Ford is betting big on EVs

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In today's edition: Ford is betting big on EVs, Walmart ends Work-from-home, and memes.

Reading time is 4 minutes. Let’s do this!

Main Thing ☕️

Ford is betting big on EVs

~$15B invested in last 2 years to ramp up battery manufacturing 💸

What: Ford, the #2 EV seller in US, will build a new $3.5B battery plan in Michigan using technology from China. The investment comes on top of $11B for 2 battery manufacturing plants in 2021.

The new battery plant:

• Will make Lithium-Iron-Phospate (aka LFP) cells, which are cheaper but lower range than standard Nickle-Cobalt batteries.

• Will be ready in 2026, and supply enough batteries for 400K cars.

Zoom out: The US invented the LFP battery tech in 2001 but couldn’t use it because of patent restrictions. Meanwhile, China used it for free and LFP became the most common type of battery. Almost 20 years later, China is ‘licensing’ it back to US manufacturers including Tesla and Ford!

Maybe the US patent system needs a little recharge too.

Big Picture 🔍

Walmart: Work-From-Home is over at Walmart, all tech workers will be required to come into the office at least two days a week. The company is also closing its offices in Austin, Carlsbad and Portland and relocating impacted employees.

Blue Origin: Amazon’s rocket subsidiary announced new technology to manufacture ‘Solar cells’ on Moon, using raw materials from lunar soil! Generation of electricity is one of the biggest hurdles for a lunar base.

Zoox: Amazon’s self driving car, Zoox shuttled people on public roads for the first time after receiving regulatory approval from California.

Wondering why the car looks different? It’s designed to be used as a fully autonomous taxi. The car doesn’t even have a steering wheel!

Cool Tools 🛠️

Today’s category is Video editing/generation. Some of the tools are so good, you might want to rethink your Adobe Subscription!

Descrypt: Edit podcast or video just like a text document. AI removes all filler words like "um", "uh" from video, so no need for retakes. Uses your voice to generate audio that let's you fix pronunciation mistakes by ‘typing’ the correct word!

Runway: Generate and edit content in minutes. It lets you create images from text, erase and replace parts of image, remove backgrounds and even objects from videos.

Synthesia: Generate videos using text. Turn docs, PowerPoints, or PDFs into engaging training, how-to or product marketing videos, narrated by a human-like AI Avatar!

Quick Bites🍪

• Layoffs: Twilio laid off 17% of its workforce in the second wave of layoffs, after 11% were let go in September 2022.

• VR Headset: Bigscreen launches the world’s smallest and lightest VR headsets with two 5K 90Hz OLED displays!

• Podcasts: 80% drop in new podcasts created last year.

• AI pilot: In a first, an AI flew F-16 fighter jet for over 17 hours.