ahead.
FLATOW: To pay some of the bills. Talking about the plug-in cars this hour on Talk of the Nation: Science Friday from NPR News. Talking with Sherry and Tony, go ahead. Why don't you go ahead and finish up?
Ms. BOSCHERT: Just, you know, if we're going to play that game, that all options are equal, then let's at least give equal funding to battery research and development and plug-in car research in development. Put it on a par with hydrogen; I would be happy with that.
FLATOW: Would you, Dan?
Dr. SPERLING: I support - yes, I agree. We do need more. I agree we need more research in batteries. But I'd say we need more research for all of these options where you know, we spend much of federal money. We spent much less on our energy R&D than we did 20 years ago. It's, you know, and given that, now is the time we were - we really understand that we need to move to a clean energy and low-carbon future. This is the time we should be investing.
FLATOW: And we - go ahead, Sherry.
Ms. BOSCHERT: Well, just one last point. I mean, we can talk research, but really climate experts tell us we have 10 years to try and turn around what we're doing in terms of carbon emissions. If we have any hope of stopping global warming or avoiding the worst effects, we're not going to stop all of it. Ten years, well, hydrogen's not going to be ready in that timeframe. You know, I'm not saying it will never be ready. I'm saying, what can we do now? Right now we can do plug-in cars.
FLATOW: Let's go to Greg in Burlington, North Carolina. Hi, Greg.
GREG (Caller): Hi. Couple of quick comments here and a question. Speaking about the oil companies, it would be good if President Obama has a windfall profit tax on the oil companies and uses it for alternative energy. That's one suggestion. Another suggestion is just, why don't oil companies bail out the real markets since they are linked together? And I would like to see someone like Rush Holt, congressman from New Jersey, be either transportation secretary, secretary of energy, or EPA administrator. And my question is - I was reading New York Times about Chile, where they have a vast field of lithium; they're like the Saudi Arabia of lithium. And I'd like to hear your comments from your guests.
FLATOW: OK. I'm sure they must be underground, fields of lithium. That waves of lithium growing. Sherry, you have any comment on that?
Ms. BOSCHERT: Yeah, actually, Plug In America gets that question commonly. And so we had a Ph.D. candidate do a white-paper for us on lithium supplies in the world. That's up on our website for people to see, and it's very detailed actually, and his conclusion is there are adequate lithium supplies in the world for the foreseeable future for lithium-ion batteries. And you know, like Dan and all of us say, battery technology will continue to improve. I mean, today's flavor of batteries has not necessarily tomorrow's, but it's certainly good enough to get us going on either lithium batteries, the nickel metal hydride batteries, zebra batteries, lead batteries, you name it. Let's get going.
FLATOW: 1-800-989-8255 is the number. We're going to take a quick break in just a second. But TDMC, it's - twittering says: How could we convert our gas-powered cars into electrical vehicles? Can it be done today? Can you two think of that?
Ms. BOSCHERT: Yeah, I can, but it's expensive. I mean, it's time-consuming. And if you paid someone to do it, you know, it will cost you $15, $20,000. So, we really need to get the major companies to do it, because they have the economies of scale to make it much more efficient.
FLATOW: Unless you had one of the hybrids like the Prius, which can be done a lot cheaper than that.
Ms. BOSCHERT: Yeah, plug-in hybrid. That's a lot simpler. And there was at least six companies I know about that will do it for you. One of them is National, High Motion, HY Motion, and they are operating now in five cities.
FLATOW: All right, let's take a break there. We're going to take a break. When we come back, we have to talk to the chief technology officer to talk about can you take over General Motors. We'll be right back after this break. I'm Ira Flatow. this is Talk of the Nation: Science Friday from NPR News.
(Soundbite of music)
FLATOW: You're listening to Talk of the Nation: Science Friday. I'm Ira Flatow. We're talking this hour about electric vehicles, plug-in cars, the best way of developing them, with my guest Sherry Boschert, who is vice president of Plug In America, author of "Plug-In Hybrids: The Cars that Will Recharge America;" Daniel Sperling, coauthor of "Two Billion Cars: Driving Toward Sustainability." That's coming out in January.
And my next guest has spent his share of time mulling over batteries and plugs. He is chief technology officer at Tesla Motors, a startup company in Silicon Valley that is designing very sleek and sexy cars that run just on electricity. In fact, they have signed up behind the big three Detroit makers hoping to get some of the bailout money for the auto industry just get a - get some of it coming their way if the - if it ever comes. But Tesla CEO Elon Musk says he's optimistic, and the company's churning out 15 of their high-priced sports cars a week. That's about 100 of the Roadsters are now navigating the highways; maybe you've seen one. And joining me to talk about these Roadsters and the company's vision for a plugged-in future is JB Straubel. He is the chief technology officer at Tesla Motors in San Carlos, California. Welcome to the program.
Mr. JB STRAUBEL (Chief Technology Officer, Tesla Motors): Hi, Ira. Great to be here.
FLATOW: Give us a little thumbnail of how far can more - the Roadsters go on one charge?
Mr. STRAUBEL: Well, in recent testing, we drove on the EPA test cycles to about 244 miles. And it's really the first production certified electric vehicle that's broken in the 200-mile barrier. So, that's something we're pretty proud of.
FLATOW: Wow. Let me ask and maybe you can answer a question from somebody in Second Life, TJ asked - wrote - writes, please make one concession to the engineering illiterate, and tell me how many kilowatts does it take to run a typical car at 50 miles per hour on flat dry route?
Mr. STRAUBEL: Well, it depends a lot on what kind of car it is. There's a big difference in the aerodynamics and the weights, but it can vary anywhere from, I would say, around 10 kilowatts of - to maybe as much as 20 kilowatts for an SUV or a truck or something like that.
FLATOW: Now, how are you able to get such terrific, you know, mileage like that?
Mr. STRAUBEL: Well, a lot of that is in the battery pack. We're storing more energy onboard the car than any other electric vehicle has done. A battery pack is about 53 kilowatt-hours, and, you know, the Volt, the Chevy Volt, is around 15. So, we just have a much, much bigger battery pack along with a fairly efficient car, and together, those can give you the very long driving range.
FLATOW: So, you've optimized the battery to go for a long range versus power? Or how do you change those dynamics?
Mr. STRAUBEL: Oh, we have done that. Our focus has been on getting very long range and very high energy. And because it's a pure EV, we don't have a - any gasoline engine at all, no sort of fuel whatsoever. Energy density in the battery is a critical metric for us. But because the battery is so big, it actually has a lot of power along with it. We don't have to focus on extremely high power battery cells in order to get these, you know, very quick accelerations and good driving just like another sports car.
FLATOW: Now, your car is very expensive for my, you know, price range. It's over $100,000.
Mr. STRAUBEL: Yeah. The price base starts at about $109,000. But if you look at comparable gasoline sports cars in the same performance class, that - you know, surprisingly that's actually very competitive with vehicles that accelerate in the same range and handle at the same way.
FLATOW: If you could more - mass market your car, if I gave you the GM plants to work in and scale-up, could you bring down the price of that car?
Mr. STRAUBEL: Absolutely. And that's what we're really spending most of our engineering time on. Now that the Roadster is done and shipping, we're in development right now on a pure electric sedan that will be about half the price of that, and that's still in relatively small volumes compared to what many, you know, high-production vehicles were built at, about 10 to 20,000 a year.
FLATOW: Wow. So, you know, with the price of GM stock, like, worth less than a cup of Starbucks, couldn't you get enough money together or go into Congress and say, give us the part of that bailout money? We can take over these factories, we can put American workers back, and we could build these plug-in hybrids, for plugging - just battery cars that you make.
Mr. STRAUBEL: In fact, we have filed an application for part of the 25 billion in deal with loan guarantees. And 25 billion is such a huge amount of money. I think it gets lost to how large that sum is. And Sherry mentioned at the beginning of the program, there's over 25 companies now there, you know, experimenting or have announced electric fuels - vehicles in one way or the other. And I think what's critical is that that money gets spread around to a broad group of people so that we're not just betting on one company to try and do this. Now, you - that's one billion each to all those 25 companies.
FLATOW: Now, you're talking real money.
Mr. STRAUBEL: Absolutely.
(Soundbite of laughter)
FLATOW: And do you think that within 10 years, given the right amount of money spread around that we could have all the cars in America, plug-in cars, plug-in electric vehicles?
Mr. STRAUBEL: Well, I think all the cars would be a bit of a stretch in 10 years, but we can be well on our way to a significant fraction of the new vehicles sold. I think, you know, well over a quarter of new vehicles sold could easily be plug-in vehicles of one form or other within 10 years.
FLATOW: And what about the big heavy trucks? I asked this question before, but Tibble(ph) and Pickens questions about him insisting that we have to have natural gas to run them.
Mr. STRAUBEL: Well, I mean, natural gas could be one solution for those. That'll be a bit tough to make electric just because of the fact that, you know, they're in use for such a large fraction of time and there's really not a down period to recharge. Passenger cars, you know, end up sitting idle for 22 to 23 hours per day, but large, long-haul trucks are in use for much larger fraction.
FLATOW: GM talks about its Volt coming out in 2010. What's your take on it?
Mr. STRAUBEL: Well, I think it's a great program. It's going a long way to really prove to people that this is - is not just some sort of niche fringe technology and it's a - you know, large car companies are really diving into plug-in vehicles. I think it's going to face some stiff competition though from other plug-in vehicles. When and if Toyota launches a plug-in Prius, I think that'll be a very difficult competitor for the Volt. And a lot of this - it depends on where the final price point to the Volt lands. I think there's some definitely - it's tricky to know where that will be, whether it's 30,000 or 40,000 or higher.
Dr. SPERLING: What Ira, could I...
FLATOW: Dan, go ahead. Sure.
Dr. SPERLING: Add a touch of reality to this discussion?. You know, I've driven JB's car and it's a fabulous - the Tesla, you know, it is, I would say, it is worth - if I had the money, it is worth $109,000. But there's not many people that can afford it, and as we look to the future, you know, if you think about the gasoline hybrid car, which is a much simpler version of what we're talking about - it doesn't take any electricity from the grid, much smaller battery, much cheaper premium - it's taken us eight years to get to two and a half percent of the national market, two and a half percent with the gasoline hybrid, and when you go to a plug-in hybrid, you're adding more cost, it's more complex and more difficulties. And so, there is - this is not something that's going to happen today or tomorrow.
Nissan just announced that they anticipate or they hope to have 10 percent of their cars being battery electrics in 2020. And I think that's probably the upper level of what we can expect in that timeframe. And so, you know, we need to be thinking about, you know, the economics, unfortunately, get in the way here. And we talked about how batteries are expensive and so - but probably the kind of vehicle that's really going to be mass marketed in the next 10 years are these what we call blended plug-in hybrids, where they have small batteries that you do plug-in that gives you very high fuel-economy, but do not have that all electric range like the Volt. And that'll be much cheaper...
Ms. BOSCHERT: That's certainly a possibility, and we would welcome that. But it is a new day in America. I mean, President-elect Obama has pledged to put a million plug-in hybrids on the road by 2015. We in Plug I America think that could happen by 2012 and get 10 million on the road by 2016. A lot of it depends on the will of the people and the will of the government to intensify this to help the economy get rolling and build green jobs, building clean cars. It's a new day.
Mr. STRAUBEL: Yeah, I think extrapolating how the changes progressed over the last - last 10 years won't be the best indicator of how it's going to look over the next 10.
FLATOW: You mean, if - you know, I'm sitting here thinking, it's 1961 and John F. Kennedy is talking about going to the Moon, and he says, you know, maybe if we get this, I can project, who knows, maybe by 1969, we might be in this lunar outpost, but on the Moon. They went ahead and they did it. I mean, they made a 10-year - JFK make a 10-year commitment, and people rolled up their sleeves. We brought along our educational community, our teachers and our kids, and had a whole, you know, educational process that went with this and people did it. You don't think we can do that in 10 years with plug-in battery cars?
Dr. SPERLING: Well, you know, Ira, the reality is that we can make our - we can get much, much greater improvements from our conventional technology. I've been a champion of electric-drive vehicles for, you know, 20 years now. There's no one that's more enthusiastic than me. But if what we want is reductions in oil use, reductions in greenhouse gases, the kinds of things that we can do is take these, the gasoline and diesel technologies, and make it a lot better. You know, California now has, for instance, a greenhouse gas standard that the automobile companies have been suing California, not let it - trying to block them. EPA under George Bush has blocked it as well. Fortunately, President-elect Obama says he will not block it any further. But if that, if those standards are imposed, then the vehicles are going to get much more efficient. There are already fuel-economy standards calling for 40-percent improvements for new cars by 2020. The California ones could stand up...
FLATOW: Wait, wait, wait - but I understand the politics that you're talking about. I'm talking about the demand from the public. The public wants these cars; why can't we give them to them?
Dr. SPERLING: Cost, cost, cost. It's like...
FLATOW: Well, but you just heard JB Straubel say, you know, if we could ramp up to the size of General Motors and built - we could build all these cars, and we could bring the cost down also.
Dr. SPERLING: We can and we will, but the reality is those vehicles will cost more, and some people will buy them. I own two hybrid cars. I've paid the premium to have them. You know, Sherry's brought her car. But they cost more, and you know, we can provide incentives to people, but those incentives represent a lot of money, and are we as taxpayers, how much...
FLATOW: Just to play devil's advocate here, you sound like you've come from Detroit.
Dr. SPERLING: I come from California.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. BOSCHERT: And I mean, that, you know, the car companies keep saying, we can't, we can't, we can't, and today more people are saying, yes, we can. And the way technology goes, too, you know, sure. New technology is always more expensive. Think about cell phones; anyone my age remembers when there used to be as big as a shoe box and they cost $1,000. Now they fit in the palm of your hand and they're practically giving them away free. We can accelerate that process. We can make this happen. People want these cars and now, we're going to have someone in the White House who's going to help us make this happen.
Mr. STRAUBEL: Yeah, just one comment on cost. I think what's critical is to really look at the total cost of ownership. If you focus entirely on the initial purchase price, sometimes I think we can make the wrong decisions here, because what you do when you're buying a plug-in vehicle is you're really moving, you know, some of the price into the battery pack and into the vehicle what you would have used - previously paid for fuel. Because your energy bill for the lifetime of the car drops enormously, and there's some creative ways that that can be spread around and as long as you look, you know, intelligently at how that savings really plays out over the life of the car, it's much more competitive than it might seem.
FLATOW: 1-800-989-8255 is our number. We're talking about plug-in and electric cars this hour in Talk of the Nation: Science Friday from NPR News. Getting a question from Idueno(ph) in Second Life. Isn't the missing piece an open interstate grid? Do we need to do the grid over for this?
Ms. BOSCHERT: Well, you know, eventually, there will be need to be grid improvements whether we have plug-in cars or not. I mean, if we're going to put more renewable power into the grid, which we want to do - we need to upgrade transmission lines, et cetera - yes, if we put millions and millions of plug-in cars out there - but to get started? No. We don't need anything but the cars, and while it takes time to roll those cars out, we can plan ahead, we can see what we need, we can put in what we need and we can start converting all of those gas cars out there, because even if we start producing new plug-in cars, there's all those polluting cars using Middle East oil that we could be converting as well.
FLATOW: We've got to take the last question, Michael from California. Hi, Michael.
MICHAEL (Caller): Hi.
FLATOW: Hi. Quickly.
MICHAEL: Yeah, I think all the talk on technology is missing what I think is the systemic problem, which is that the organizational structure of Detroit is a Hummer. And we need to retool it into a Prius, and there are concepts of community capitalism where we began to think like capitalists, and if I had $27 billion, I wouldn't be looking to give it to the managers of the car companies. I would be looking to purchase the company and create a company where the people working for the company actually - where we bring Jeffersonian democracy to corporate structures, and the people who work for Detroit end up to owning the company in the end, and maybe partnering with companies like Tesla. We use that bailout money to buy the company.
FLATOW: All right, thanks for your opinion. We've just about run out of time for this discussion. Very interesting, we'll have to pick - we will pick it up later. Sherry Boschert is vice president of Plug In America, author of "Plug-In Hybrids: The Cars that Will Recharge America;" Daniel Sperling, coauthor of "Two Billion Cars; Driving Towards Sustainability;" that's coming out in January - he's also a professor of engineering in environmental science and policy at UC Davis; and JB Straubel, who is chief technical officer at Tesla Motors in San Carlos, California. Thank you all for taking time to be with us today.
Mr. STRAUBEL: Thank you.
FLATOW: You're welcome.
Dr. SPERLING: Thank you.
FLATOW: Have a good weekend.
Ms. BOSCHERT: Thanks, Ira.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.


text:
It’s 2016 and sadly, racist trolls still roam the internet.
On Friday, Old Navy tweeted an ad featuring an interracial family to promote their “Thank You Event.” Unfortunately, the photo did not sit well with some internet trolls who immediately attacked the company with shockingly racist comments.
Luckily, the internet came together to fire back at these haters in the most beautiful way. On Twitter, users began posting positive comments with the hashtag #LoveWins and even began sharing photos of their own interracial families.
Model Grace Mahary, who is featured in the Old Navy ad, also hit back at the trolls by posting the photo on her Instagram account.
“In light of the controversy revolving around my pretend family... I am proud to be representing interracial love, multiculturalism, and most importantly, a mentality that supports opportunity for all ethnicities. Thanks @oldnavy #lovewins #hatefreezone,” Mahary wrote.
Old Navy also released a statement to Fortune, saying that it was proud the ad promoted “diversity and inclusion.”
Unfortunately, the racist backlash sparked by the Old Navy ad is similar to an incident in 2013 involving a Cheerios commercial. The TV ad featured a white mother, black father and their biracial daughter.
Despite the racist criticism it received, Meagan Hatcher-Mays, a biracial woman, told Today.com that the commercial was a sign of progress. “I think this commercial is a really big step for interracial families,” she said. “The commercial represents that we exist.”
Hatcher-Mays was right. Earlier this year, a new study revealed that 80 per cent of parents like to see diverse families in advertisements. Research was conducted by BabyCenter and YouGov, a market research company, and involved over 2,000 people.
Clearly Old Navy was on to something when they released their most recent ad. However, according to Chloe Gottlieb, senior vice president and executive creative director at ad agency R/GA, this is still a “transition time” for companies and backlash is going to happen regardless.
“Brands are being brave, but there are still some people who aren't as comfortable, and they are reflecting it back,” Gottlieb told CNBC.
Nonetheless, the Old Navy incident has shown us that #lovewins. And there’s nothing more beautiful than that.
Also on HuffPost


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We’re pleased to announce the release of OrderFlow 4.2.1. We’re particularly excited about this release, because as well as using our new OrderFlow logo for the first time, we’ve added some powerful new capabilities to the system. We’ve also added a new integration to the Help Scout customer service platform.
We recently changed our company name to OrderFlow, which for a long time has been the name of our flagship product. In this release we have now added the key elements of the new branding into the product itself. We’ve backed this up with some substantial functional enhancements.