When it comes to sustainability, cities represent both the problem and the solution. Sprawling slabs of concrete and asphalt create heat islands, resulting in significantly higher temperatures than non-urbanized areas, while city populations are only growing as the planet becomes more populous. Already, more than 60 percent of humans live in urban areas.

Framlab is a research and design studio based in Bergen, Norway, and Brooklyn, New York, and architects there are focused on rethinking the way we build city spaces. Framlab founder Andreas Tjeldflaat believes there’s a need to overhaul conventional urban planning with an eye on inclusion, adaptability and regeneration. His concepts address micro- and macro-level societal issues, from feelings of personal isolation to the consequences of human-driven climate change. They also end up looking extremely sleek.

Tjeldflaat outlined three conceptual projects for us, each one addressing a different problem in growing cities. Open House is a building designed to encourage interpersonal interaction through the use of soft edges and shared spaces, while Oversky places floating, cloud-like buildings above the city streets. Glasir takes advantage of leftover urban spaces like empty lots and streetside landscaping by establishing large glass treehouses with community gardens inside their branches. Watch the video for the below for the full story.

One detail that's often omitted from modern founders myths is whether or not said scion of capitalist success actually invented the thing they're famous for inventing. Just like Elon Musk didn't invent electric vehicles so much as be the first to successfully market them to the American public, Thomas Edison's contributions to the advent of electrified lighting too might be overstated. In the excerpt below from his latest book, The Things We Make: The Unknown History of Invention from Cathedrals to Soda Cans, Dr. Bill Hammack, YouTube's "The Engineer Guy," recounts the tale of Hiram Maxim, an irrepressible engineer and inventor whose novel filament production method would have made him a household name — had Edison not reportedly made "a clean steal" of his revolutionary technology.   

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Excerpted from The Things We Make: The Unknown History of Invention from Cathedrals to Soda Cans by Bill Hammack, PhD. © 2023 by Bill Hammack, PhD. Used with permission of the publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc. All rights reserved.

In November 1880, the reading room of the Mercantile Safe Deposit Company, located in the basement of one of the first skyscrapers, glowed with the light of a four-bulb chandelier and six bulbs in fixtures spaced along the walls. An observer characterized this electric light as “very much like that of a first-class oil lamp, steadier than gas, and of a yellow, clear pleasant quality” — nothing like the “ghastly blue” of a “flickering” arc light, nor was there the odor of burning gas; instead, the room’s atmosphere “remain[ed] perfectly cool and sweet.” His only complaint was that the bulbs flickered slightly with every stroke of the engine that powered the generator. This first commercial installation, a spectacular achievement, featured no bulbs manufactured by Thomas Edison, although he had proudly announced his invention of the light bulb only a few months earlier to great press attention. The bulbs at the Mercantile Company were those of the U.S. Electric Lighting Company, a company driven forward by their irrepressible and energetic engineer, Hiram Maxim. Edison called Maxim’s bulb “a clean steal” of his lamp. Yet Maxim had seventeen patents on incandescent lamps, and his company controlled the patents of several other inventors, also contemporary to Edison. Maxim thought of himself as the inventor of the commercial light bulb. “Every time I put up a light,” he complained, “a crowd would gather, everyone asking, ‘Is it Edison’s?’” This so irritated Maxim, who noted that Edison at the time “had never made a lamp,” that he considering killing “on the spot” the next person to ask him “Is it Edison’s?”

That the first commercialized light bulbs were not Edison’s surprises because we love stories of sole inventors whose spark of inspiration revolutionized the world. They give us narratives that are neat, tidy, and digestible but incomplete. These stories hide the engineering method; they bury the creativity of engineers, smooth over struggles, and sanitize choices that reflect cultural norms. Perhaps no story persists more than Edison and his light bulb, yet Edison was the tail end of a long list of light bulb innovators in a process of invention similar to that of the steam turbine in the next century.

In the forty years before Edison’s first successful prototype, at least twenty people presented, patented, and demonstrated incandescent lamps—using electricity to heat a filament until it glowed. The first recorded attempt was in 1838 (almost a decade before Edison’s birth) by a Belgian inventor whose bulb used a strip of carbon as a filament. A fair assessment of history would call these men inventors of the light bulb comparable to Edison, especially in a world where Edison, the so-called inventor of the incandescent light bulb, was forty years late to the idea of incandescent lighting. But unlike with Edison, we don’t remember the names of these men, because most of their bulbs burned for only a few seconds. They had the necessary but thankless job of creating links in a chain of incremental advances that didn’t yet produce an applicable or reproducible solution to the problem of darkness, which so far could only be dispelled with fire, until Edison created one of the links that did, transforming from method into narrative. Although Edison and his bulb end that length of the chain of innovators, his link was no more an exercise or example of the engineering method than those that came before; it only overcame a circumstantial threshold of usefulness.

In 1878, Edison focused the energy of his staff at the bustling Menlo Park Research Laboratory on finding a long-lasting filament for the incandescent light bulb. The staff worked to the rhythms of Edison, “the central originating and guiding mind and personality,” as one worker noted, describing work there as “a strenuous but joyful life for all physically, mentally, and emotionally.” Edison set the tone with long work hours into the night. He often napped on the workbenches in Menlo Park and ate sparingly in increments of small snacks he thought were better for digestion, although for his workers, he had brought in, often at midnight, hamper baskets loaded with hot dinners of meat, vegetables, dessert, and coffee. But when Edison stood, stretched, hitched up his waistband, and sauntered away, all knew that dinner was over and work should resume.

In the late 1870s, Edison and his staff produced bulbs that looked much like a modern bulb: a glass envelope fastened to a wooden base covered with copper strips, and, at its center, a thin, long, delicate spiral of platinum. Yet these bulbs failed. Some yielded light as bright as a small bundle of today’s Christmas lights for a few hours, but most burned out quickly. As Edison learned, the temperature for the incandescence of platinum wire was near that of its melting point—any fluctuations in the current and the platinum would melt. Edison and his team tested an astonishing array of materials, by some count sixteen hundred types. They tested metals like platinum, iridium, ruthenium, chromium, aluminum, tungsten, molybdenum, palladium, manganese, and titanium; elements that sometimes behaved like metals, including silicon and boron; then a grab bag of materials—cork, wax, celluloid, and the hair from his employees’ beards. After these, his team moved to slivers of wood, broom corn, and paper. Tissue paper covered with lampblack and tar and rolled into a rod glowed astonishingly well and for a good amount of time. Edison refined this idea by “carbonizing” cotton thread, heating it without oxygen until the length of thread was blackened throughout. From this thread, he formed a long filament. On October 21, 1879, a bulb with a filament of this thread, with all the air removed from the glass enclosure, burned for more than half a day. They were approaching the beginning of the commercial light bulb.

Seven months after that bit of carbonized thread showed promise, they tried a piece of bamboo: a six-inch strip burned for three hours and twenty-four minutes at seventy-one candlepower (about the brightness of a standard sixty-watt bulb today). “The best lamp ever yet made,” an Edison associate noted, “here from vegetable Carbon.” From there, Edison’s team tested two hundred species of bamboo until they found a variety that was the best for manufacturing carbon filaments, grown near Yawata, Japan, where Edison is still celebrated with a street named “Edison-dori,” a bust of Edison in the town center, and, near a shrine, a large monument dedicated to Edison. With his specialized bamboo supply and method of manufacturing in place, Edison was ready to light the world, but Hiram Maxim beat him out of the gate.

Maxim’s bulbs, installed at the Equitable Life Building, out-classed Edison’s. “They have a rich golden tint, resembling that of a wax taper,” said one reporter. Another noted that Maxim “has invented a lamp which surpasses, I believe, even Edison’s dreams.” When comparing the lamps, reporters noted that Edison’s had lower brightness than Maxim's, or, when of the same intensity as Maxim’s, they burned out in only a few hours. By Maxim’s own estimate, the filaments in his bulbs could last forty days. The dimness and shorter life of Edison’s bulbs were the same thing: Edison’s bulbs could not tolerate as much current as Maxim’s, so if run at the same current, Edison’s bulbs would burn out quickly, and to make them last longer, Edison’s were run at a lower current and thus were dimmer.

That Maxim could achieve this was unbelievable to Edison’s staff—an outraged member of the Menlo Park staff ranted that it must be apparent to “any sane person that” Maxim’s bulb must be “but a copy” of Edison’s. Surely, thought Edison’s employees, only a well-oiled machine like that of Menlo Park could produce a light bulb. Inside Menlo Park, glassblowers, machinists, engineers, chemists, and physicists churned out inventions like appliances on an assembly line, while Maxim’s ham-handed U.S. Electric Lighting Company struggled to find enough resources to survive; employees thought it likely to shut at any minute, and even its own president described it as “helpless.” Their technical expertise was so low that they could not figure out, as one employee later noted, what “size wire would carry a certain number of lamps without overheating,” adding that “a number of mysterious fires about this time were probably the fruits of our ignorance.” Compared with Edison’s factory-line Menlo Park model, Maxim’s method of invention seemed scattershot.

Maxim was the classic American tinkerer, once describing himself as a “chronic inventor.” Although self-taught—one biographer describes him as “semiliterate”—over his lifetime, he invented an astonishing array of tools and toys. Maxim developed methods to separate metals from their ores, instruments to measure wind velocities, vacuum cleaners, novelty items that produced “illusionary effects”—a rotating sphere with concave paraboloidal floor, mirrors, and a bicycle track, presumably to create the illusion of riding a bike long distances—gear to prevent the rolling of ships, riveting machines, feed water check valves, steam generators, wheels for railroads and tramways, an inhaler to treat bronchitis, boot and shoe heel protectors, hair curling irons, a method for demagnetizing watches, a type of pneumatic tire, a coffee substitute, a method for extinguishing fires in theaters, and most surprising of all, new advertising methods—a rotating sign that works “even in very light airs.” And near the end of his life, he invented the world’s first successful machine gun.

Maxim’s contribution to the light bulb was to improve the manufacture of filaments. Filaments, whether of bamboo or cardboard, as in Maxim’s case, were converted to carbon by heating at high temperatures in the absence of oxygen until the cellulose in the material broke down, leaving a hard carbon skeleton, but uneven carbonization caused thinner sections to become much hotter when lit with an electrical current and burn out more quickly. Maxim’s insight was to place a carbonized filament into a hydrocarbon atmosphere, then pass through it an electrical current that heated the filament to a bright red. The thinner and hotter parts of the filament would break down the vaporous hydrocarbon surrounding them and deposit pure carbon on the filament, building up layers of carbon on the thinner parts and resulting in a filament of uniform thickness and greater life span. As Maxim gloated, “it is absolutely impossible by mechanical means to make a carbon filament that is of uniform resistance” without his patented method, adding that Edison “had to use my process or give up the job.”

Maxim’s attitude was prompted by the rivalry that burned between the many engineers competing in a world eager for the magic of electrical lighting, but it also shows us the problem with crediting any individual with the complete “invention” of any technology. We tend to tell the stories of inventors who, through their unique intellect and drive, produce an equally unique marvel at the climax of a story with a beginning, middle, and end. That is often how this book has told it, out of deference to individual humans’ need to relate to the stories of other individual humans. But the engineering method is uninterested in this “great men” historical framework. It cares only about the accumulated knowledge, heuristics, rules of thumb, intuition, and anything else that drives problems in the direction of solutions as fast as possible, the sum of which, even for a single solution, is beyond unthinkable for a lone person to create themselves. This web of information is so vast, incomprehensibly vast, so we make it comprehensible and moving by telling the stories of individual inventors, even if this distorts the unknowable true web of invention.

Maxim is likely unrecognized as an inventor today because he lacked Edison’s agile self-promotion and because, in a sense, Edison “won” and thus told the story of the light bulb’s invention. But did Edison “invent” a light bulb when his company produced a brilliantly glowing but short-lived electric light? Perhaps. When we think of an invented technology, we typically imply technology that not only exists but is reproducible in a way that can fulfill the needs of those whose problem it solves. That is, it can be manufactured or mass-produced. A handful of working light bulbs in the late 1800s is a marvel, but it doesn’t light the world. In this sense, the invention of the light bulb was a decades-long process of incremental changes to create a filament that can be manufactured reliably and extended beyond Edison and Maxim alone. To tell only a “great man” story hides the contributions of others who were essential to a technology’s development. We can see that in the evolution of the manufacturing techniques of Maxim’s light bulbs: he had on staff an artistic draftsman turned engineer whose contributions to reliable manufacturing have long been overlooked.

Apple is promising more eco-friendly batteries ahead of Earth Day. The company has committed to using 100 percent recycled cobalt in all Apple-designed batteries by 2025. It also expects to use completely recycled rare earth elements in its magnets by that point, and all in-house circuit board designs will use fully recycled gold plating and tin soldering.

Only 25 percent of the cobalt Apple used last year was recycled. While thats's up from 13 percent in 2021, that makes the new target more ambitious than others. Apple already uses 73 percent recycled rare earth elements and 38 percent recycled tin. Apple has custom battery designs in most of its portable products, including the iPhone, iPad and MacBook lines.

The company eventually hopes to make all products exclusively with recycled and renewable materials. It expects its products to be carbon neutral by 2030. As of 2022, just 20 percent of the material in Apple hardware was recycled or renewed.

Yes, this is partly about burnishing the company's image. You may be more likely to buy an iPhone or Apple Watch if you believe it's relatively gentle on the planet. However, the cobalt goal may be more significant than most. Cobalt is widely used in batteries, including in electric vehicles, but it also has significant environmental and social problems. The mining process contaminates the air, earth and water, and can lead to health issues for both miners and the general population. There are also concerns about miner exploitation in countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Companies have been developing cobalt-free batteries that could lessen the environmental impact across the tech industry. For now, though, efforts like Apple's could reduce the demand for additional cobalt and the associated mining.

LED light bulbs are already supposed to be energy-efficient, but Signifiy thinks it can improve on the formula. The company has released Philips Ultra Efficient LED bulbs that, as the name implies, use 40 percent less energy than the brand's usual LED options. The "advanced" LEDs and optics reduce the yearly energy cost to between 55 cents and $1.03 per bulb, Signify claims. For context, a Philips Ultra Definition 60W bulb uses an estimated 97 cents each year.

The new lights might also be helpful if you're trying to minimize waste. Signify estimates that the Ultra Efficient line has an average lifespan of 50 years, or more than three times the usage of Philips' standard LED bulbs. There's a real chance this lighting might outlive you.

The Philips range is available now as a Walmart exclusive. It starts at $10 for a 60W-equivalent A19 bulb ($17 for two) in soft white and daylight variants. A 65W BR30 bulb costs $11, while a 100W A21 light is $15. You're paying considerably more than you would for standard LEDs — a four-pack of Philips Ultra Definition 60W bulbs costs $14. However, Signify is clearly betting that the lower energy costs and increased longevity will ultimately save you money on top of being kinder to the environment.

The catch, of course, is that these aren't smart bulbs. You'll need to live with higher energy consumption if you insist on Philips Hue and don't want to use smart plugs. If that isn't an obstacle, though, you may see your energy bills shrink if you replace enough bulbs around your home.

The Biden-Harris administration has proposed stricter pollution standards across the auto industry as part of their goal to increase EV production and slow climate change. The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) new guidelines would mean that, by 2032, 67 percent of new light-duty vehicles, such as sedans and light trucks, and 46 percent of new medium-duty vehicles sold will be EVs. The proposed changes could also lead to almost 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions to be avoided through 2055 — about double the US's 2022 emissions. 

Details on the proposed emissions standards aren’t fully clear, but are set to include targets for EV sales and new rules that punish automakers who exceed CO2 standards within the next five to ten years. "Specifically, EPA is proposing stronger CO2 standards for MY 2027 HD vehicles that go beyond the current standards that apply under the HD Phase 2 Greenhouse Gas program," the agency said in a statement. "EPA is also is proposing an additional set of CO2 standards for HD vehicles that would begin to apply in MY 2028, with progressively lower standards each model year through 2032." 

This year has already seen continued progress for EV manufacturing and sales. Tesla reported increased first quarter sales that were 36 percent higher than the same period in 2022, and four percent higher than the last quarter. Volkswagen pledged $193 billion dollars towards EV technology, including batteries and raw materials, over the next five years.

EV purchases are clearly heading in the direction the Biden administration hopes: EV sales accounted for 5.6 percent in 2022, compared to 1.8 percent in 2020. In California, EVs made up almost 19 percent of yearly new car sales. That upswing is set to continue in 2023 with 225,000 EVs sold in the first quarter — about seven percent of all new vehicles. The same period saw used EV purchases increase by almost a third, thanks potentially to their prices decreasing.

At the same time, cost is still a huge barrier for making EVs mainstream. Last year, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, providing EV buyers subsidies up to $7,500 for SUVs, trucks, and vans under $80,000 and cars under $55,000. Even used EV purchases could get up to $4,000. Recent updated guidance from the US Treasury Department, however, limited how many EVs would qualify for a subsidy. 

Another issue is making sure people have somewhere to charge all these EVs while they're on the go. Currently, there are 130,000 public charging stations across the United States, with President Biden aiming to tackle demand by building another 500,000 by 2030. Part of this plan entails teaming with local officials to build them in widely accessible spaces, with regional governments needing to apply for funds by May 30th. If all goes well, no one would live farther than 50 miles from a charger. 

NASA has launched an innovative air quality monitoring instrument into a fixed-rotation orbit around Earth. The tool is called TEMPO, which stands for Tropospheric Emissions Monitoring of Pollution instrument, and it keeps an eye on a handful of harmful airborne pollutants in the atmosphere, such as nitrogen dioxide, formaldehyde and ground-level ozone. These chemicals are the building blocks of smog.

TEMPO traveled to space hitched to a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launching from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. NASA says the launch was completed successfully, with the atmospheric satellite separating from the rocket without any incidents. NASA acquired the appropriate signal and the agency says the instrument will begin monitoring duties in late May or early June.

TEMPO sits at a fixed geostationary orbit just above the equator and it measures air quality over North America every hour and measures regions spaced apart by just a few miles. This is a significant improvement to existing technologies, as current measurements are conducted within areas of 100 square miles. TEMPO should be able to take accurate measurements from neighborhood to neighborhood, giving a comprehensive view of pollution from both the macro and micro levels.

This also gives us some unique opportunities to pick up new kinds of data, such as changing pollution levels throughout rush hour, the effects of lightning on the ozone layer, the movement of pollution related to forest fires and the long-term effects of fertilizers on the atmosphere, among other data points. More information is never bad. 

NASA

TEMPO is the middle child in a group of high-powered instruments tracking pollution. South Korea's Geostationary Environment Monitoring Spectrometer went up in 2020, measuring pollution over Asia, and the ESA (European Space Agency) Sentinel-4 satellite launches in 2024 to handle European and North African measurements. Other tracking satellites will eventually join TEMPO up there in the great black, including the forthcoming NASA instrument to measure the planet's crust.

You may notice that TEMPO flew into space on a SpaceX rocket and not a NASA rocket. This is by design, as the agency is testing a new business model to send crucial instruments into orbit. Paying a private company seems to be the more budget-friendly option when compared to sending up a rocket itself. 

Best Buy announced today that it’s extending its gadget recycling program to include a new mail-in option. The retailer will now sell you a box for your used electronics that you can ship back for recycling, saving a trip to the store. Best Buy says it’s recycled 2.7 billion pounds of electronics and appliances through its existing programs, describing itself as the US’ “largest retail collector of e-waste.”

The program lets you order a box in one of two sizes: a $23 small (9 x 5 x 3 inches) one for e-waste weighing up to six lbs and a $30 medium (18 x 14 x 4 inches) one supporting up to 15 lbs. After receiving it, you can pack in as many (approved) devices as you can fit, as long as they stay under the weight limits. Then, you can either take them to a UPS drop-off point or schedule a UPS pickup.

The program is an extension of Best Buy’s free in-store recycling program, launched in 2009. The retailer also provides a home-pickup option, but it costs $200 and is ideal for unusually cumbersome items like home theater and heavy appliances. All of its recycling initiatives accept computers, tablets, TVs, smartphones, radios, appliances, cameras and other common gadgets. (You can read the complete list and exclusions here.)

The free in-store recycling program would be more practical unless you live far from a Best Buy location. Still, I can see some people willing to pay to avoid making the trip — especially during the holiday shopping season or if you have disposable income and live in a congested area. If nothing else, Earth Day (April 22nd) is an appropriate time to raise awareness of e-waste recycling to nudge people away from throwing these items in the trash, where they’ll get hauled off to landfills.

Microsoft announced a new sustainable Xbox controller today. Arriving as an Earth Day promotion, the Xbox Remix Special Edition wireless controller uses recycled materials from old gamepads, auto headlight covers and reclaimed CDs (among other sources) to give each accessory a unique look. Although it offers no special functionality, it allows gamers to vote with their wallets for environmentally friendly manufacturing.

One-third of each gamepad is made from post-consumer recycled resins and regrind materials. Microsoft says the resins are sourced from materials like “automotive headlight covers, plastic water jugs and CDs.” Meanwhile, the regrind comes from leftover Xbox One controller parts recycled into new material. The company says the regrind maintains the durability and performance you’d expect.

Microsoft describes the combination of recycled resins with regrind as creating “custom, earth-tone colors with subtle variations, swirling, markings, and texturing — giving each Remix Special Edition controller its own look and feel.” Unfortunately, the company’s marketing images don’t appear to reveal much of that, but you can expect each one to look at least slightly different from the rest. It also has “a topographic texture pattern” on its bumpers, triggers and side grip areas, which Microsoft describes as a “nod to the Earth’s dynamic landscape.” Finally, the green hues on its front case, D-pad and Xbox button were inspired by lichen, a composite organism found in the Pacific Northwest.

It wouldn’t make sense to buy an environmentally sound controller only to stuff it with disposable AA batteries that end up in landfills. So Microsoft bundles an Xbox Rechargeable Battery Pack with each special-edition gamepad. The accessory costs $25 on its own.

It’s easy to grow cynical about mega-corporations virtue-signaling around Earth Day products that most people won’t buy while their broader product portfolio falls short in environmental friendliness. But hey, it’s still something. Further, Microsoft does point us to its Xbox sustainability efforts — including goals of being carbon-negative, water-positive and zero-waste by 2030 and improving its consoles’ Energy Saver sleep mode.

The Xbox Remix Special Edition controller costs $85, the same price you’d pay for a $60 standard Xbox wireless gamepad with a rechargeable battery pack. It’s available for pre-order today before launching on April 18th, four days before Earth Day.

California will require more than half of all heavy trucks sold in the state to be electric by 2035. The rule received approval from the Biden administration today, allowing it to take effect next year, according toThe New York Times. California approved the mandate in 2020 but needed an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) waiver because it exceeded federal standards.

The rule aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector. By 2035, it requires 55 percent of delivery vans and small trucks sold in California to be entirely electric-powered. Similarly, 40 percent of tractor-trailers and 75 percent of buses and larger trucks must be all-electric by the same deadline.

California Governor Gavin Newsom sees the mandate as a bellwether for the nation. “This is a moment to mark because it’s a preview of the order of magnitude of the change in the industry,” Newsom told The New York Times. “There’s a power in these waivers and that power is emulation. We adopt through these waivers the principles and policies that lead to innovation and investment.” Given the size and centrality of California’s economy (it would be the world’s fifth-biggest economy if it were a sovereign nation), the rule would, in practice, essentially apply nationwide — similar to the state’s ban on sales of gas-powered vehicles by 2035.

The trucking industry has criticized the move for its costs and infrastructure requirements. “Drivers don’t want to work in California anymore,” said Jay Grimes, director of federal affairs for the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association. “They’re skeptical of the rapid timeline on this transition to electric trucks. Can a trucker get a charge that will take them on a highway for two or three days? Is the technology ready for prime time?” He adds that batteries for electric trucks can weigh thousands of pounds more than combustion engines, potentially limiting hauls. Other truckers have questioned whether the charging station rollout will be adequate for long trips. Finally, electric trucks are more expensive, starting at around $100,000 and stretching into high six figures (although the pricing discrepancies compared to gas trucks could drop over time).

Unsurprisingly, attorneys general from 17 Republican-led states are suing to block the legislation. That list includes (among others) Texas AG Ken Paxton, who has received over $3.9 million in fossil fuel donations since 2002, and Louisiana AG Jeff Landry, who has raked in over $875,000 from oil and gas industries. Their lawsuit is scheduled for the US Court of Appeals for Washington, DC, later this year and could move to the conservative-dominated US Supreme Court afterward.

Clean energy groups acknowledge the mandate’s difficulties but strike an optimistic tone. “There’s a great deal of challenge with the electrification of heavy-duty vehicles,” said Drew Kodjak, executive director of the International Council on Clean Transportation. “But there are elements that lead to optimism.” For example, he points out that government tax incentives and savings from not having to buy gasoline will help with long-term costs. “Companies like FedEx look at the bottom line over the total life span of a vehicle. And when they look long-term, the calculations for this become more optimistic.”

Uber announced today that it’s adding 14 new markets to Comfort Electric, its EV rideshare service. The program allows you to hail electric vehicles like the Tesla Model 3, Ford Mustang Mach-E and Polestar 2. It’s another small step toward the company’s goal of phasing out gas-powered vehicles by 2030.

Beginning today, Uber’s Comfort Electric program adds availability for Detroit, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Minneapolis / St. Paul, Montreal, Nashville, New Orleans, Orlando, Palm Springs, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Salt Lake City, Tampa Bay and Toronto. The program’s rollout began last May in California and expanded to 25 US markets in September. Comfort Electric is separate from Uber Green, which costs the same as UberX but includes hybrid vehicles in addition to electrics. The company also offers e-bikes and e-scooters in partnership with Lime for customers who can skip cars altogether.

Uber says it will spend $800 million to help its drivers transition to EVs. It partnered with Hertz to help supply EVs while offering a (limited-time) Zero Emissions incentive, letting EV drivers earn an extra $1 on every trip (up to $4,000 per calendar year). Other driver perks include $100 off a Wallbox EV charger and another $100 off installation. In addition to its 2030 goal of zero emissions in North America, the company plans to cut its carbon emissions in half by 2025, and it wants to hit zero emissions globally by 2040.

Comfort Electric rides cost more than a standard UberX — usually by around 20 to 40 percent. However, Uber is enticing you to try it out by offering 25 percent off two rides with the coupon code “GOELECTRIC” from April 11th through the 30th.