Tesla will replace the Autopilot cameras in the front fenders of some its electric vehicles for free, according to CNBC. While Tesla has yet to issue a recall, the news organization has seen internal documents distributed to authorized service providers in late November, asking them to replace faulty repeater cameras at no cost to owners. Apparently, the cameras on some Model S, X and 3 vehicles manufactured by the company at its Fremont, California plant have faulty printed circuit boards. 

Those cameras capture the car's blind spots, and Autopilot wouldn't work without them. If they're not working as intended, drivers typically only see a block box on their main display and may get alerts that their Autopilot has limited function. CNBC says Tesla may have to replace cameras for at least several hundred vehicles as a result of the faulty PCBs it used.

A Tesla sales manager told the publication that internal service notices are sometimes followed by voluntary recalls, but the automaker has yet to issue a statement. Tesla recalled vehicles several times in the past over various issues. In October, it recalled nearly 3,000 Model 3 and Y vehicles, because their front suspension lateral link fasteners may loosen. The company also recalled 11,704 Tesla EVs from 2017 and later in November after they became prone to false-positive braking following a buggy Full Self-Driving beta update.

Two years ago, BMW delivered its 500,000th electrified vehicle (including EVs and hybrids), promising to deliver one million units in two years. Now, the company has announced that it's met that goal by delivering its one millionth electrified vehicle, an iX xDrive40 SUV (shown above), to a customer in Europe. It's also promising to double that tally to two million by next year, while delivering two million fully electric EVs by 2025. 

BMW was a pioneer in the pure electric category with the i3 and i8 EVs, but has been slow to ramp up its offerings since then. As such, the majority of its electrified sales have been hybrid, rather than pure EVs. (The term "electrified" generally encompasses both PHEVs, mild hybrids and EVs.) Between January and September of 2021, BMW reportedly sold 59,688 EVs and 171,887 plug-in hybrid vehicles worldwide, according to CleanTechnica. In 2020, it sold 192,646 plug-in vehicles, including PHEVs and EVs, InsideEVs reported. 

This year, the company launched the i4 sedan and iX SUV pure electric models into the US market, but they only went on sale last month. It also offers four PHEVs, including versions of the 7, X5, 3 and 5 models. Over the next year, BMW will add the fully electric BMW 7 series and X1, plus the high-volume BMW 5 series by 2023. It plans to have "about ten million fully-electric vehicles on the road" by 2031 or so.

Golf has been booming during the pandemic as folks look for socially distanced outdoor activities, and that has extended to interest in televised golf. There's going to be a lot more to watch in 2022, as ESPN+ has announced that it will offer 4,300 hours of golf coverage across 35 tournaments as part of its PGA Tour Live streaming deal. US viewers will also pay less to access the service.

In the past, we've seen "Featured Groups" and "Featured Holes" on PGA Tour Live. Next year, however, ESPN+ will offer four concurrent feeds, adding a "Marquee Group" with the most interesting players. It's also introducing a "Main Feed" that will resemble a traditional broadcast with the best content from all its cameras around the course. 

ESPN+ said the PGA Tour Live production crew will increase from 85 to 210 people as part of its new commitment to the tour. Each feed will have hosts and on-course analysts including Stuart Appleby, Christina Kim, Chantel McCabe and Mark Immelman. 

PGA Tour Live first launched as a free service on pgatour.com, and has recently been available for free on Twitter during select broadcasts. Now, you'll need to pay $6.99 per month for ESPN+, or pick it up in the Disney Bundle that includes Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ for $13.99 per month (ESPN+ is only available in the US). That's a significant sum, but PGA Tour Live currently costs $9.99 per month on NBC Sports Gold, and ESPN+ offers other live sports coverage (soccer, MLB baseball, NHL hockey, MMA, etc.) on top of golf.

Instagram has launched a number of new and experimental features meant to make its app a safer place for teens ahead of Adam Mosseri's Senate testimony. To start with, it's launching the previously announced "Take a Break" feature in the US, UK, Canada and Australia today. Now, when a user has been scrolling Instagram for quite some time, the app will ask them to take a break and to set reminders for the future. Teens, in particular, will get notifications to set those reminders on to make sure they're aware of the feature. They'll also see expert-backed tips to help them "reflect and reset."

In March, Instagram will be launching tools for parents and guardians that will give them a way to view how much time their kids are spending on the app and to set time limits. Teens will get the option to notify their parents if they report someone, as well, serving as a way to signal the adults in their life that they may need to talk about it. 

One of the experimental features Instagram is testing will come in handy for teens and young adults who want to remove their activity on the app from when they were a lot younger. It will allow users to bulk delete the photos and videos they posted, as well as all their likes and comments. The feature will be available to everyone in January. 

Another test feature will expand what Instagram started earlier this year when it prohibited adults from DMing teens who don't follow them. Early next year, it will also switch off the ability to tag or mention teens by adults who don't follow them, or to include their content in Reels Remixes or Guides. Finally, it's exploring the possibility of limiting the sensitive content teens see even more and is currently building an experience that would nudge users towards another topic if they've been scrolling one topic for a while. 

Samsung has merged its mobile business, the company's biggest moneymaker, with its consumer electronics division in a major restructuring meant to "strengthen its business competitiveness." In addition, to combining divisions, the tech giant has also replaced all of its CEOs. 

Jong-Hee Han, the head of its TV business, has been named as Vice-Chairman and co-CEO of the newly merged mobile and consumer electronics divisions. Han won't be leaving his duties as head of visual display, though, and will instead lead both businesses. According to Reuters, Han has no experience in mobile, but Samsung credits him for playing a key role in the company achieving top position in global TV sales over the past 15 years. 

Meanwhile, Samsung President Kyehyun Kyung has also been named co-CEO and will now lead its chip and components division. Kyung is a semiconductor design expert and used to leading the company's flash product and technology team. He's expected to "help maintain" Samsung's semiconductor leadership and conjure innovative ideas at the same time. 

While mobile generated the biggest revenue (US$24.2 billion) for Samsung in the third quarter of 2021, its chip business isn't that far behind. Its semiconductor business posted US$22.6 billion in revenue due to the heightened demand for server DRAMs and for computers in general during the pandemic. Samsung is aiming to become the number 1 chip contract manufacturer within the next decade and has poured hundreds of billions into the business. Just this November, it announced that it's building a $17 billion semiconductor factory in Texas to manufacture high-end and advanced chips for smartphones, 5G and artificial intelligence.

British-American vehicle manufacturer Arrival today announced it plans to establish an $11.5 million battery plant in Charlotte, North Carolina. The factory will be the company’s third overall facility in the city. It will be located just steps away from its soon-to-be-complete North American headquarters. Once the plant is operational, it will supply batteries to the company’s Van “Microfactory,” creating approximately 150 additional jobs. 

“By bringing the assembly of our proprietary High Voltage Battery Modules in-house, we’re striving to be as vertically integrated as possible,” Arrival CEO Mike Ableson said. “This will enable us to have even greater control over the functionality and cost of our products and pass those cost savings on to the customer while also working toward our goal of zero waste production.” The company told TechCrunch the facility should have a production capacity of up to 350,000 battery modules per year. 

Arrival has a lot riding on the success of its Van EV. In 2020, UPS ordered 10,000 electric trucks from the automaker, with the option to buy an additional 10,000 vehicles if everything goes well. The announcement comes on the same day Toyota said it would build a $1.29 billion battery plant in central North Carolina.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating Tesla following a whistleblower complaint alleging the company failed to disclose a variety of safety risks associated with rooftop solar panels from its SolarCity division. Per Reuters, the agency acknowledged the probe in a Freedom of Information Act request made by Steven Henkes (pictured above), a former Tesla employee. 

He contacted the SEC in 2019 after the automaker allegedly ignored his pleas to notify consumers and regulators about the safety issues with its solar panels. One of those involved defective electrical connectors that could cause fires.

In 2020, Henkes later sued Tesla, alleging the company had dismissed him in retaliation for his actions. "The top lawyer cautioned any communication of this issue to the public as a detriment to the Tesla reputation,” Henkes said in his complaint. According to the lawsuit, more than 60,000 residential customers were affected by the issues Henkes documented in his complaint.

The investigation follows several years of reports of safety concerns with Tesla’s solar panels. In 2019, Walmart sued the company after its solar panels led to seven store fires. While the two companies eventually settled, Walmart claimed at the time Tesla regularly sent inspectors who “lacked basic solar training and knowledge." It also asserted the company’s panels were plagued by visible defects. That same year, the Tesla solar panels at an Amazon warehouse in California reportedly caught fire as well.

Toyota has selected a site for its proposed $1.29 billion US battery manufacturing facility. On Monday, the automaker said it would build the plant on the Greensboro-Randolph Megasite, a tract of land located in Randolph County in central North Carolina. When the facility is complete sometime in 2025, it will consist of four production lines, each capable of producing batteries for 200,000 vehicles per year. Toyota plans to eventually expand the facility to produce enough power cells to support up to 1.2 million cars annually.

The plant is part of a broader $3.4 billion investment the automaker has earmarked to expand its battery production capabilities in the US. When Toyota first announced the $1.29 billion facility, it said it would create approximately 1,750 jobs. The company notes it picked Greensboro-Randolph Megasite for a handful of reasons. One of the more notable ones is that it’s a location with access to renewable energy. Toyota says it’s “committed” to using 100 percent clean energy to produce batteries at the facility.

The scale of the project is an acknowledgment by the automaker that it needs to diversify its electrification strategy. More so than any other automaker, Toyota invested significantly into fuel cell technology. So far, it has little to show for its efforts. Outside of California, you can’t buy its Mirai fuel-cell sedan. However, the company’s latest plan is to offer 70 different electric models, including 15 battery electric vehicles, by 2025.

DoorDash is piloting an ultra-fast grocery delivery service in Manhattan, with the goal of delivering items to customers in less than 15 minutes. The service will initially be available at a new DashMart outlet in Chelsea, and DoorDash plans to expand ultra-fast deliveries to more locations and partners over the coming months.

The company opened its first DashMarts last year to provide a central location for shoppers to find fresh and frozen groceries, household items and goods from local merchants. The company says DashMart offers more than 2,000 items. The Chelsea location will be open between 7AM and 2AM for orders within a small radius, and excess produce will be donated to a local food bank.

In addition, DoorDash notes that the ultra-fast service will require a different operating model than its typical approach of using gig workers to fulfill orders. A team of full-time employees will handle those deliveries. The company says the workers will be on regular schedules, have wages starting at $15/hour plus tips and receive benefits. 

The company says 90 percent of its couriers (or Dashers) in the US want to stay as contractors and have greater flexibility over their schedule. DoorDash has been at odds with the city and other jurisdictions, including California, on worker classification and other fronts. NYC lawmakers passed a series of bills in September that, among other things, set minimum pay for gig economy and food delivery workers. In addition, DoorDash, along with Uber Eats and Grubhub, recently sued New York City over limits on the delivery fees they're allowed to charge restaurants.

DoorDash will be competing against other companies that offer ultra-fast deliveries in the city, including Gorillas, Buyk, Gopuff and Jokr. However, it's a well-known brand that could potentially carve out a significant slice of the market.

Mozilla is introducing a new security feature it claims will make Firefox the most secure browser available to consumers. Dubbed RLBox and available through today's Firefox 95 update, it’s a new sandboxing tool the company developed in collaboration with the University of California San Diego and the University of Texas.

All modern browsers use sandboxing to protect users against malicious code. The problem is that many of the most advanced exploits chain together two vulnerabilities to bypass those protections. With RLBox, Firefox will compile a process into WebAssembly and then convert it into native code. According to Mozilla, this approach presents two significant advantages. It prevents code from jumping between different parts of a program and limits access to specific areas of your system’s memory.

With today’s release, Mozilla will use RLBox to isolate five components of Firefox, including the browser’s Graphite font rendering engine and Ogg multimedia module. If the system works as expected, the company says “even a zero-day vulnerability in any of [the five components] should pose no threat to Firefox.”

Mozilla is quick to note it won’t be able to use RLBox to protect every component of Firefox. For instance, it’s not suitable for modules that depend on sharing memory with the rest of the program to function. However, the company is hopeful that other developers will use the technology to make their software safer. In the meantime, RLBox is now rolling out to all desktop and mobile versions of Firefox.