Yesterday at A/D/O, a MINI-sponsored creative space in Brooklyn, New York, seven start-ups pitched their companies to an audience of investors and public sector agencies as part of URBAN-X’s Demo Day. URBAN-X is an accelerator for urban tech companies that was launched in 2016 by BMW-owned car brand MINI, one of its many forays into rethinking shelter, fashion, and design. The seven start-ups are members of URBAN-X’s fifth cohort, bringing the total number of companies that URBAN-X has fostered to 39. URBAN-X selects up to 10 start-ups twice a year for its program, which includes a $150,000 investment and five months of support in engineering, design, and business development.

Urban mobility and access to electric vehicles featured prominently in this cohort, not a surprising theme for an incubator with roots in the automotive sector. But other strong trends, like construction site productivity and emissions efficiency, pointed to a focus on the built environment and its relationship with ecological concerns.

If this cohort is any indication of the trends in urban mobility, then the two startups dedicated to transit hinted at a very electric future. Borrow offers short-term, flexible leasing of electric vehicles, making them more available to those who can’t purchase the pricey cars, while Circuit, formerly The Free Ride, offers free electric shuttle transportation in five-passenger vehicles for short distances. The latter is already rolled out in 17 cities around the United States, with more than 20 cars on the streets of San Diego. With funding from advertisers, private developers, and transit agencies, the free shuttle is specially designed for first- and last-mile conditions to supplement other forms of transit, and also offers hail and on-demand services. Brooklyn residents and visitors can experience Circuit for themselves, with the company extending its Williamsburg run this summer.

Buildstream cofounder David Polanski talks about his company, which digitizes heavy construction equipment and processes to make construction sites safer and more efficient. (Courtesy MINI)

Buildstream and Toggle both address construction site safety and other challenges. Buildstream (formerly GearBuddy) utilizes IoT-based software and machine learning to digitize data collection on heavy construction equipment like bulldozers and trucks to monitor and assess construction sites in real time, allowing someone at an office desk and not just the construction manager on site to monitor what is happening. The technology is currently in use in the U.K. on one of Europe’s largest infrastructure projects, according to David Polanski, co-founder and COO of the company. Toggle, on the other hand, combines software and industrial robotics to help automate the construction site and reduce costs in the building process.

Energy efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions are also a central concern of this year’s cohort. Treau develops technology to improve energy efficiency in cooling and heating systems, essentially bringing HVAC and refrigerants into the modern age with lighter, more inexpensive polymers and other material innovations. The overarching promise of Treau is to reduce energy consumption in the U.S. by 10 percent.

Another vital but less glamorous aspect of city life is waste management infrastructure. Israel-based GreenQ‘s technology attaches to existing truck-based garbage collection systems to collect data and offer analytics to help meet demand and cut costs where needed. For example, in its applications across Israel cities, towns, and villages, GreenQ has identified areas that need one less collection day a week, or data on what homes or users need larger trash receptacles. The data from the garbage also delivers demographic data for those companies it partners with. Consumption and waste were also addressed by Thrilling, the first e-commerce platform for second-hand and vintage stores, with a goal of reducing carbon, waste, and water footprints in garment production.

From transit to garbage, the technology-driven platforms of these start-ups hints an increasingly wired, mobile urban future to come.

The post URBAN-X startups pitch free electrical shuttles, fashionable HVAC, and digitized building gear appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

photo: Stevo Rood

***

In May, Jack Casady and Jorma Kaukonen issued a statement regarding the future of their musical partnership. More than five decades after they first performed together as Hot Tuna, they announced that their fall Going Fishing Tour would represent their final electric performances for the foreseeable future.

However, fans took heart in the knowledge that the longtime friends would continue to appear together in the acoustic setting as Hot Tuna, which they have done since 1969. Indeed, as Kaukonen posted on his blog, “It is still our plan to continue in our original duo format. We are not retiring from touring, but the Electric lineup of this long-lived incarnation is going fishing for a while. The road may not go on forever, but the destination is still beyond the horizon.”

Casady, Kaukonen and drummer Justin Guip recently wrapped up three weeks of shows, a number of which featured Steven Bernstein on trumpet. In December, Electric Hot Tuna will reconvene at the Fillmore in San Francisco, a place of deep significance for Casady and Kaukonen, who first took flight there with Jefferson Airplane before they set a new course as Hot Tuna. Then it will be on to the Paramount Theatre in Denver to close out the run.

As he considers the full sweep of his creative existence in Hot Tuna, Kaukonen offers, “Whatever the moment requires from us has always been exciting and it still is. We’ve never tried to script things. Playing this music is magical and we continue to revel in it.”

Casady adds, “As we listen to each other and react to the way the dynamics shift and change, we’re still smiling and having a lot of fun. Every time we go onstage, we give a true rendition to the audience. We don’t play songs that aren’t important to us today and we’re not going to give them what we played last night. We’ve always tried to be honest, and I think we’ve been successful at that.”

What prompted the decision to step away from Electric Hot Tuna shows?

JORMA KAUKONEN: I’m going to be 83 years old this year, and I’m fortunate because I’m very healthy, but an electric show just physically beats the piss out of you. At the end of the evening, I don’t want to see people.

I still enjoy doing it because any time I get to play music is a great thing. But after spending two and a half hours on stage holding a heavy guitar, this old man’s ready to go to bed.

JACK CASADY: We will still be touring a lot with Acoustic Hot Tuna, as we have all along. We’ve toured as Acoustic Hot Tuna from the very beginning, as a duo with an acoustic guitar and a bass. We’ve also toured in the electric format, which is basically adding amplifiers, a drummer and a combination of people throughout Hot Tuna’s electric career.

We decided recently, though, that there’s only so much time and only so much energy. Over the last 10 years, we’ve been working with Acoustic Hot Tuna and really just enjoying that world. Jorma is one of the most gifted and sensitive acoustic fingerpicking guitar players that I’ve ever heard. He is not an electric guitar player playing unplugged, where he does the same licks he does on the electric guitar and plays rhythm on the acoustic. So that’s the world where we’ve really been making some interesting strides lately.

The two of you first played together in a Washington, D.C. basement in 1958. As you think back on that, what comes to mind?

JORMA: I met Jack through his older brother, Chick. Jack’s three years younger than me, and his older brother was a year older than me. For some reason, we’ve always had an unintimidating friendship. For lack of a better way to put it—my wife always tells me not to use metaphors like this, but I can’t think of another one— there wasn’t that sort of a swinging dick thing where there’s competition with your buddies. We’ve never had that.

We don’t have band meetings. We’ve respected each other as men and as artists and have thoroughly enjoyed the dialogue that we have when we play music.

There’s that picture floating around of him, me and Warren Smith playing drums back then in Charlotte Harbour’s basement. It was a long time ago, so I can’t remember how long we played and I don’t remember the setlist. What I do remember was that we got about $5 apiece for that gig and we were able to go to the Hot Shoppe—which is a local drive-in restaurant—and get a hamburger afterwards.

Over the years, aside from the fact that various other outside realities have impinged themselves upon us, not much has changed.

JACK: My older brother was an avid record collector, as was my father. He was an audiophile and belonged to the American Jazz Society, so every month we would get something in a brand-new format, an LP—a long-playing record, as opposed to the 78. That’s how ancient I am. They were collections of various jazz artists.

So I started listening early on to Bix Beiderbecke, Eddie Condon and all the ‘20s jazz groups—a lot of stuff from New Orleans. I loved that small combo interplay with all the instruments. Then at the same time—1956, ‘57, ‘58—all the great rock-and-roll and R&B was going on—Little Richard, Hank Ballad & The Midnighters, Ray Charles, Jackie Wilson and Chuck Willis. You also had rockabilly with Gene Vincent and Buddy Holly, as well as the jazz world with John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, Roland Kirk and all the people that I devoured as much as possible.

I met Jorma around 1957, when I was 13 and a half. He played guitar and sang a little bit and we formed a friendship through music, which would have been highly unlikely if the music wasn’t there, because that’s a pretty large age gap, from 14 to 17. Usually that’s not who you hang out with. But we formed a little band for a year and a half while he finished high school and I finished junior high, playing cover songs of Johnny Cash, Buddy Holly and things like that.

Later on, when Jorma went off to Antioch College, he was sort of reborn as a fingerpicking guitar player after he learned that from Ian Buchanan, a schoolmate. Meanwhile, I started playing in a lot of bands in D.C. One of my good buddies was Danny Gatton, who was a year younger than me and a wunderkind on the guitar. We traded off in each other’s bands.

So as I finished high school, I found myself working three, four nights a week in clubs with the adults, and then I’d be in a homeroom with the kids, so to speak. There was this sort of dual world going on for me.

Jorma, when you invited Jack to join Jefferson Airplane on bass, you had never heard him play that instrument. What does that say about him, not even necessarily as a musician?

JORMA: Well, he’s the kind of guy who’s a perfectionist. So whatever he’s going to do, it’s going to be done well, whether it’s fixing a piece of plumbing, putting some flooring into his house, winterizing his RV, walking his dog or playing music. I knew that when I brought him out to play bass. I’d never heard him play bass, but I’d heard him play guitar and we’d listened to a lot of music together. I just knew he was going to be good. I didn’t know he was going to be that good, but I knew he was going to be good.

Jack, what did that invitation mean to you?

JACK: I was stagnating in Washington at the time. I played night after night for years. When I was 16, I really started working the club circuit, but it was all other people’s music. One night, it’d be rhythm and blues—I’d be playing Ray Charles and Bobby “Blue” Bland in bands that had three saxes, a trumpet and a Wurlitzer piano. Then I’d be doing a country gig or a rockabilly gig. I was doing all these genres of music, but it was never my own stuff, it was always other people’s stuff. Your stuff was never desired by the club owners, so it was really stifling.

I was in college from ‘63-‘65, and Jorma moved out to the West Coast, so we didn’t seen each other a lot for a bit. We used to see each other up in New York City when he was at Antioch. He would do a work furlough where he worked three months in New York and then would go back to Stevo Rood school. I’d take a train up and we’d go to Gerde’s Folk City and see Reverend Gary Davis and Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, and all the blues and folk greats of the early ‘60s.

So when he said he’d just joined a folk-rock band, I was in shock. I saw Jorma as a purist on the acoustic guitar. So we laughed and he said, “Yeah, it’s really great. What are you doing?” I said, “I’m going to school, staying out of the army, playing gigs as best I can.” I think he knew that I played bass, but he had never heard me.

When I got out to California, it changed my life completely. I found myself in a band where, even if we did songs that were recorded by other people, we did them our own way. I was responsible for all the music that I made on the bass guitar and held accountable for it.

As I understand it, Hot Tuna began with the two of you playing acoustic in hotel rooms during Jefferson Airplane tours, until one night when Paul Kantner suggested you perform an acoustic tune during an Airplane set.

JACK: That’s just what musicians do. They do it for themselves. You find musicians to play with, then you sit down and play.

Jefferson Airplane had all those talented people for its seven years of existence. We did extraordinary things with that format and even had a couple of hits with the second album.

At the same time, that wasn’t a format for the kind of music we were just beginning to touch upon, drawing out of the more traditional fingerpicking blues and folk worlds that Jorma was coming from. I was coming from a world where I played a lot more R&B and a little bit of jazz, and we were putting those two things together.

We just loved the music. I loved Reverend Gary Davis, I listened to all that stuff. I started out as a guitar player and then moved to bass.

It was just natural to sit down in a nice, quiet environment and hear the acoustic guitar. There’s not a huge amount of volume if you’re not thrashing on the guitar as a rhythm instrument when you’re playing individual notes.

So we played to that atmosphere, and within that atmosphere, we started to discover a lot of the subtleties of the instrument that you don’t hear when it’s piped through an amplifier.

Jorma, can you talk a bit about Reverend Gary Davis and his impact on your music?

JORMA: He has been influential in my life in a lot of profound ways, although I never studied with him. I discovered him through my mentor, who has long since passed away, Ian Buchanan. So, because he studied with the Rev., I got a chance to meet the Reverend a couple of times.

It didn’t make sense for me to play the way he did, though. He played with the two fingers of his right hand and I use three. But there was something so joyful and creative about his playing. It was incredibly sophisticated harmonically, very advanced. He was not a typical blues gospel player of his time, but what he did made sense to me. The Holy Trinity of those guys—the big dog Piedmont players—are Blind Arthur Blake, Blind Boy Fuller and Reverend Davis.

I was never intimidated by his playing, as some people might’ve been, because I never had the skill to mirror other people’s playing. But I’m always there to learn. So while I’m not really a Reverend Gary Davis-style player, his spirit courses through my playing in a lot of ways.

Was there a specific moment that led to the debut of Electric Hot Tuna?

JORMA: There were various incarnations long before it was called Hot Tuna—before we actually said, “Hey, look, we’ve got a band.” When the Airplane first started, we rehearsed eight hours a day. I loved that and I was learning so much about the electric guitar. Then as the band began to age a bit, and as some of the members started families, there just wasn’t that kind of passion anymore for being on the road that Jack and I had.

So in order to fill that void, we had a number of lineups that were almost Airplane, but not quite. We did stuff with Joey Covington, Marty Balin, my brother [Peter] and my buddy Paul Ziegler. We just liked to play.

Then as the coffee grounds began to settle to the bottom, it started to distill itself into a concept that became Hot Tuna. That being said, Hot Tuna has mutated many times over the years, but the core is always Jack and myself.

JACK: We had been playing electric all along. The trick was how to get some of that fingerpicking style of the songs into the electric format. Jorma worked with heavier gauge strings and Stratocaster guitars for the fingerpicking elements.

A lot of the ragtime-y songs lent themselves to a backbeat, which is what they had been doing in New Orleans. But we were doing them in our style, which was more of the Piedmont fingerpicking style that people hadn’t heard in that format. Usually, you couldn’t hear acoustic guitar fingerpicking with a set of drums.

So we transformed some of this stuff, where you could play it with drums in an electric format in front of a large group of people and they would get it.

In Jorma’s blog, he points out that the two of you have probably played 15,000 shows. What’s your reaction to that?

JACK: Well, the 15,000 shows is just part of the whole deal. I’ve always been working on the tone or the melody of songs, and the place where I would experiment was at a show, where I had somebody else to play with me. That’s where I would get another chance to try to open up the door and enter that special world.

I’ve taught for 20-some years at Jorma’s Fur Peace Guitar Camp, and people will ask, “You guys have played so much together, do you even have to rehearse?” Well, it’s the complete opposite. To set up for this tour, we’ve done more rehearsing, more preparation than we ever have before.

It’s kind of like a fighter who spars with a partner in the afternoon. You have to keep your muscles all functioning and keep up to speed. That way, we remain aggressive in our music and approach, so it’s never lackadaisical.

That’s because when we’re onstage, that is the night. You can’t get caught up in what’s happened before. Can you open the door in that special space you’ve got and enter into that room without being distracted by life? If so, then you can get down to work with each other and see what you can discover.

Since this is the final electric tour, what impact has that had on creating setlists?

JORMA: To me, each set is kind of like a song, so I like to have a flow of dynamics. There’s a number of ways to look at the dynamics. One of them is obviously the fingerpicking stuff, which I do on the Chet Atkins SST, as opposed to the balls to the wall rock-and-roll stuff, which is on the Gibson ES-345. I don’t want to berate people’s ears too much without having that flow with the sonic dynamic.

Another thing is that so many of my songs are in Drop D—the king of all alternative tunings—and they have a definite character to them. So I always have a little section in the flow of a set that has at least two Drop D songs together—not just because I don’t have to change tunings, which I can do but I hate to do onstage, but because sonically, it gives people something interesting to listen to rather than the same sort of emotional intensity.

Normally, because we know a lot of songs, I’ll rotate all kinds of songs through the setlist, but because this is our series of final electric gigs, I wanted to be sure that we could really nail every one of these songs every night. I also kept in mind that we’d have Steve on a bunch of the dates. That is not to say we’re going to duplicate every note and every arrangement because that’s not how we play. But I wanted the underpinning to be rock solid, so if we had the opportunity to wander artistically afield, we could still be supported.

Most of the songs we have played for many years, but my quasi-humorous take on it is that we still do these songs because I’m still trying to get them right. The excitement for us, and hopefully for some of the audience members, is that as we’ve learned more about music, we have different takes. It remains a work in progress.

On this tour, you have been performing “Invitation” and “I Don’t Want to Go” for the first time since the mid-‘70s. How did that come about?

JACK: We’d been playing around with “Invitation” for a couple years to get it back up and running. I was working on “Invitation” at home and it’s on the same album as “I Don’t Want to Go.” My stepdaughter, Redbird Stanley, once told me that was her favorite song. It had something to do with when she was in high school and there was something she didn’t want to do. She said she played that song endlessly, much to her mother’s chagrin. So I called Jorma a few weeks before the tour started and I said, “Can you listen and see if we can put it together?” So he did and we did.

We played “Invitation” back in the day, but we hardly ever played “I Don’t Want to Go.” I haven’t used effects in a long time, but I’ve been playing around with them for one of the opening lines on bass.

So we were able to add two songs that we hadn’t done in years.

The other Electric Hot Tuna mainstay for over a decade has been Justin Guip on drums. Can you talk about his contributions?

JORMA: We’ve played with Justin longer than any drummer in our lives. I met Justin in 2009 when I was recording River of Time at Levon’s Studio. Larry Campbell was producing the session. We became friends and companions on a lot of different levels—our wives and kids like each other.

We don’t keep somebody on retainer— we work when we work. So Justin has made himself available and kept himself current with what we’re doing for well over a decade.

We love playing with him. His percussion sensibilities are awesome, and we love hanging out with him, because when you’re out on the road traveling in a bus, the things that irritate you about your friends become apparent after about three days. He doesn’t do anything that irritates me, and I hope I don’t irritate him.

Steven Bernstein takes the music in a lot of unexpected directions. How did he come to join you on certain dates?

JORMA: I like playing with people who make things interesting. I met Steve up at Levon’s Rambles a number of years ago. We later did a tour with Little Feat where they basically had the Ramble horn section with them. Steve was kind of ramrodding that outfit, writing the charts. We were on the road for a number of weeks, and he’s a great guy to hang out with. So we just got to talking and I figured it would be really fun to turn a guy loose on our songs who has his kind of musical and intellectual prowess, to see what happens.

I told him: “You need to know the songs so you’re aware of where they go but I don’t want to rehearse stuff. I don’t want to write parts out. I just want you to get in there and blow and see what happens.” He is the guy for that, which is what makes it so much fun.

At the risk of sounding fatuous and self-serving, when he plays on “Hesitation Blues” with us, I could be in some speakeasy who knows how many years ago. He just brings that to the table. When we turn him loose on a song like “Invitation” or one of these jam tunes like “Bow-Legged Woman” and he plays that slide trumpet through a wah-wah pedal, who would’ve thought of such a thing? He can be as traditional as a Dixieland master or as out as Pharaoh Sanders.

You’re returning to San Francisco to play at the Fillmore. What does that venue represent to you?

 JORMA: The Fillmore has been hugely important to musicians of my generation and down the line. But a year before the whole San Francisco music thing started to happen for guys like me, I went with my ex-wife to the Fillmore, which was in a Black neighborhood over in the Western Addition. I saw this friend of mine from Oakland named Johnny Talbot with his band Johnny Talbot & De Thangs playing a show with Bobby “Blue” Bland and B.B. King. Those guys were heroes to me, and hearing them in person was unbelievable. Then a scant year or two later, when the Fillmore became a dance hall, it was very exciting for me to be able to play there.

In the beginning, when we first started playing the Fillmore, the stage was maybe two-and-a-half-feet tall. The sound system was barely adequate. Now, of course, it’s a high-tech performing venue that we all love. So there’s a lot of tradition there. For me, that goes way beyond the posters— although I love the posters—and I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels that way.

JACK: Sonically, the Fillmore is just like a big warm blanket around you. The sound in that hall is a part of me because we started our career in that hall with Jefferson Airplane. So I’ve played that hall since 1966 and we look forward to coming back there. I’ll be driving up from Los Angeles, where I live now, and we’re going to play two days there, then jump out to Colorado, do a show there, and that will pretty much wrap up the year and the Electric Hot Tuna.

The post Scorching Tuna: The Final Electrical Waltz appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Leading Men’s Grooming Brand Introduces its First-Ever Foil Shaver for Grooming On the Go

SAN DIEGO, July 25, 2023–(BUSINESS WIRE)–MANSCAPED®, the global men’s grooming company and leading lifestyle consumer brand, today announces the launch of its latest innovation, The Handyman, a compact electric face shaver. Equipped with a sleek magnetic blade cover and thoughtfully designed to be portable, quick-charging, and waterproof*, this revolutionary, travel-friendly device is your new go-to gadget for trimming, styling, and touch-ups.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230725041111/en/

Introducing the latest innovation from MANSCAPED®, The Handyman, a revolutionary compact face shaver for grooming on the go. (Photo: Business Wire)

“Our mission is to deliver on man’s every grooming need, so we’re very excited to offer a new tool that is as high performing as it is convenient,” said Paul Tran, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of MANSCAPED. “Men are leading busier lifestyles than ever, but their grooming routines should never be compromised. With that in mind, we designed this premium, perfectly compact, and hygienic device so men can achieve that coveted clean-shaven, confident look and feel, even on the go.”

Living up to its namesake, the handheld and uber-convenient Handyman is just about as handy as you can get. Its dual-action blade head is engineered with SkinSafe technology** to help reduce the risk of nicks and cuts, so you can be stress-free during even the speediest of shaving sessions. This hybrid long-hair leveler device can be used for a quick clean-shave or as a luxury styling tool to maintain your beard line. Go ahead and shave as close as you want on those more sensitive areas like the neck, cheeks, and jawline so you can rock those sexy lines and edges. With 60 minutes of runtime and a five-minute quick charge option via USB-C cable, battery life will never be an issue.

Story continues

Priced at $79.99, The Handyman is now available for purchase on manscaped.com and Amazon in the United States, Canada, Europe, the United Kingdom, and Australia, with further distribution and retail rollout to come. So, what are you waiting for? Get a Handy today and you’ll feel like you’re on top of the world.

* IPX7 rated to protect against immersion in up to one meter of fresh water or up to 30 minutes. Learn more at https://www.manscaped.com/pages/waterproof.
** SkinSafe technology does not guarantee cut protection.

About MANSCAPED®

Founded by Paul Tran in 2016, San Diego, California-based MANSCAPED® is the global men’s lifestyle consumer brand and male grooming category creator trusted by over eight million men worldwide. The product range includes a diversified line of premium tools, formulations, and accessories designed to introduce and elevate a whole new self-care routine for men. The MANSCAPED collection is available globally in 39 countries via direct-to-consumer and on Amazon in more than 100 countries worldwide. Retail placement includes Target®, Best Buy, Macy’s, Walgreens, Men’s Wearhouse, Jos. A. Bank, and Military Exchanges in the U.S., Moores in Canada, Hairhouse and Woolworths in Australia, and Tesco and Harvey Norman in Ireland. For more information, visit manscaped.com or follow on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Tumblr, and YouTube.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230725041111/en/

Contacts

Allison Frazier
Senior Director, Communications at MANSCAPED®
allison@manscaped.com

The post MANSCAPED® Introduces The Handyman™ Compact Electrical Face Shaver appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

A new report has highlighted several factors to consider when planning charging infrastructure – often seen as the most challenging aspect of the EV transition. The report included a 10-step plan to implement infrastructure and charge vehicles reliably and cost-effectively.

According to the report of North American Freight Efficiency CouncilFleets considering EV deployment “need a basic understanding of electricity and how utilities work to estimate charging costs, easily install chargers and see the fuel savings that result from using electricity instead of diesel for the vehicle driving trucks.”

The Council’s report builds on the 2019 report and included interviews with executives from fleets, truck manufacturers, utilities, charger manufacturers, research groups and industry organizations. The report includes EV charging strategies, a breakdown of charger types and charging service models.

Charging as a service is the payment of a fee to a provider who invests in the charging equipment needed to power customer fleets. With Trucking as a Service or Fleet as a Service, drivers can reserve fully charged electric trucks to pick them up at a scheduled time. The report shows that most fleets are buying charging stations, which can cost anywhere from less than $1,000 to as much as $90,000 per charger, depending on charging speed.

According to the report, aspects of the 10-step plan to implement charging infrastructure include appointing an internal project manager, working with key stakeholders, selecting EVs and chargers, and designing and building the infrastructure. Financial support is available for the transition to electric trucks. Resources facilitating access include Clean Cities Coalitions and electric utilities. A meeting with the latter is also important to ensure that there is enough power available for the infrastructure.

“Remember that your energy supplier has a (regulated) monopoly,” the report says. “No one else can supply your power. It’s important to talk to your energy supplier as soon as you have the slightest thought of converting your fleet to electric trucks. There are more than 3,000 individual utilities in the United States alone, and no two are exactly the same.”

The report also shows that some chargers do not work well with electric trucks and fleets need to work with truck manufacturers to select the appropriate charger. Fleets can use charge management software to ensure vehicles are charged when needed and at the lowest cost. Charging a vehicle during the day and at higher speeds can be more expensive as the power demand is higher. However, charging at slower speeds or lower power is more cost-effective.

A recent study found that 23% of public electric vehicle chargers in the San Francisco Bay Area were unusable. Similar problems have arisen with personal chargers. According to the report, fleets should have a service contract that monitors and repairs equipment with guaranteed minimal downtime.

With a DC fast charger, the Volvo VNR Electric 4×2 Class 8 truck can be charged from 20% to 80% in 50 minutes. Class 8 trucks are the largest truck class and the Volvo truck has a range of 175 miles. According to the report, it was estimated that charging the truck from 20% to full charge took more than four hours, as the charging rate slows down as the battery gets closer to a full charge.

According to the report, DC chargers integrated with battery storage can draw power from the grid when it is more cost-effective. A disadvantage of these systems is that they cannot deliver full power when the batteries are discharged. Wireless charging systems also exist, but they typically charge at slower speeds.

Lowell-based trucking company JB Hunt Transport Services and Bentonville-based retailer Walmart have piloted medium- and heavy-duty electric trucks. Both companies are exploring a mix of alternative fuel trucks, including hydrogen-powered trucks, for their fleets to meet their emission reduction or elimination targets.

Lisa Perry, senior manager of energy services at Walmart, recently said the company is testing Freightliner eCascadia and Nikola Class 8 trucks. She cited battery weight as one of the challenges in deploying Class 8 electric trucks for road transportation.

“They have to be weighed at weigh stations,” Perry said. “Someone told me that it was much easier to make potato chips electrically than soft drinks.”

The post Report: Economics for transferring to electrical vans continues to enhance appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

The vehicle search engine iSeeCars.com recently published a study on the availability of electric vehicle charging stations in US cities and states. Analysis of data through the end of 2022 looks at publicly available DC fast chargers that can deliver a charge directly to the car battery, as well as the Tesla network of chargers.

EV owners often charge at home. However, according to iSeeCars, many drivers, including those living in apartments and condominiums, use the approximately 146,000 public electric vehicle charging stations in the United States.

In the following slides we show the US metro areas with the fewest inhabitants per public charging station. Next you will find the metros with the most EV charging stations per person. The city that iSeeCars calls the best equipped for EV drivers is at the bottom of our list.

5. Cleveland-Akron, Ohio

Pedro Gutierrez / Shutterstock.com

Number of inhabitants in this metropolitan area per charging station for electric vehicles: 5,217

Total number of electric vehicle charging stations in this metropolitan area: 635

According to ISeeCars, Cleveland’s low number of chargers per capita ranks it among the cities with the “worst EV charging support for EV owners wanting to plug into public chargers.” But in Cleveland’s defense, the survey doesn’t say how many EVs in the city are vying for use of these chargers.

Cars are bread-and-butter in Ohio. At the peak of industry in the state in 1990, Ohio had 144,000 automotive jobs, according to Cleveland.com. Today, Ohio’s automotive workforce — 91,600 assembly and parts workers — remains the second-largest in the United States

Ford, GM, Honda and LG Chem are now spending billions to reconfigure manufacturing, including at Ohio plants in Avon Lake, Toledo, Lordstown and elsewhere in the rush to rebuild factories and compete in the electric vehicle world state.

4. Saint Anthony

Sean Pavone/Shutterstock.com

Number of inhabitants in this metropolitan area per charging station for electric vehicles: 5,386

Total number of electric vehicle charging stations in this metropolitan area: 464

CPS Energy in San Antonio is offering rebates to residential customers if they agree to change their EV charging habits at home. The rebates are given as utility bill credits for customers who agree to charge off-peak or accept slower charging speeds during periods of high demand.

3. Indianapolis

f11photo / Shutterstock.com

Number of inhabitants in this metropolitan area per charging station for electric vehicles: 5,422

Total number of electric vehicle charging stations in this metropolitan area: 491

Only 0.1% of registered vehicles in Indiana are electric, according to the Indiana Department of Transportation’s Summer 2022 Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Deployment Plan.

Its May 2022 data shows that 6,990 light electric vehicles were registered in the state, including hybrids, battery electric and plug-in vehicles.

2.Birmingham, Alabama

Sean Pavone/Shutterstock.com

Number of inhabitants in this metropolitan area per charging station for electric vehicles: 5,691

Total number of electric vehicle charging stations in this metropolitan area: 296

Alabama, a major auto manufacturing center, may be poised to become an electric vehicle manufacturing hub, supporters say.

According to EV publication Elektrek, the state has several major automakers transitioning to electric, including Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai, Toyota and Honda.

1. St Louis

CrackerClips Stock Media / Shutterstock.com

Number of inhabitants in this metropolitan area per charging station for electric vehicles: 5,787

Total number of electric vehicle charging stations in this metropolitan area: 473

Some Republican leaders in Missouri are pushing to repeal local ordinances that require EV charging stations to be added in parking lots if they make certain changes, such as making changes to parking lots. B. remodel or expand a lot. According to the Missouri Independent, St. Louis city and county governments are currently requiring the charger to be added.

Opponents claim building codes should not be used to advance what they see as a political agenda.

The best places for electric vehicles

Angel DiBilio / Shutterstock.com

ISeeCars also cites the “most EV-friendly metropolitan areas,” ranking cities by the total number of public EV charging stations, including charging stations on Tesla’s mostly private network.

According to Axios, Tesla has about 17,500 Supercharger plugs and thousands of other slower chargers nationwide. A Tesla pilot program opened up the company’s chargers to some non-Tesla drivers, but, according to Axios, “it turns out that only eight of Tesla’s 1,400 supercharger stations are open to non-Tesla drivers so far.”

Following are iSeeCars’ five best subways for electric vehicles, starting with #5.

5. Fresno-Visalia, California

stellamc/Shutterstock.com

Number of inhabitants in this metropolitan area per charging station for electric vehicles: 1,024

Total number of electric vehicle charging stations in this metropolitan area: 1,692

Fresno’s Clean Vehicle Rebate Project is offering a rebate for drivers transitioning from a gas-powered car to an electric car.

Discounts range from $1,000 to $4,500 for purchasing or leasing an electric vehicle.

EV car buyers whose income qualifies may be eligible for an additional $2,500.

4. Denver

f11photo / Shutterstock.com

Number of inhabitants in this metropolitan area per charging station for electric vehicles: 992

Total number of electric vehicle charging stations in this metropolitan area: 4,128

Denver is lagging behind on its greenhouse gas emission reduction goals, according to The Denver Gazette.

The city predicts that plug-in electric vehicles could account for 10% of all light commercial vehicles by 2030. But that’s only a third of Denver’s original goal of 30%.

3.Los Angeles

Threesome shoot / Shutterstock.com

Number of inhabitants in this metropolitan area per charging station for electric vehicles: 852

Total number of electric vehicle charging stations in this metropolitan area: 18,287

Building a nationwide charging network for electric vehicles is a complex undertaking. The Los Angeles Times, reporting on a Stanford University study, says plans to expand EV charging in the western US are increasing the demands on the region’s electric grid.

One solution: Encourage more drivers to charge their cars during the day.

2.San Diego

bondandbon/Shutterstock.com

Number of inhabitants in this metropolitan area per charging station for electric vehicles: 824

Total number of electric vehicle charging stations in this metropolitan area: 3,450

California’s large number of public EV charging stations – 44,287 – puts the state at the top of the iSeeCars chart (Vermont is the #1 state).

But California also has a large number of electric vehicles on its roads: 425,300 according to a study by Electrek.

And so, in San Diego, you might be waiting to use a charger more often than, say, in a city in Alabama, where there are fewer chargers but also fewer EVs competing for use.

1. San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, California

IM_photo / Shutterstock.com

Number of inhabitants in this metropolitan area per charging station for electric vehicles: 465

Total number of electric vehicle charging stations in this metropolitan area: 14,083

South San Francisco recently became the site of the first “electrified” Taco Bell franchise, according to the San Francisco Examiner. You can charge your electric vehicle there while you have dinner.

This particular Taco Bell is just the first of 298 that franchisee Diversified Restaurant Group is planning solar-powered EV charging stations for.

The post The 5 Greatest and 5 Worst Locations for Electrical Automobiles appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

WHEN FAMILIES COME TOGETHER Around the fire this holiday season, the odds are better than ever that actual kindling isn’t involved. Due to health and air quality concerns, regulations against wood-burning fireplaces and stoves have become increasingly strict — San Francisco, for example, bans them in new construction — and homeowners drawn to flames have turned to alternatives like gas and electricity. That doesn’t mean, however, that such adopters of new technologies are ready to give up the ghost of Christmas bygone. Fireplaces, even man-made ones, remain the core of a home’s decor.

“For generations, fire has been the center of the home,” says Julie Buckner, an interior designer in Petaluma, California, who often installs electric fireplaces instead of gas or wood. The flame is a projection, so it does not emit pollution and is safe for children and pets. “It’s a light show,” she said, “but once we commit to not burning wood, it becomes easier to accept that it doesn’t look entirely natural.”

The post Fuel and Electrical Fireplaces Are the Future. We Requested Design Professionals How one can Make Them Appear Actual. appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

ReportLinker

Major players in the automotive electric HVAC compressor market are Denso Corporation, Toyota Industries Corporation, Valeo SA, MAHLE GmbH, Robert Bosch GmbH, Highly Marelli Holdings Co. Ltd. , Brose vehicle parts SE & Co.

New York, Dec 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report “Automotive Electric HVAC Compressor Global Market Report 2022: Ukraine-Russia War Impact” – https://www.reportlinker.com/p06370316/?utm_source= GNW
KG, Borg Warner Inc., Hanon Systems, Aptiv PLC, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd., WABCO Vehicle Control Systems, Estra Automotive Systems Co. Ltd, Hella KGaA Hueck & Co., Merck KGaA, Subros Ltd, Michigan Automotive Compressor, Shanghai Highly Group Co Ltd, and Continental AG.

The global automotive electric HVAC compressor market is expected to grow from $8.59 billion in 2021 to $10.82 billion in 2022 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 26%. The Russia-Ukraine was disrupted the chances of global economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, at least in the short term. The war between these two countries has led to economic sanctions on multiple countries, surge in commodity prices, and supply chain disruptions, effecting many markets across the globe. The automotive electric HVAC compressor market is expected to reach $24.61 billion in 2026 at a CAGR of 22.8%.

The automotive electric HVAC compressor market consists of sales of automotive electric HVAC compressors by entities (organizations, sole traders, and partnerships) that are used to avoid vehicle breakdowns and keep the cabin and battery pack cool to protect the battery from overheating.HVAC refers to automotive electric heating, ventilation, and air conditioning.

These act as the heart of the cooling function in automotive vehicles.

The main product types of automotive electric HVAC compressors are scroll, screw, swash and wobble.The scroll type of automotive electric HVAC compressor is used in vehicles due to its features such as fewer moving parts and lower torque variations.

Scroll electric HVAC compressors refer to a specifically made compressor that operates in a circular movement rather than an up-and-down piston action.The various types of vehicles are passenger vehicles, light commercial vehicles (LCV), heavy commercial vehicles (HCV), and buses and coaches.

The various cooling capacities include less than 20 CC, 20-40 CC, 40-60 CC, and more than 60 CC and involve several drivetrains such as plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV), battery electric vehicles (BEV), and hybrid electric vehicles (HEV).

Asia Pacific was the largest region in the automotive electric HVAC compressor in 2021. Europe was the second largest region in the automotive electric HVAC compressor.

The regions covered in the automotive electric HVAC compressor market report are Asia-Pacific, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, North America, South America, Middle East and Africa.

The increasing adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) is expected to contribute to the growth of the automotive electric HVAC compressor market going forward.Electric vehicles refer to vehicles that use one or more electric motors as a means of propulsion that run on electricity.

In electric vehicles, an electric HVAC compressor is required to cool not only the cabin but also other onboard electronics that tend to get hot.Therefore, the role of these compressors is expanding for electric vehicles and their production is increasing.

For instance, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), a France-based autonomous intergovernmental organization, 10 million electric cars were on the road globally in 2020, a 43% increase from 2019. Therefore, the increasing adoption of EVs is driving the Growth of the automotive electric HVAC compressor market.

Product innovations have emerged as the key trend gaining popularity in the automotive electric HVAC compressor market. Major companies in the market are focused on launching innovative products to meet consumer demand.

For instance, in December 2019, Denso, a Japan-based automotive components manufacturer launched the full electrical rooftop HVAC system with two integrated electrical compressors.The product is designed for electric buses of 9 meters and above and on average it is 10-20% more efficient than similar products on the market.

This integrated, efficient, lightweight air-conditioning delivers high thermal comfort and air quality and is also a cost-efficient product.

In June 2021, Hisense Group, a China-based provider of home electronics acquired Sanden Corporation for $195.6 million. The acquisition will help Hisense Group to expand into the automotive compressor markets. Sanden corporation is a Japan-based company that manufactures automotive electrical equipment.

The countries covered in the automotive electric HVAC compressor market report are Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Russia, South Korea, UK, USA.

The automotive electric HVAC compressor market research report is one of a series of new reports that provides automotive electric HVAC compressor market statistics, including automotive electric HVAC compressor industry global market size, regional shares, competitors with an automotive electric HVAC compressor market share, detailed automotive electric HVAC compressor market segments, market trends and opportunities, and any further data you may need to thrive in the automotive electric HVAC compressor industry. This automotive electric HVAC compressor market research report delivers a complete perspective of everything you need, with an in-depth analysis of the current and future scenario of the industry.
Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p06370316/?utm_source=GNW

About Reportlinker
ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need – instantly, in one place.

__________________________

Story continues

CONTACT: Clare: clare@reportlinker.com US: (339)-368-6001 Intl: +1 339-368-6001

The post Automotive Electrical HVAC Compressor International Market Report 2022: Ukraine-Russia Conflict Influence appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Listen to the article
4 mins

This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback.

Dive Brief:

• In Oregon, a switch to sales of only zero-emissions residential heating and cooling appliances by 2030 could nearly halve climate pollution by 2035 while increasing electricity demand from homes and buildings 13% by the middle of the century, according to a recent report from Synapse Energy Economics.
• The report, prepared for the Sierra Club, found that making this transition could lead to $1.1 billion in gas and electric system savings for the residential and commercial sector through 2050, with cost savings beginning in 2030.
• The city of Eugene is currently developing a local policy to wean developers off natural gas in new construction, making it the first in Oregon to do so. The state is aiming to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80% from 1990 levels by 2050.

Dive Insight:

Meeting Oregon’s climate goals will mean reducing the carbon footprint of residential and commercial buildings, which currently produce 35% of the state’s carbon dioxide emissions, according to the report. One approach is to electrify building appliances and systems and switch to efficient electric heat pumps.

There are two types of heat pumps, according to Fred Heutte, senior policy associate with the NW Energy Coalition: those that can provide air heating and air conditioning and those that provide hot water.

“We’re poised to do a pretty big upward market transformation [with] both kinds of heat pumps in the next few years,” Heutte said, adding that the recent Synapse report builds on work that has been happening in the state for a long time. The transition to heat pumps represents a shift away from natural gas heating as well as older styles of electric resistance heating, he said, which tend to not be as efficient.

The report took a closer look at two electrification pathways: one that assumes a 100% market share for efficient electrical systems by 2025 and another that reaches that goal by 2030. The more-aggressive 2025 deadline would reduce carbon emissions by 56% by 2035, according to the report, while increasing electricity consumption 12% by 2030, and 13% by the middle of the century.

The 2030 pathway, meanwhile, would reduce emissions by 47% by 2035 while increasing electricity demand by 10% by 2030 and 13% by 2050. These efforts will likely lower energy system costs in both scenarios, the study found: The 2030 pathway is estimated to lead to $1.1 billion in savings through 2050, while the 2025 pathway saves around $1.7 billion in the same timeframe.

Heat pump technology can also help the power system by shifting load around, according to Heutte, because they can be scheduled to operate outside of peak electricity demand hours, essentially functioning like a kind of battery storage.

“In effect, what you’re doing is shifting the renewable energy from when it’s generated to when it’s needed,” he explained, by, for instance, pre-heating water or pre-cooling a house. “All those things are basically smart ways to manage the customer side of energy use.”

Moreover, the report shows that because of the high efficiency of heat pump technology, electricity consumption in residential buildings in Oregon would actually decrease even as the amount of homes using electricity for heating and water heating doubles, Dylan Plummer, senior campaign representative with Sierra Club , said in an email.

The main challenge standing in the way of widespread adoption of heat pump technology is ensuring that the financial burden of the transition does not fall on historically marginalized households, according to Plummer.

“That is why organizations across the State are working to put in place policies at all levels of government to fund targeted retrofit programs to ensure that the clean energy transition has values ​​of economic and racial equity at its core,” he said.

The post Switching to environment friendly, electrical HVAC home equipment may save Oregon $1.1B by way of 2050, research finds appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Listen to the article
4 mins

This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback.

Dive Brief:

• In Oregon, a switch to sales of only zero-emissions residential heating and cooling appliances by 2030 could nearly halve climate pollution by 2035 while increasing electricity demand from homes and buildings 13% by the middle of the century, according to a recent report from Synapse Energy Economics.
• The report, prepared for the Sierra Club, found that making this transition could lead to $1.1 billion in gas and electric system savings for the residential and commercial sector through 2050, with cost savings beginning in 2030.
• The city of Eugene is currently developing a local policy to wean developers off natural gas in new construction, making it the first in Oregon to do so. The state is aiming to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80% from 1990 levels by 2050.

Dive Insight:

Meeting Oregon’s climate goals will mean reducing the carbon footprint of residential and commercial buildings, which currently produce 35% of the state’s carbon dioxide emissions, according to the report. One approach is to electrify building appliances and systems and switch to efficient electric heat pumps.

There are two types of heat pumps, according to Fred Heutte, senior policy associate with the NW Energy Coalition: those that can provide air heating and air conditioning and those that provide hot water.

“We’re poised to do a pretty big upward market transformation [with] both kinds of heat pumps in the next few years,” Heutte said, adding that the recent Synapse report builds on work that has been happening in the state for a long time. The transition to heat pumps represents a shift away from natural gas heating as well as older styles of electric resistance heating, he said, which tend to not be as efficient.

The report took a closer look at two electrification pathways: one that assumes a 100% market share for efficient electrical systems by 2025 and another that reaches that goal by 2030. The more-aggressive 2025 deadline would reduce carbon emissions by 56% by 2035, according to the report, while increasing electricity consumption 12% by 2030, and 13% by the middle of the century.

The 2030 pathway, meanwhile, would reduce emissions by 47% by 2035 while increasing electricity demand by 10% by 2030 and 13% by 2050. These efforts will likely lower energy system costs in both scenarios, the study found: The 2030 pathway is estimated to lead to $1.1 billion in savings through 2050, while the 2025 pathway saves around $1.7 billion in the same timeframe.

Heat pump technology can also help the power system by shifting load around, according to Heutte, because they can be scheduled to operate outside of peak electricity demand hours, essentially functioning like a kind of battery storage.

“In effect, what you’re doing is shifting the renewable energy from when it’s generated to when it’s needed,” he explained, by, for instance, pre-heating water or pre-cooling a house. “All those things are basically smart ways to manage the customer side of energy use.”

Moreover, the report shows that because of the high efficiency of heat pump technology, electricity consumption in residential buildings in Oregon would actually decrease even as the amount of homes using electricity for heating and water heating doubles, Dylan Plummer, senior campaign representative with Sierra Club , said in an email.

The main challenge standing in the way of widespread adoption of heat pump technology is ensuring that the financial burden of the transition does not fall on historically marginalized households, according to Plummer.

“That is why organizations across the State are working to put in place policies at all levels of government to fund targeted retrofit programs to ensure that the clean energy transition has values ​​of economic and racial equity at its core,” he said.

The post Switching to environment friendly, electrical HVAC home equipment may save Oregon $1.1B by means of 2050, examine finds appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

By Belis Sly and Trish Donnelly

Pan-Med Enterprises, located in the prestigious Pacific Professional Building in San Francisco, has been serving the health needs of the Bay Area since 1984. Although the building was considered state-of-the-art when it first opened, it had not been updated since then.

Pan-Med’s Tony Najera checks out the newly installed HVAC controls.

Tony Najera, a veteran Pan-Med engineer and recently appointed Building Manager, recognized there was an opportunity to bring his building into the 21st century with modern, energy-efficient equipment updates. As soon as he took charge of the building’s energy management, Najera rolled out a complete overhaul project focused on achieving the company’s long-term energy goals while increasing occupant and patient comfort.

“When my board asked me about my 5-year energy savings plan, I told them we can get it done in 2 years with the help of PG&E,” said Najera.

(Hear more in this video about how Pan-Med Enterprises worked with PG&E to help save both energy and money.)

Due to the building’s expansive footprint, financing a complete energy overhaul out-of-pocket would not be feasible. Working closely with his PG&E account manager and energy solutions company, Gridium, Najera quickly put together a plan that outlined $2.6M worth of equipment upgrades to maximize energy and money savings. This planning enabled Pan-Med Enterprises to retrofit the whole building with PG&E’s 0% interest On-Bill Financing Program, and pay for the total project cost with monthly energy savings and no out-of-pocket costs.

Once the project plan was complete and the On-Bill Financing loan was approved, PG&E trade pro partner Gridium worked with design and construction partner NuWave Energy Solutions to install LED lighting, variable frequency drives, HVAC controls, and a smart building automation system to monitor and manage it all. All the work was done while the building was occupied, with no effect on Pan-Med’s operations.

Since completion, Pan-Med is saving 30% of electricity usage and 60% of gas usage, bringing in $270,000/994,000 kWh in yearly energy savings – meaning they can turn their focus back to caring for the members of their community.

Email Currents at Currents@pge.com.

The post Pacific Gasoline and Electrical : San Francisco Medical Constructing Strikes into twenty first Century with Power Effectivity Upgrades appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.