As a child, sharing is one of the most valuable lessons you learn. But as adults, the generous act often goes by the wayside.
But not with Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla Motors and one of Silicon Valley’s most famous leaders. Musk is taking a bold and unconventional step by offering to share the technology behind his Superchargers — the fast-charging, plug-in stations for his company’s electric vehicles (EV) — with the competition, according to TechCrunch.
Opening up the Supercharger design would allow competing EV models to power up using a Tesla network that already spans the country. His only requirement? That the other auto companies embrace his free power for life model rather than charging drivers after each use. They’d also have to chip in with maintenance costs for the stations, which remains minimal.
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The hope is that one standard would be used across the entire industry, making it easier for companies to buy into EV development by eliminating one of the barriers to entry. As Musk told the BBC: “We don’t want to cut a path through the jungle and then lay a bunch of landmines behind us.”
None of this should come as any surprise, since Musk has gained a reputation for doing things differently, earning the ire of the auto industry in the process. (Just ask Arizona, Maryland, New Jersey, Texas and Virginia, which have all instituted bans on the electric vehicle venture for bypassing car dealerships in favor of selling directly to consumers.)
The move reveals that Musk’s priorities also lay more in ensuring the success of the nascent EV industry as whole rather than in any narrowly defined interests of his company. As government infrastructure spending has lagged, and we’ve seen only incremental large-scale action on climate change (an issue close to Musk’s heart), this announcement could be an important step in combatting the latter and putting America on the path toward a more sustainable energy future.
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Tag: Technolgy
What Are All Those Teens Doing on Their Phones? Learning About Politics, Apparently
Researchers have long known that political engagement among young people increases with socioeconomic status—the more privileged the person, the more likely they are to participate in civic matters. But is there another force more powerful than money when it comes to getting young people to engage with the political process? A new study suggests that there is: social media. Young people of any economic background who used social media were more likely to be politically engaged than those who did not.
Michael Xenos of the University of Wisconsin, Ariadne Vromen of the University of Sydney, and Brian D. Loader of the University of York studied political engagement among young people in the United States, Australia and Great Britain. They surveyed a representative sample of people aged 16 to 29 in each country, asking about social media use and acts of civic and political engagement. (They did not ask about voting.) In their study published in Information, Communication & Society, they write, “We find a strong, significant, and robust positive relationship between social media use and political engagement.”
They also write, “Stated plainly, our results suggest that if one were seeking an efficient single indicator of political engagement among young people in the countries studied here, social media use would appear to be as good as, or better than, SES [socioeconomic status].” So watch out—those teenagers using Snapchat and Instagram today might fuel a new wave of political engagement tomorrow.
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