Archives for June 2021

Auto show back in Detroit next year with focus on outdoors

DETROIT (AP) — The head of Detroit’s big international auto show says it will return to the Motor City next year, but with smaller indoor displays, and more emphasis on experiencing vehicles and technology outside.

The North American International Auto Show was canceled last year due the coronavirus pandemic and will be replaced this year by an event at a racetrack north of Detroit.

But Rod Alberts, executive director of the Detroit Auto Dealers Association, which runs the show, says that next year there will be an event in the city’s downtown.

“That’s the place it belongs,” Alberts told the Automotive Press Association of Detroit on Thursday.

But he said the show will have to change from the past, when automakers built elaborate and costly multi-story displays and unveiled their most important new models. Now car companies are finding they can get good exposure and spend less by doing virtual unveilings outside of auto shows, where vehicles can get overshadowed by other debuts. Some automakers had pulled out of Detroit and other shows.

Alberts said Detroit and other shows have to change to appeal more to millennials, which are two generations after baby boomers and like to experience things rather than just view them.

He envisions a mainly a walkable outdoor event encompassing the entire downtown, with smaller displays and maybe some electric-vehicle driving indoors. It would be during good-weather months instead of the traditional frigid January in Detroit.

“You can’t just keep doing the same things over and over again,” Alberts said.

The show had been scheduled at the downtown convention center for September of this year, but in January organizers decided to replace it with an outdoor event called “Motor Bella” at the M1 Concourse track in Pontiac, Michigan.

Alberts said Motor Bella could be incorporated into a future downtown auto show, or could be a separate event in the future. It will have track driving, an off-road driving area, and displays by automakers and technology companies. He said there will be new vehicle debuts at the event from Sept. 21-26, but he wasn’t sure how many.

Last month, the Chicago Auto Show announced that it would be back downtown in July. The New York International Auto Show is scheduled to make a comeback from Aug. 20-29 at the Javits Convention Center, while the Los Angeles Auto Show is to return from Nov. 19-28 at the city’s convention center.

EPA chief reinstates science advisory board he dismantled

WASHINGTON (AP) — The head of the Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday he has fully reinstated one of two key advisory boards he dismantled earlier this year in a push for “scientific integrity” at the agency.

The new seven-member Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee features four scientists who have served on the panel previously — including two who were on the board when it was dismantled in March. The five women and two men on the panel include three people of color, making it the most diverse panel since the committee was established more than 40 years ago.

“From the very beginning of my tenure, I have committed to ensuring that science is restored as the backbone of everything EPA does to protect people and the environment from pollution,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a statement. The new advisory panel will provide “credible, independent expertise to EPA’s reviews of air quality standards that is grounded in scientific evidence,” he said.

Regan has said that advisers appointed under the Trump administration were overly friendly to business, adding that his March 31 “reset” of the clean-air panel and the Science Advisory Board would return EPA to its practice of relying on advice from a balanced group of experts.

Regan’s overhaul removed more than 45 members of the two advisory boards, including some whose terms do not expire this year. The panels provide scientific expertise and recommendations for air quality standards and other policies intended to protect public health and the environment.

The new chair of the clean-air committee is Lianne Sheppard, a professor in environmental and occupational health sciences and biostatistics at the University of Washington. Sheppard, who has expertise in epidemiology, biostatistics and exposure assessment, served on the committee from 2015 to 2018.

Other members include James Boylan, an air protection official with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. Boylan served on the panel under President Donald Trump and was on the committee when it was dismantled, along with Dr. Mark Frampton, a physician and professor emeritus in medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center.

Judith Chow, a professor in atmospheric sciences at the Nevada=based Desert Research Institute, served on the panel from 2015 to 2018.

Also serving on the committee are Michelle Bell, environmental health professor at Yale University; Christine Fuller, associate professor of environmental health at Georgia State University; and Alexandra Ponette-González, associate professor of geography and the environment at the University of North Texas.

Members of the much larger Science Advisory Board have not been selected. Both panels pay stipends to members for their service.

Republican Reps. James Comer of Kentucky and Ralph Norman of South Carolina have criticized Regan for what they say was an unwarranted “purge” based more on politics than science. Comer is the senior Republican on the House Oversight Committee, while Norman is the top Republican on the panel’s environment subcommittee.

Democrats have said a 2017 decision by Trump’s first EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, to remove many academic scientists from the advisory panels tilted them in favor of the chemical and fossil fuel industries. Pruitt barred scientists from serving on the advisory boards if they had received EPA research grants. Pruitt later resigned amid ethics scandals but his policies were largely continued under his successor and former deputy, Andrew Wheeler.

Cruise giant Carnival says customers affected by breach

Carnival Corp. said Thursday that a data breach in March might have exposed personal information about customers and employees on Carnival Cruise Line, Holland America Line and Princess Cruises.

In a letter to customers, the company indicated that outsiders might have gained access to Social Security numbers, passport numbers, dates of birth, addresses and health information of people.

The company declined to say how many people’s information was exposed.

The breach comes after Carnival was hit twice last year by ransomware attacks.

Carnival spokesman Roger Frizzell said the company detected the latest intrusion to some of its information-technology systems on March 19 and shut down access and hired a cybersecurity company to investigate. He said Carnival is making changes to improve security of its information systems.

Frizzell said the company has notified the affected people and set up a call center to answer their questions.

The Miami-headquartered company disclosed in a securities filing in April that hackers broke into its systems in August of last year and again in December.

The attackers encrypted part of one cruise line’s IT systems and gained access to personal information about customers and employees. Carnival said there was no indication that personal information exposed in those attacks was misused. The company did not indicate whether it paid a ransom.

Carnival’s shares fell 3% on Thursday.

Self-driving car pioneer Waymo gets $2.5B to fuel ambitions

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (AP) — Waymo, the self-driving car pioneer spun off from Google, isn’t allowing a recent wave of executive departures to detour its plans to expand its robotic taxi service.

The Mountain View, California, company made that clear Wednesday by announcing it has raised another $2.5 billion from a group of investors ranging from venture capital firms such as Andreessen Horowitz to a major car dealer, AutoNation.

With the latest fundraising, Waymo has raised a total of $5.7 billion in the past 15 months as it tries to build upon a driverless ride-hailing service that it has been operating in the Phoenix area.

The latest fundraising comes after Waymo’s longtime CEO, John Krafcik, stepped down in April, followed by the departures of the company’s chief financial officer and head of automotive partnerships.

Waymo is now being led by co-CEOs, Dmitri Dolgov and Tekedra Mawakana, who said the company plans to use the investment to continue to hone the technology that was first hatched inside of Google as a secret project more than a decade ago.

Google later spun out Waymo as a separate subsidiary owned by the same corporate parent, Alphabet Inc.

Waymo now operates as part of an Alphabet division called “Other Bets,” which has lost nearly $13 billion in the past years.

Even so, analysts have estimated Waymo may be worth about $30 billion — an estimate reflecting the high hopes that autonomous driving technology may finally realize its promise to revolutionize the way people get around.

Amazon allots $300 million for housing near mass transit

ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) — Amazon is providing $300 million in low-interest loans to support housing located near mass transit in the Washington, D.C., area and the Seattle and Nashville, Tennessee, regions.

The largest amount, $125 million, is earmarked for the nation’s capital region, where Amazon is building a second headquarters that will support 25,000 jobs, the company announced Wednesday. Amazon is working with the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, which runs the region’s Metrorail system. The money will be used to fund 1,000 affordable housing units or low- and moderate income families.

Amazon’s second headquarters is being built in the Crystal City neighborhood of northern Virginia, which is served by Metrorail and other forms of mass transit.

Amazon also has dedicated $100 million to create 1,200 new affordable housing units near light rail stations across the Puget Sound region. Another $75 million in below-market loans is earmarked for creation of an estimated 800 affordable homes in Nashville on privately owned land within a half-mile of WeGo transit corridors.

The money is part of a $2 billion housing equity fund Amazon announced in January. In Virginia, the company had already financed the purchase of the 825-unit Crystal House in Crystal City by an affordable-housing organization.

Archives for June 2021

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