Telsa's already-smudged safety reputation took another hit on Thursday as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced the start of a new investigation into the company — this time, in response to a flurry of complaints by owners that their vehicles would randomly and dangerously decelerate while at freeway speeds, which they've come to call "phantom braking."
Per the NHTSA's Office of Defects Investigation (ODI), the agency has received "354 complaints alleging unexpected brake activation in 2021-2022 Tesla Model 3 and Model Y vehicles" over the past nine months.
"The complaints allege that while utilizing the ADAS features including adaptive cruise control," the ODI summary reads, "the vehicle unexpectedly applies its brakes while driving at highway speeds. Complainants report that the rapid deceleration can occur without warning, at random, and often repeatedly in a single drive cycle."
As such, the ODI is launching this preliminary investigation "to determine the scope and severity of the potential problem and to fully assess the potential safety-related issues" with further steps to follow depending, of course, on what, if anything, the investigators uncover.
Many of the complaints have come very recently. The Washington Post notes that following one of its pieces published earlier this month, the "NHTSA received about 250 complaints about phantom braking during the following two weeks. That compared to 107 complaints in the prior three months — a steep surge of its own — and only 34 in the preceding 22 months."
“It’s when the traffic is coming towards me that it randomly throws on the brake,” Sally Bergquist, of Alexander City, Al, a 2021 Model S owner who experienced the phantom braking effect, told The Post. “This random braking is really concerning to me.”
A recent batch of SpaceX’s Starlink internet-beaming cubesats met with tragedy on February 3rd when a 49-member cohort of the newly-launched satellites encountered a strong geomagnetic storm in orbit.
“These storms cause the atmosphere to warm and atmospheric density at our low deployment altitudes to increase. In fact, onboard GPS suggests the escalation speed and severity of the storm caused atmospheric drag to increase up to 50 percent higher than during previous launches,” SpaceX wrote in a blog update last Wednesday. “The Starlink team commanded the satellites into a safe-mode where they would fly edge-on (like a sheet of paper) to minimize drag.” Unfortunately, 40 of the satellites never came out of safe mode and, as of Wednesday’s announcement, are expected to, if they haven’t already, fall to their doom in Earth’s atmosphere.
The NOAA defines geomagnetic storms as “a major disturbance of Earth's magnetosphere that occurs when there is a very efficient exchange of energy from the solar wind into the space environment surrounding Earth.” Solar winds, composed of plasma and high-energy particles, are ejected from the Sun’s outermost coronal layers and carry the same charge as the sun’s magnetic field, oriented either North or South.
When that charged solar wind hits Earth’s magnetosphere — moreso if it is especially energetic or carries a southern polarization — it can cause magnetic reconnection of the dayside magnetopause. This, in turn, accelerates plasma in that region down the atmosphere’s magnetic field lines towards the planet’s poles where the added energy excites nitrogen and oxygen atoms to generate the Northern Lights aurora effect. That extra energy also causes the magnetosphere itself to oscillate, creating electrical currents which further disrupt the region’s magnetic fields — all of which make up magnetic storms.
“Storms also result in intense currents in the magnetosphere, changes in the radiation belts, and changes in the ionosphere, including heating the ionosphere and upper atmosphere region called the thermosphere,” notes the NOAA. “In space, a ring of westward current around Earth produces magnetic disturbances on the ground.”
Basically, when the Sun belches out a massive blast of solar wind, it travels through space and smacks into the Earth’s magnetic shell where all that energy infuses into the planet’s magnetic field, causing electrical chaos while making a bunch of atoms in the upper reaches of the atmosphere jiggle in just the right way to create a light show. Behold, the majesty of our cosmos, the celestial equivalent of waving away a wet burp from the slob next to you at the bar.
Solar flares occur with varying frequency depending on where the Sun is in its 11-year solar cycle with fewer than one happening each week during solar minimums to multiple flares daily during the maximal period. Their intensities oscillate similarly, though if the electromagnetic storm of 1859 — the largest such event on record, dubbed the Carrington Event — were to occur today, its damage to Earth’s satellite and telecom systems is estimated to run in the trillions of US dollars, requiring months if not years of repairs to undo. The event pushed the Northern aurora borealis as far south as the Caribbean and energized telegraph lines to the point of combustion. A similar storm in March of 1989 was only as third as powerful as Carrington but it still managed to straight up melt an electrical transformer in New Jersey as well as knock out Quebec’s power grid in a matter of seconds, stranding 6 million customers in the dark for nine hours until the system’s equipment could be sequentially checked and reset.
"A worst-case solar storm could have an economic impact similar to a category 5 hurricane or a tsunami," Dr. Sten Odenwald of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said in 2017. "There are more than 900 working satellites with an estimated replacement value of $170 billion to $230 billion, supporting a $90 billion-per-year industry. One scenario showed a 'superstorm' costing as much as $70 billion due to a combination of lost satellites, service loss, and profit loss."
Most importantly to SpaceX, solar storms can increase the amount of drag the upper edges of the atmosphere exert upon passing spacecraft. There isn’t much atmosphere in low Earth orbit where the ISS and a majority of satellites reside but there is enough to cause a noticeable amount of drag on passing objects. This drag increases during daylight hours as the Sun’s energy excites atoms in lower regions of the atmosphere pushing them higher into LEO and creating a higher-density layer that satellites have to push through. Geomagnetic storms can exacerbate this effect by producing large short-term increases in the upper atmosphere’s temperature and density.
NOAA
“There are only two natural disasters that could impact the entire US,” University of Michigan researcher, Gabor Toth, said in a press statement last August. “One is a pandemic. And the other is an extreme space weather event.”
"We have all these technological assets that are at risk," he continued. "If an extreme event like the one in 1859 happened again, it would completely destroy the power grid and satellite and communications systems — the stakes are much higher."
Austin Brenner, University of Michigan
In order to extend the time between a solar eruption and its resulting winds slamming into our magnetosphere, Toth and his team have worked to develop the Geospace Model version 2.0 (which is what the NOAA currently employs) using state-of-the-art computer learning systems and statistical analysis schemes. With it, astronomers and power grid operators are afforded a scant 30 minutes of advanced warning before solar winds reach the planet — just enough time to put vital electrical systems into standby mode or otherwise mitigate the storm’s impact.
Toth’s team relies on X-ray and UV data “from a satellite measuring plasma parameters one million miles away from the Earth,” he explained, in order to spot coronal mass ejections as they happen. “From that point, we can run a model and predict the arrival time and impact of magnetic events," Toth said.
NASA has developed and launched a number of missions in recent years to better predict the tumultuous behavior of our local star. In 2006, for example, the space agency launched the STEREO (Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory) mission in which a pair of observatories measured the “flow of energy and matter” from the Sun to Earth. Currently, NASA is working on two more missions — Multi-slit Solar Explorer (MUSE) and HelioSwarm — to more fully understand the Sun-Earth connection.
“MUSE and HelioSwarm will provide new and deeper insight into the solar atmosphere and space weather,” Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for science at NASA, said in a February news release. “These missions not only extend the science of our other heliophysics missions—they also provide a unique perspective and a novel approach to understanding the mysteries of our star.”
MUSE aims to study the forces that heat the corona and drive eruptions in that solar layer. “MUSE will help us fill crucial gaps in knowledge pertaining to the Sun-Earth connection,” Nicola Fox, director of NASA’s Heliophysics Division, added. “It will provide more insight into space weather and complements a host of other missions within the heliophysics mission fleet.”
The HelioSwarm, on the other hand, is actually a collection of nine spacecraft tasked with taking “first multiscale in-space measurements of fluctuations in the magnetic field and motions of the solar wind.”
"The technical innovation of HelioSwarm's small satellites operating together as a constellation provides the unique ability to investigate turbulence and its evolution in the solar wind," Peg Luce, deputy director of the Heliophysics Division, said.
These ongoing research efforts to better comprehend our place in the solar system and how to be neighborly with the massive nuclear fusion reactor down the celestial block are sure to prove vital as humanity’s telecommunications technologies continue to mature. Because, no matter how hardened our systems, we simply cannot afford a repeat of 1859.
The Polestar 5 will be cut from a different cloth than its predecessors when it launches at the end of 2024. Polestar announced on Tuesday that its upcoming electric performance sedan will ride atop an entirely new, lightweight bonded aluminum platform rather, than the welded design used by the 1 and 2.
Polestar
Because welding aluminum generally halves its yield strength, you end up having to use double the amount of material to achieve the same performance — which defeats the whole purpose of using the lightweight metal in the first place. Bonding aluminum parts together (ie affixing them with screws and adhesive), on the other hand, cuts down on the materials needed but at the cost of extended production times.
"The cycle time to cure the adhesive is comparatively long compared to a typical welding cell," Steve Swift, director of vehicle engineering at Polestar, told Engadget via email, adding "the strategy to control build consistency is very different to conventional construction methods."
In order to maintain the material advantages of using aluminum while minimizing the production penalties of bonding the pieces together, Polestar’s engineering team developed a faster manufacturing process that assembles the vehicle body and battery platform as one.
Polestar
"We were able to bake in the structural stiffness targets we need to meet our dynamic performance aspirations at the beginning of the project," Swifts said, explaining the benefits of a unibody construction process.
"As such, we will not have to make late modifications to the design to deliver on performance," he conceded. "With a conventional strategy, if the platform and body performance contributions are discovered to be unbalanced, a compromise or modification becomes necessary."
The design's time-saving design has already born results, enabling the company to produce and deliver an early series of prototypes, just 18 months after the start of development. Swift expects the process to reduce "the timing for some of the production tooling required," as well. What's more, Polestar noted that the 5 "is being designed with torsional rigidity superior to that of a traditional two-seat sports or supercar" in Tuesday's announcement and "is expected to weigh less than that of cars in smaller segments." This should translate into increased range and improved handling, since there is less vehicle mass to move around.
Polestar
Though the technique cannot be retroactively applied to production of the Polestar 2, its success with the Polestar 5 could potentially lead to its implementation in future projects as well. "While nothing is in R&D just yet," Swift said, "we have been dreaming of the possibilities it offers."
Beginning in the 1940s, Mexico's Green Revolution saw the country's agriculture industrialized on a national scale, helping propel a massive, decades-long economic boom in what has become known as the Mexican Miracle. Though the modernization of Mexico's food production helped spur unparalleled market growth, these changes also opened the industry's doors to powerful transnational seed companies, eroding national control over the genetic diversity of its domestic crops and endangering the livelihoods of Mexico's poorest farmers.
In the excerpt below from her new book Endangered Maize: Industrial Agriculture and the Crisis of Extinction, author and Peter Lipton Lecturer in History of Modern Science and Technology at Cambridge University, Helen Anne Curry, examines the country's efforts to maintain its cultural and genetic independence in the face of globalized agribusiness.
Amid the clatter and hum generated by several hundred delegates and observers to the 1981 Conference of FAO, a member of the Mexican delegation took the floor. Participants from 145 member nations had already reviewed the state of global agricultural production, assessed and commended ongoing FAO programs, agreed on budget appropriations, and wrestled over the wording of numerous conference resolutions. The Mexican representative opened discussion on yet another draft resolution, this one proposing “The Establishment of an International Plant Germplasm Bank.” Two interlocked elements lie at the resolution’s heart: a collection of duplicate samples of all the world’s major seed collections under the control of the United Nations and a legally binding international agreement that recognized “plant genetic resources” as the “patrimony of humanity.” Together, the bank and agreement would ensure the “availability, utilization and non-discriminatory benefit to all nations” of plant varieties in storage and in cultivation across the globe.
Today, international treaties are integral to the conservation and use of crop genetic diversity. The 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity aims to ensure the sustainable and just use of the world’s biodiversity, which includes plant genetic resources. Meanwhile, the 2001 International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, also called the Seed Treaty, establishes protocols specific to crop diversity. Although it draws much of its power from the Convention on Biological Diversity, the roots of the Seed Treaty reach further back, to the 1981 resolution of the Mexican delegation and beyond.
Mexico’s resolution, like today’s Seed Treaty, offered conservation as a principal motivation. It told a story of farmers’ varieties displaced by breeders’ products, the attrition of genetic diversity, and the looming “extinction of material of incalculable value.” Earlier calls for conservation had sketched the same picture. Yet those who prepared and promoted the Mexican proposal mobilized this narrative to different ends. They may well have wanted to protect crop diversity. Far more important, however, was the guarantee of access to this diversity, once conserved. They insisted that a seed bank governed by the United Nations and an international treaty were needed to prevent the “monopolization” of plant genetic materials. This monopolization came in the form of control by national governments, the ultimate decision makers for most existing seed banks. It also resulted from possession by transnational corporations. By exercising intellectual property protections in crop varieties, seed companies could take ownership of these varieties, even if they were derived from seeds sourced abroad. In other words, the survival of a seed sample in a base collection, or its duplicate, did not mean this sample was available to breeders, let alone farmers, in its own place of origin. Binding international agreements were necessary to ensure access.
Mexico’s intervention at the 1981 FAO Conference was just one volley in what would later be called the seed wars, a decades-long conflict over the granting of property rights in plant varieties and the physical control of seed banks. Allusions to endangered crop diversity have been mostly rhetorical flourishes in this debate, deployed in defense of other things considered threatened by agricultural change—namely, peoples and governments across Africa, Asia, and Latin America in the later twentieth century. Seed treaties were meant to protect not seeds, but sovereignty.
Between the late 1960s and the early 1980s, in the midst of this struggle over seeds, consensus fractured about the loss of crop diversity—or, more specifically, about the meaning of this loss. When experts had gathered at FAO in the 1960s to discuss genetic erosion, most saw this as an inevitable consequence of a beneficial transition. Wherever farmers opted for breeders’ lines over their own seeds, the value of these so-called improved lines was confirmed, and agricultural productivity inched forward. In the 1970s genetic erosion featured centrally in a very different narrative. It was offered as evidence of the misguided ideas and practices driving agricultural development, especially the Green Revolution, and of the dangers posed by powerful transnational seed companies. Corporate greed emerged as a new driver of crop diversity loss. The willingness of wealthy countries to sustain this greed through friendly regulations meant both were complicit in undermining the capacities of developing countries to feed themselves. The extinction of farmers’ varieties and landraces was no longer an accepted byproduct of agricultural modernization. It was an argument against this development.
This shift pitted scientists committed to saving crop diversity against activists ostensibly interested in the same thing. It brought competing visions of what agriculture could and should be head to head. Invocations of the imminent loss of crop diversity, the one element everyone seemed able to agree on, reached a fever pitch during the seed wars. This rhetorical barrage often obscured on-the-ground realities. While FAO delegates, government officials, NGO activists, and prominent scientists waged a war of words in meeting rooms and magazines, plant breeders and agronomists tended experimental plots, tested genetic combinations, and presented farmers with varieties they hoped would be improvements. In 1970s Mexico some of these researchers were newly resolved to use Mexican seeds and methods to address the needs of the country’s poorest farmers. Keeping these individuals, their methods, and their corn collections in view grounds the seed wars in actual seeds. If the Mexican delegation’s invocation of crop diversity at FAO in 1981 was a rhetorical flourish in a bid to defend national sovereignty, the concurrent use of crop diversity by some Mexican breeders was a practical strategy for getting Mexican agriculture out from under the thumb of the United States and transnational agribusinesses. On the ground, seeds were not ornaments in oratory but the very stuff of sovereignty.
Inroads for Agribusiness
While scientists in Mexico searched for novel solutions to the country’s rural crises, critical assessments of agricultural aid bolstered the case for these alternatives. By the mid-1970s studies by economists, sociologists, and other development experts indicated that the much-vaunted Green Revolution had done more harm than help, thanks especially to the input- and capital-intensive model of farming it espoused.
The first critiques of the Green Revolution followed close on the heels of its initial celebration. In 1973 the Oxford economist Keith Griffin joined a growing chorus when he cataloged the harms introduced with “high-yielding varieties,” a phrase used to describe types bred to flourish with synthetic fertilizers. Their introduction had neither increased income per capita nor solved the problems of hunger and malnutrition, according to Griffin. They had produced effects, however: “The new technology... has accelerated the development of a market oriented, capitalist agriculture. It has hastened the demise of subsistence oriented, peasant farming... It has increased the power of landowners, especially the larger ones, and this in turn has been associated with a greater polarization of classes and intensified conflict.” In 1973 Griffin thought that the ultimate outcome depended on how governments responded to these changes. Five years later he had come to a final determination. “The story of the green revolution is a story of a revolution that failed,” he declared.
Griffin was a researcher on the project “Social and Economic Implications of the Large-Scale Introduction of High-Yielding Varieties of Foodgrain.” Carried out under the auspices of the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, this project enlisted social scientists to document the uptake of new agricultural technologies — chiefly new crop varieties — and their social and economic effects across Asia and North Africa. Mexico was also included among the project’s case studies, since organizers pinpointed it as the historical site of the “first experiments in high-yielding seeds for modernizing nations.” An attempt to synthesize a single account from the case studies in the 1970s highlighted the problems arising from the integration of farmers into national and international markets. New varieties, chemical fertilizers, and mechanical equipment demanded that cultivators "become businessmen competent in market operations and small-scale financing and receptive to science-generated information." This was thought to be in marked contrast to their having once been "'artisan’ cultivators' who drew on 'tradition and locally valid practices'" to sustain their families. The fact that only a minority of better-off farmers could make such a transition meant that development programs benefited a few at the expense of the many. Drawing on her case study of Mexico, project contributor Cynthia Hewitt de Alcántara extended this observation about market integration into a reflection on the flow of economic resources around, and out of, the country — from laborers to landowners, from farms to industries, from national programs to foreign businesses. The reconfiguration of agriculture as what she labeled a "capitalist enterprise" had not brought more money to the countryside but instead robbed peasants of what little they had.
This apparent contradiction in Mexico’s agricultural development invited scrutiny from many besides Hewitt. The preceding three decades had been characterized by steady economic growth, thanks to increased international trade during World War II, government policies that encouraged national industry, and investments in infrastructure and education. This period of the so-called Mexican Miracle had also seen a transition from food dependency — needing to import grain to feed the nation — to self-sufficiency. At this level of abstraction, Mexico’s prospects for sustaining adequate food and nutrition looked rosy. When sociologists and economists delved into specifics, however, the miracle revealed itself a mirage. Investments in agriculture had focused on supplying food to urban workers and developing new products for export. State food-aid programs, too, had been oriented to urban labor, with set prices that kept food affordable for consumers in the city but made its cultivation unprofitable for farmers in the countryside. While well-off cultivators in the north of the country benefited from state-funded irrigation programs and guaranteed prices, poor farmers working small plots without access to state grain purchasers found that they could not sustain their families by selling surplus corn. Hewitt estimated that in 1969–70, one-third of the Mexican population experienced calorie deficiency. A 1974 national survey came to similar conclusions, calculating that 18.4 million Mexicans, over a quarter of the population, suffered from malnutrition.
The persistence of poverty in Mexico, in spite of the country’s celebrated economic growth, could be traced to the model of development embraced by national leaders since the 1940s. Politicians and policy makers had assumed that subsistence farmers could be made irrelevant, with their surplus labor absorbed into the growing industrial economy. Yet industry had not acted the sponge, with the result that this “irrelevant” segment of the population had grown while continuing to be neglected by the state. The economist David Barkin linked faulty Mexican policies to a more fundamental problem of emulating the market capitalism of its northern neighbor. The apparently flourishing Mexican economy had invited the interest of foreign investors, in particular US corporations. Despite protectionist policies, these companies had moved in, and national industries had been sold off, leaving Mexicans vulnerable to the whims of private capital.
Agriculture offered a prime example of this pattern. By the 1970s US firms dominated across the sector, from farm machinery (John Deere, International Harvester) to chemicals (Monsanto, DuPont, American Cyanamid) to production and processing (United Brands, Corn Products) to animal feed (Ralston Purina). Observing this trend, another economist pinpointed Mexican agriculture as the place of origin of a “new, world-wide modernization strategy.” He traced a path from the interventions of the Rockefeller Foundation to the stimulus these gave to the importation of costly agricultural inputs to the management of Mexican farms by foreign firms. Foreign control and deepening ties to international markets affected food self-sufficiency. It made sense, from the perspective of increasing individual profits, for large and well-financed producers in Mexico to focus on the crops that would bring the best prices. These were more likely to be fruits and vegetables for US supermarkets or sorghum to feed cattle than corn or wheat to feed Mexican workers. Thanks to these patterns, it was possible to see much of Mexican agriculture as an extension of US agribusiness, operating chiefly “to exploit Mexican rural labor, Mexican land and water resources, and Mexican private and public capital for the principal benefit of US entrepreneurs.” The ultimate outcome of technical assistance to enhance agricultural production, ostensibly undertaken for the betterment of Mexican farmers and the Mexican economy, was the dominance of transnational companies in that very task, for their own aggrandizement. This portended ill for Mexico and especially for the poorest Mexicans.
Hyper-capable AIs have been beating us at our own games for years. Whether it’s Go or Jeopardy, DOTA 2 or Nethack, artificial intelligences have routinely proven themselves superior competitors, helping advance not only the state of gaming arts but also those of machine learning and computational science as well. On Wednesday, Sony announced its latest addition to the field, GT Sophy, an AI racer capable of taking on — and beating — some of the world’s best Gran Turismo players.
GT Sophy (the GT stands for “Gran Turismo”) is the result of a collaboration between Sony AI, Polyphony Digital (PDI) and Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), as well as more than half a decade of research and development.
“Gran Turismo Sophy is a significant development in AI whose purpose is not simply to be better than human players, but to offer players a stimulating opponent that can accelerate and elevate the players’ techniques and creativity to the next level,” Sony AI CEO, Hiroaki Kitano, said in a statement Wednesday. “In addition to making contributions to the gaming community, we believe this breakthrough presents new opportunities in areas such as autonomous racing, autonomous driving, high-speed robotics and control.”
Utilizing as novel deep reinforcement learning method, the research team taught its AI agent how to control a digital race car within the structure of the GT game, helping Sophy to understand vehicle dynamics and capabilities, as well as racing tactics like slipstreaming, passing and blocking overtakers and basic track etiquette.
“To drive competitively GT Sophy had to learn to control the car at the physical limit, optimize for braking and acceleration points, as well as find the right lines that squeeze the last tenth of a second out of the track,” Michael Spranger, COO of Sony AI, said during the presentation. “But raising also means that you're not alone on the track, so Sophie has to find lines to pass opponents, taking into account the opponent's reaction, as well as complex, aerodynamic interactions between cars.”
Sony trained its AI using deep reinforcement learning to optimize its ability to stay on track. “Sophy observes the environment, such as the car speed and acceleration, the relative position, of course borders and opponents, as well as the progress of the car along the track,” Spranger explained. “Based on these inputs, GT Sophy learns to take actions, such as using a throttle steering or braking.”
“To learn,” he continued, “Sophy gets a positive signal — a reward — when things are going well, when it is making focus on the track and overtaking other cars. [Sophy receives] a negative signal when things are not going well through continuous interaction with the game.”
The initial results were impressive, with Sophy beating 95 percent of the humans pitted against her within the first two days of training. What’s more, the AI continued to shave time off of her splits throughout the following week. In an exhibition race Wednesday against some of Japan’s top Gran Turismo drivers — with four Sophy variants going up against a quartet of humans — the AI took the checkered flag and two of the top four positions on the game’s Lago Maggiore circuit. The winning AI agent began the race in pole position and stayed there through all three laps, eventually beating the pack by more than five seconds. The AIs were not running on rails, however, as evidenced by one agent misjudging a passing attempt then understeering through a turn and promptly running head on into the wall and out of competition.
“This is not just a technical breakthrough project,” Sony Group CEO, Kenichiro Yoshida, said during Wednesday’s press event. “It really is about bringing AI into the hands of the game developers who are going to build new experiences for the players.”
Players will soon be able to pit themselves against Sophy, and potentially have her on hand as either an in-game driving coach or in-race teammate. Gran Turismo 7 for the PS4 and PS5 will be released on March 4th and Sony executives expect the AI to be added in a future update.
Just a few short months after debuting it for the European market, Kia has announced on Tuesday that the PHEV (plug-in hybrid) variant of its venerated Sportage line of SUVs will be made available for sale in America as well. When the Sportage PHEV arrives in Q3 of this year, it will offer a 66.9 kW electric motor backed by a 13.8 kWh battery in addition to its 1.6-liter, 177-hp turbocharged four-cylinder engine.
Unlike the EV6 or IONIQ5, the new Sportage PHEV is not built upon Hyundai's E-GMPT platform. Rather, it rides atop the N3 chassis like the Sorento and Optima. All-wheel drive will come standard.
“The first Sportage PHEV to be introduced in the U.S. demonstrates that Kia is listening to our consumers who are asking for electrified solutions and super-efficient powertrains, and Sportage delivers on that promise in a sophisticated, refined package,” Sean Yoon, president and CEO, Kia America, said in a statement Tuesday. “As Kia continues to implement our Plan S strategy and push toward carbon neutrality, models like Sportage PHEV are paving the way.”
Hyundai Motor Group
The small stature of the Sportage's battery means that though it can only provide enough juice to propel the vehicle around 32 miles on electricity alone, it can be recharged far more quickly than a full EV. Kia estimates that the 13.8 kWh battery will require only around two hours to fully fill using a Level 2 charger. The vehicle's regenerative braking system should help keep its cells topped off, though the company has not yet released EPA mileage or range estimates yet (but expect them to drop as we get closer to the Sportage's actual on-sale date).
Hyundai Motor Group
The exterior of the PHEV version will look very much like its HEV and ICE counterparts, and its interior will feature all the same bells and whistles that consumers have come to expect from modern hybrid vehicles. The Sportage will offer a slew of driver assist systems, like what we saw recently in the EV6, 12.3-inch a instrument cluster — and equally-sized central infotainment system — as well as 4G Wi-Fi for up to 5 devices, stolen vehicle tracking, OTA map updates and access to the Kia Connect mobile app.
Feeding the planet's 8 billion people is challenge enough and our current industrialized commercial practices are causing such ecological damage that we may soon find ourselves hard-pressed to feed any more. For decades, scientists have sought out higher yields and faster growth at the expense of genetic diversity and disease — just look at what we've done to the humble banana. Now, finally, researchers are working to revitalize landrace and heirloom crop varieties, using their unique, and largely forgotten, genetic diversity to reimagine global agriculture.
In his new book, Eating to Extinction: The World's Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them, BBC food journalist Dan Saladino scours the planet in search of animals, vegetables and legumes most at-risk of extinction, documenting their origins and declines, as well as the efforts being made to preserve and restore them. In the excerpt below, Saladino takes a look at all-important rice, the cereal that serves as a staple crop for more than 3.5 billion people around the world.
Whereas the global Green Revolution was largely steered by American science and finance, China’s push for greater food production was more self-contained. Both efforts happened more or less in parallel. Mao’s attempt at rapid industrialization, the ‘Great Leap Forward’ in the late 1950s, forced farmers off their land, leading to famine and the death of millions. Soon after, an agricultural researcher, Yuan Longping, was given the task of helping China’s recovery by increasing the supply of rice. Based in a lab in Hunan, Yuan, like Borlaug in Mexico, spent years working with landraces and crossing varieties in meticulous experiments. By the early 1970s, he had developed Nan-you No. 2, a hybrid rice so productive it had the potential to increase food supply by nearly a third. Farmers were told to replace the old varieties with the new, and by the start of the 1980s, more than 50 per cent of China’s rice came from this single variety. But, as with Borlaug’s wheat, Yuan’s rice depended on huge amounts of fertilizers, pesticides and lots and lots of water.
In the 1960s, in another part of Asia, a team of scientists were also breeding new rice varieties. What became known as the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines was funded by the American Rockefeller and Ford Foundations. The IRRI’s plant breeders also made a breakthrough drawing on the genetics of a dwarf plant. This new pest-resistant, high-yielding rice, called IR8, was released across India, Pakistan and Bangladesh in 1966. Using the Green Revolution package of irrigation, fertilizers and pesticides, IR8 tripled yields and became known as ‘miracle rice’. As it rapidly spread across Asia (with the necessary agrichemicals subsidized by Western foundations and governments), farmers were encouraged to abandon their landrace varieties and help share the new seeds with neighbors and relatives in other villages. Social occasions, including weddings, were treated by Western strategists as opportunities to distribute IR8. A decade later, rice scientist Gurdev Khush, the son of an Indian rice farmer, improved on the ‘miracle rice’ (IR8 wasn’t the tastiest rice to eat and had a chalky texture). A later iteration, IR64, was so productive that it became the most widely cultivated rice variety in the world. But while most of the world was applauding the increase in calories created by the new rice varieties, some people were sounding a note of caution about what was also being lost.
In July 1972, with the Green Revolution in full flow, the botanist Jack Harlan published an article entitled ‘The Genetics of Disaster’. As the world’s population was increasing faster than at any time in history, Harlan said, crop diversity was being eroded at an equally unprecedented rate. ‘These resources stand between us and catastrophic starvation on a scale we cannot imagine,’ he argued. ‘In a very real sense, the future of the human race rides on these materials.’ Bad things can happen at the hands of nature, Harlan reminded his readers, citing the Irish potato famine. ‘We can survive if a forest or shade tree is destroyed, but who would survive if wheat, rice, or maize were to be destroyed? We are taking risks we need not and should not take.’ The solutions being developed in the Green Revolution would be as good as they could be until they failed – and when they did, the human race would be left facing disaster, he warned. ‘Few will criticize Dr. Borlaug for doing his job too well. The enormous increase in . . . yields is a welcome relief and his achievements are deservedly recognized, but if we fail to salvage at least what is left of the landrace populations of Asia before they are replaced, we can justifiably be condemned by future generations for squandering our heritage and theirs.’ We were moving from genetic erosion, he said, to genetic wipe-out. ‘The line between abundance and disaster is becoming thinner and thinner, and the public is unaware and unconcerned. Must we wait for disaster to be real before we are heard? Will people listen only after it is too late?’ It may be nearly too late, but, fifty years on, people are listening to Harlan.
One of them is Susan McCouch, Professor of Plant Breeding and Genetics at Cornell University and an expert on rice genetics. Her research includes the less familiar aus rice which evolved in the Bangladeshi delta. ‘It has the most stress-tolerant genes of all the rice we know,’ says McCouch. ‘It grows on poor soils, survives drought and is the fastest species to go from seed to grain.’ And yet aus is endangered. Most farmers in Bangladesh have abandoned it and switched to more commercial varieties. Only the poorest people have saved the rice, farmers who couldn’t afford to buy fertilizers and build irrigation systems. Its genetics are so rare because, unlike japonica and indica which travelled far and wide, aus stayed put. ‘The people who domesticated it never left the river delta,’ says McCouch. ‘They weren’t empire builders, didn’t have armies and never enslaved populations.’ But by bequeathing the world aus, they have left their mark.
In 2018, McCouch, along with researchers from USDA, released a new rice called Scarlett. It was, the team said, a rice with nutty rich flavors but also ‘packed with high levels of antioxidants and flavonoids along with vitamin E’. To create it, McCouch had crossed an American long-grain rice called Jefferson and a rice that was discovered in Malaysia. The reason the new rice was packed with nutrients and called Scarlett was because the Malaysian plant was a red-colored wild species. One person who would have been unsurprised at the special qualities of these colored grains was Sun Wenxiang, the farmer I had visited in Sichuan.
Inside a room on his farm, Sun was packing up small parcels of his special red rice to send to customers in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu and Hangzhou. They order his red mouth rice on WeChat, the Chinese social media app used by more than a billion people across Asia that is part Twitter and part PayPal (and so much more). Some have told him they buy it for its taste or intriguing color, but most buy it for its health properties.
For farmers such as Sun working to save China’s endangered foods, help is at hand at the Centre for Rural Reconstruction, a modern day iteration of a movement founded a century ago to empower peasants and revitalize villages. In the 1920s a group of intellectuals and smallholders set up the original Rural Reconstruction Movement to develop farms, improve crops, establish co-operatives and sell more produce in China’s towns and cities. After the revolution, and during Mao’s rule, it disappeared, but in the 1990s was resurrected. A former government economist named Professor Wen Tiejun believed rural communities across China faced serious decline as manufacturing boomed and millions of people migrated from thousands of villages. By 2010, the country had experienced the largest and most rapid rural-to-urban migration ever witnessed in human history. Professor Wen began to ask what this meant for the future of China’s small-scale farmers and the food they produced and, as a result, he launched the New Rural Reconstruction Movement.
The garden surrounding the two-story training center 50 miles north of Beijing is a statement of intent: its raised beds are fertilized with night soil, the nutrients processed from a row of eco-toilets (an ancient technique, as Chinese farmers enriched their fields using human and animal waste for thousands of years). The idea came from a book written a century ago, not by a Chinese agricultural expert, but an American one. Farmers of Forty Centuries by Franklin Hiram King has become essential reading matter for some students at China’s Centre for Rural Reconstruction.
In the early 1900s, King, an agronomist from Wisconsin, worked at the United States Department of Agriculture, but he was regarded as a maverick, more interested in indigenous farming systems than the agricultural expansion the department had been set up to deliver. Convinced that he could learn more from peasant farmers than the scientists in Washington, King left the United States in 1909 and set out on an eight-month expedition through Asia. ‘I had long desired to stand face to face with Chinese and Japanese farmers,’ he wrote in the book’s introduction, ‘to walk through their fields and to learn by seeing some of their methods, appliances and practices which centuries of stress and experience have led these oldest farmers in the world to adopt.’ King died in 1911 before he had completed his book and the work was pretty much forgotten until 1927, when a London publisher, Jonathan Cape, discovered the manuscript and published it, ensuring it remained in print for the next twenty years. It went on to influence the founding figures in Britain’s organic movement, Albert Howard and Eve Balfour. The farmers who visit the Centre for Rural Reconstruction and come across King’s book, will read an account of how food was produced in China’s villages a century ago. Crops grown then, now endangered, are also being resurrected.
Inside a storeroom at the center, now a bank of some of China’s rarest foods, I was shown boxes full of seeds and jars and packets of ingredients all produced by farming projects in villages supported by the New Rural Reconstruction Movement. All were distinctive products that were helping to increase farmers’ incomes. There was dark green soy from Yunnan in the south; red-colored ears of wheat from the north; wild tea harvested from ancient forests; and bottles of honey-colored rice wine. And among other varieties of landrace rice was Sun Wenxiang’s red mouth glutinous grains.
‘When we lose a traditional food, a variety of rice or a fruit, we store up problems for the future,’ Professor Wen told me. ‘There’s no question China needs large-scale farms, but we also need diversity.’ With 20 per cent of the world’s population, China encapsulates the biggest food dilemmas of our times. Should it intensify farming to produce more calories, or diversify to help save the planet? In the long run, there is no option but to change the system. China suffers from wide-scale soil erosion, health-harming levels of pollution and water shortages. As a consequence, land has become contaminated, there are algae blooms around its coastline and high levels of greenhouse gas emissions.
There are signs of change. In September 2016 China ratified the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. Among the specific targets it set was zero growth in fertilizer and pesticide use. To conserve more of its genetic resources and crop diversity, China is one of the few countries investing heavily in new botanic gardens to protect and study endangered species. The Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences has also built a collection of half a million samples of landrace crops, varieties now being researched for future use. This is what Jack Harlan might have called the genetics of salvation. It’s a long way from King’s Farmers of Forty Centuries, but there is clear recognition that China’s current food system can’t go on as before.
‘We need to modernize and develop, but that doesn’t mean letting go of our past,’ said Wen. ‘The entire world should not be chasing one way of living, we can’t all eat the same kind of food, that is a crazy ideology.’ And then he shared the famous quote attributed to Napoleon: ‘Let China sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world.’ ‘Well,’ said Wen, ‘we have woken up and we’ve started to eat more like the rest of the world. We need to find better ways of living and farming. Maybe some answers can be found in our traditions.’
The Space Race is no longer a competition between the global superpowers of the world — at least not the nation-states that once vied to be first to the Moon. Today, low Earth orbit is the battleground for private conglomerates and the billionaires that helm them. With the Mir Space Station having deorbited in 2001 after 15 years of service and the ISS scheduled for retirement by the end of the decade, tomorrow’s space stations are very likely to be owned and operated by companies, not countries. In fact, the handover has already begun.
“We are not ready for what comes after the International Space Station,” then-NASA-administrator Jim Bridenstine explained at a hearing of the Senate Commerce Committee’s space subcommittee in October. “Building a space station takes a long time, especially when you’re doing it in a way that’s never been done before.”
“NASA by its very nature is an exploration agency,” the space agency wrote in 2019. “We like to challenge the status quo and discover new things. We like to solve impossible problems and do amazing things. NASA also realizes that we need help and do not know everything. We can only accomplish amazing things by teamwork. NASA is reaching out to the US private sector to see if they can push the economic frontier into space.”
Space exploration has been a public-private cooperative effort since the founding days of NASA. For example, the expendable launch vehicles that put satellites into LEO from 1963 to 1982 — the Titan by Martin Marietta, the Atlas from General Dynamics, McDonnell Douglas’ Delta rockets, and the Scout from LTV Aerospace Corporation — were all built by private aerospace companies as federal contractors but operated by the US government. “The US government essentially served as the only provider of space launch services to the Western world,” wrote the FAA. This changed in the ‘70s when the European Space Agency developed its own ELV, the Ariane, and NASA swapped out its own rockets for the Space Shuttle program, which became the nation’s default satellite launch system.
Private space launches, like what SpaceX and Northrop Grumman do, got their start in the US way back in 1982 when Space Services sent up its Conestoga rocket prototype, really the repurposed second stage of a Minuteman missile. The size, number and severity of hoops the company had to jump through to get launch clearance was enough to convince members of congress to introduce legislation streamlining the process, eventually leading then-President Ronald Reagan to declare expanding private sector involvement in civil space launches to be “a national goal.” We’ve seen a number of notable milestones in the decades since including the launch of the Pegasus rocket operated by the Orbital Sciences Corporation in 1990, which was the first fully privately developed and air-based launch vehicle to reach space, Dennis Tito’s ride aboard a Soyuz rocket to the ISS in 2001 to become the Earth’s first space tourist, and the first SpaceX Dragon Capsule mission in 2010, the first time a privately-operated spacecraft was both launched into and recovered from orbit.
“We leverage our core competencies, facilitate public-private partnerships, and utilize the platform capabilities and unique operating environment of the space station,” the ISSNL’s mission statement reads. ”We create demand, incubate in-space business ventures, provide access for and awareness of fundamental science and technological innovation, and promote science literacy of the future workforce.” More than 50 companies have already partnered with the ISSNL aboard the space station and the agency is currently working with 11 others to “install 14 commercial facilities on the station supporting research and development projects for NASA.”
Axiom's ISS-grown space station
Axiom Space
At the forefront of this commercialization effort is the Axiom Space corporation. The Houston-based company has been contracted by NASA to construct a habitat module for the ISS, install it aboard the station in September of 2024 and then detach the module for use as an independent space platform once the ISS is eventually deorbited by 2028.
“Axiom's work to develop a commercial destination in space is a critical step for NASA to meet its long-term needs for astronaut training, scientific research and technology demonstrations in low-Earth orbit,” NASA’s Bridenstine, said in a 2020 statement.
"We are transforming the way NASA works with industry to benefit the global economy and advance space exploration," he added. "It is a similar partnership that this year will return the capability of American astronauts to launch to the space station on American rockets from American soil."
Axiom has tapped Thales Alenia Space to build both the module itself and a meteoroid shield for the Axiom Node One (a pressurized segment that will connect the Axiom hub onto the ISS).
"The legacy of the International Space Station structure is one of safety and reliability despite huge technical complexity," Axiom Space CEO, Michael Suffredini, said in a 2020 statement. "We are thrilled to combine Axiom's human spaceflight expertise with Thales Alenia Space's experience to build the next stage of human settlement in low Earth orbit from a foundation that is tried and tested."
Axiom has also struck a deal with SpaceX to ferry four “Axionauts” — yes, that’s really what they’re calling them — up to the ISS to train for life in microgravity. The 8-day mission, dubbed Ax-1, was supposed to be led by former NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, who would be joined by a trio of space tourists, each of whom shelled out $55 million to ride along. The trip was originally slated to take place in February, however, it was repeatedly delayed due to “additional spacecraft preparations and space station traffic” and is currently scheduled to take place on March 30th. The company is already at work on missions Ax-2 through -4 and has reserved a set of Dragon capsules, though the crew manifests have not yet been finalized.
In addition to the crew habitat, Axiom is building a secondary commercial capsule for Space Entertainment Enterprise (SEE), a startup co-producing Tom Cruise’s latest joint which will be shot at least partially in space later this year. The SEE-1 is scheduled for installation in December, 2024 and will host both a production studio and — somehow — a sports arena as well. Bring on the Battle Rooms.
Nanoracks’ Starlab
Nanoracks
While Axiom Space is trying to bud its orbital platform from the ISS like a polyp, space service company Nanoracks is working to build a free-flying station of its own, with help from Voyager Space and Lockheed Martin, as well as a $160 million CLD contract from NASA. That contract runs through 2025 and “will be supplemented with customer pre-buy opportunities and public-private partnerships,” per a recent Lockheed press release.
Nanoracks is already deeply involved in commercial ventures to, from and on the ISS. Founded in 2009, the company has delivered some 1,300 research payloads and small satellites to the station and currently rents space for research modules aboard its Nanoracks External Platform on the outside of the ISS. Its wide-bore Bishop airlock was the first permanent commercial addition to the ISS.
The company is developing a line of smaller self-contained orbital platforms, dubbed Outposts, which could serve a variety of purposes from refueling stations for satellite constellations, to cubesat launchers and advanced technology testbeds to hydroponic greenhouses. The first iteration is expected to be launched by 2024.
The Starlab itself, which should be ready for business by 2027, will consist of an inflatable 340 cubic meter habitat built by Northrop (similar to the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM, that was demonstrated on the ISS in 2016) that can accommodate up to four crew members simultaneously. Four solar panels will generate 60 kW of power for the station to use.
With just under half the usable interior space as the ISS, Starlab’s operations will be centered around its cutting-edge George Washington Carver (GWC) Science Park which includes a biology lab space, plant habitation lab, materials research lab and an unstructured workbench area enabling the station to offer services ranging from fundamental research and astronaut training to space tourism. However, tourists will take a backseat to scientific endeavors aboard the station. “Space tourism is what captures the headlines, but to have a sustainable business model, you really do need to move beyond that,” Nanoracks CEO Jeffrey Manber told TechCrunch last October.
Blue Origin’s Orbital Reef
Blue Origin
With the “pay NASA to pay us to ferry Artemis gear to the moon” plan having been thoroughly imploded by the US federal court system, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin has set its sights on a goal slightly closer to Earth. The space launch and tourism company has partnered with Sierra Space to build, launch and operate a "mixed-use business park" in space, dubbed Orbital Reef.
The 830 cubic meter structure is still in its early planning stages, having garnered a $130 million Space Act contract from NASA last December for its development, and isn’t expected to launch until at least the second half of the 2020s. Few other details have yet been confirmed.
"Now, anyone can establish an address in orbit," Blue Origin declared last October when unveiling the project. "Orbital Reef expands access, lowers the cost and provides everything needed to help you operate your business in space." This from the company that got $28 million for a single seat aboard last year’s inaugural New Shepard flight.
Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus-based space station
NASA
NASA’s third Space Act agreement recipient from last December is defender contractor Northrop Grumman, which plans to repurpose one of its existing Cygnus spacecraft for use as an orbital station.
Like Orbital Reef, Northrop’s as-of-yet unnamed design is still in its earliest stages of development, though the company does expect the new station to accommodate up to four permanent crew members once it does initiate operations and could at least double that number as the station is expanded throughout its estimated 15-year service life.
Under the terms of the $125 million agreement, "the Northrop Grumman team will deliver a free-flying space station design that is focused on commercial operations to meet the demands of an expanding LEO market," Steve Krein, vice president of civil and commercial space at Northrop Grumman, said in a statement last December. "Our station will enable a smooth transition from International Space Station-based LEO missions to sustainable commercial-based missions where NASA does not bear all the costs, but serves as one of many customers."
Of course, the US and its commercial constituents are far from the only parties interested in colonizing LEO for business interests. China launched the Tianhe core module of its new 3-crew member Tiangong space station into orbit this past April with the remaining Experiment Modules and separate space telescope going up between this year and 2024. Similarly, India’s space agency is developing a station of its own with plans to launch it by the end of the decade, following the country’s upcoming Gaganyaan mission, the first crewed orbital spacecraft to launch as part of the Indian Human Spaceflight Programme.
These propositions are only the start of humanity’s expansion into the stars from low Earth orbit, to the Lunar Gateway, to Mars and beyond. But the question isn’t so much of when and how we’ll do so, but rather, who will be able to afford to?
“Financial performance is obviously critical,” President and CEO Jim Farley said in a release Thursday. “We’re also proud that customers see how Ford is taking EVs mainstream, and have already ordered or reserved more than 275,000 all-electric Mustang Mach-E SUVs, F-150 Lightning pickups and E-Transit commercial vehicles – and we’re breaking constraints to deliver every one of them as fast as we can.”
In fact, the company reports that sales of its EVs in January "grew almost 4 times faster than the overall electrified segment" (13,169 units in total), making Ford the current number 2 retailer of electric vehicles in the country behind Tesla (and the country’s top-selling automaker overall), prompting a promise from Farley to double the company's global production capacity for EVs "to at least 600,000 by 2023." He expects EVs to "represent at least 40 percent of its product mix by 2030."
In all, Ford saw revenue of $37.7 billion, a net income of $12.3 billion and $2 billion in EBIT (earnings before interest and taxes) in Q4 2021. The company sold 6,513 Mavericks in January alone — with 3,549 of these sold as hybrids — along with 2,370 Mach-Es, 27 percent of which were of the GT variety. Ford also saw strong interest in its new Transit line of commercial EVs with more than 300 American businesses placing orders for 10,000 vehicles. And, while not wholly electrified, Ford did point out that its pickup lines — the F-150, Ranger, and Maverick — with combined sales of 62,293, outsold GM’s pickups in January.
Strong sales of its existing pickup and SUV lines in Q4, despite decreased sales numbers due to the semiconductor shortage and supply chain constrictions, have GM positioned for a strong start to 2022 as the company works to electrify and automate its vehicle offerings.
"With an improving outlook for semiconductors in the U.S. and China, we expect our 2022 results will remain strong," GM CEO Mary Barra wrote in a letter to shareholders Tuesday. "In fact, we expect our EBIT-adjusted earnings to remain at or near record levels in the range of $13 billion — $15 billion, all while investing more year over year in our growth businesses like Cruise, BrightDrop and our rapidly accelerating portfolio of electric vehicles."
Barra points to strong demand for GM's burgeoning line of EVs running on the Ultium battery platform — such as the currently available Hummer EV as well as upcoming Silverado, Equinox, Sierra and Lyriq EVs — with a portion of the company's financial performance. GM's Brightdrop EV6000 commercial vehicle is also seeing healthy interest from FedEx, Merchant's Fleet and Walmart as green additions to their respective delivery and cargo fleets, the company reported Tuesday.
The Hummer EV itself has reportedly seen more than 59,000 paid reservations to date. "Not surprisingly, some of the first owners are very prominent figures in the sports and entertainment industries," Barra said during Tuesday's call "Their initial feedback has been just incredible.” The company has also seen 110,000 Silverado EVs reservations so far, Barra explained, "including reservations for more than 240 fleet operators, and the numbers keep growing every day."
GM's $35 billion EV and autonomy investment announced last June, is already beginning to pay dividends. "Battery cells will not be a constraint to our long term EV growth," Barra noted. The company expects its first battery cell manufacturing plant in Lordstown Ohio by the middle of the year, with two more expected to commence operations by the end of next year and the location of a fourth site set to be announced later this spring. These will work in tandem with the automaker's Michigan-based Factory ZERO and Orion EV assembly plants.
"This major milestone brings Cruise even closer to offering its first paid rides and generating $50 billion in annual revenue by the end of the decade," Barra noted. "It also means that the SoftBank Vision Fund will invest — as planned — an additional $1.35 billion in Cruise. This is another strong vote of confidence in the Cruise team, its technology and services."
The company also reiterated three of its ambitious climate goals during Tuesday's earnings call: going "carbon neutral in our global products and operations by 2040," eliminating "tailpipe emissions for new light-duty vehicles and offer all-electric heavy-duty vehicles by 2035" in line with California's upcoming emission vehicle sales ban, and sourcing 100 percent of its production power requirements "from renewable sources by 2035, and by 2025 in the US."
While interest in GM's line of electrifieds helped propel sales, the lack of available processors to put in them hurt the company's overall numbers. GM delivered 441,000 vehicles to American consumers in Q4 2021, does from 447,000 in Q3 and 771,000 in Q4 of 2020. Still, that dip only translated into a minor drop in overall revenue of $3.2 billion from $3.4 billion the previous quarter.
Looking ahead, GM expects the first of its Cadillac Lyriq to begin in less than 60 days while the first batch of its Hummer EV Pickups are already en route to their buyers. The company expects production on the EV600 to begin later this year with an initial capacity of around 30,000 units annually.
