TechCrunch
Inside Tesla's Supercharger Partner Program: The Costs And Commitments Of Electrifying Road Transport
Tesla is building a nationwide network of Supercharger stations in the U.S. to help give its growing fleet of consumer vehicles the juice they need to conquer the nation’s highways, and now we at TechCrunch have an inside look at how they’re approaching partners to help them expand. Tesla’s footing the bill for the Supercharger spots, asking only for time and access from partners with parking lots, and promising the keys to the future in return.
For “prospective hosts” of Tesla Superchargers, the ask isn’t too steep: Tesla covers all costs, upfront and ongoing associated with installing supercharger stations, according to the documents obtained by TechCrunch. That covers maintenance, as well as power costs, with Tesla optionally offering to install a dedicated meter just for the charging station alone, from which the bill will go directly to Tesla itself.
The cost for Tesla is between $100,000 and $175,000 depending on the station, and a lot of those come from the permanent modifications needed at the site to support the Supercharger itself. It’s more expensive than putting in a charger for a standard electric car, like a Nissan Leaf for instance, but the Supercharger can deliver around five times the power of those stations in the same amount of time, and is more demanding in terms of infrastructure changes as a result.
A property owner doesn’t have to stake any monetary commitment, but it does have to offer up between four or five spaces on average, plus around 200 to 600 square feet for Superchargers and equipment. Most agreements involve four “dedicated” stations, designed such that only Tesla owners can use them (prevents a driver arriving and not being able to find a spot), as well as between four and six additional stations that can accommodate both normal cars and provide supercharging for Teslas. This doesn’t need to be prime real estate either, though Tesla does stipulate it be well-lit, and close to existing power infrastructure if possible.
Partners are asked to commit to the program for a minimum of five years, with an option to expand, and most agreements range from five to ten years. The length of the commitment required reflects the large cost of the initial install. In exchange, Tesla is selling essentially the image benefits associated with its brand; partners get the mystique and influence of being a Tesla location, attracting its drivers to their on-site businesses, yes, but also offering up press and social media profile bumps. Plus, for companies with environmental sustainability programs and priorities, the brand association benefits are obviously attractive, too.
The Tesla docs also show a high rate of usage at its stations, with some installations seeing as many as 17 sessions per day during their peak usage periods, a fact which it can use to convince partners that the space provided will result in more traffic to their stores and businesses. Installation of the Supercharger requires between 12 and 20 weeks to complete, but only between two and four of those actually take place on-site, with the rest consisting of paperwork, business arrangements and obtaining local permits and approvals.
If Tesla’s footing the entire bill, it might seem like a no-brainer to get a Supercharger installed at your roadside business, but there is a significant cost involved in terms of construction time and space committed, so it’s understandable that the electric car company has to make its case through these pitch documents. For us, they provide an interesting look at what’s required from all parties involved to help pave the way for the future of electric transport.
Google Axes Shopper Price-Comparison Apps For iOS And Android To Focus On Google Shopping
It looks like Google is starting to cut back on some of its less successful mobile apps. Earlier today, we reported that the Google+ Local app has disappeared from the App Store a few weeks ahead of its planned shutdown, and now, the company has announced that it is going to shut down the standalone Google Shopper app for iOS and Android on August 30.
Given how much online shopping has moved to mobile, that’s a bit of an odd move, but Google says it wants to focus on Google Shopping and Google Search “to create a better, more consistent shopping experience across all devices.” Over the last few months, Google says it introduced “360-degree product imagery, Shortlists and more relevant reviews” on Google Shopping, and it will put its resources into improving this service going forward.
Shopper, which launched in early 2010, allows users to check online and local prices by scanning cover art and barcodes, as well as through Google’s standard text and voice searches. The last iOS version only has a 3-star rating, though it looks like the Android version was reasonably popular, with over 34,000 ratings for a 4.2 star average.
Google argues that users can still find all of the information from Google Shopper through its search app on mobile and by visiting google.com/shopping.
Despite today’s announcement, the company is also teasing some new shopping products for mobile. “We look forward to sharing some great things we have coming on mobile for the holidays,” Google Shopping VP Sameer Samat writes in today’s blog post. Those new features, though, will likely be part of Google’s existing apps and won’t come in the form of a standalone app.
Hey San Francisco, Your Rep. Pelosi Saved The NSA Phone Metadata Program
Congress almost cut off funds for an NSA spying program, until San Francisco Rep. Nancy Pelosi stepped in to save it. Rep. Pelosi, of California’s 12th district, worked to kill the Amash amendment to the 2014 Defense Appropriations Bill. Amash’s amendment would have defunded the NSA’s domestic phone record program, which collects metadata on every call placed in the United States.
It almost passed, failing by a narrow 205 to 217 margin. It now appears that it could have passed, but Rep. Pelosi worked behind the scenes to convince a number of Democrats to vote against the amendment.
According to Foreign Policy, a Democratic aide told the publication that “Pelosi had meetings and made a plea to vote against the amendment,” the effect of which was greater than briefings with General Alexander, head of the NSA. Pelosi recently took fire at a liberal gathering for her defense of NSA surveillance programs.
The aide went on to say that “Pelosi had a big effect on more middle-of-the road hawkish Democrats who didn’t want to be identified with a bunch of lefties” who were in favor of gutting the funding for a program that the NSA claims is key to its ability to preserve the national defense.
It’s not a surprise that a Democrat is in favor of the NSA’s surveillance activities; the Amash amendment managed to split Congress, but not along normal party lines. Both Democrats and Republicans voted for and against the amendment. However, Rep. Pelosi’s district makes her vote and lobbying efforts curious: She is the direct representative of San Francisco, which contains inside of it large swaths of the technology industry and its denizens. The tech industry has, on average in my estimation, tilted negative regarding the NSA’s pervasive data-collection practices.
It isn’t right to think that an elected official must at every turn vote on issues based on the temperature of their district. But in this case, Rep. Pelosi’s active efforts to stamp out support for an amendment that had a chance at enacting real reform — which I suspect would be quite popular in her district — is somewhat hard to grok.
Rep. Pelosi is my Representative in Congress, and I voted for her in the last election. That in mind, I must register material complaint with her recent actions.
There is irony in that the elected official that represents the location where Twitter is headquartered is in favor of the NSA’s intra-United States data collection activities. Twitter, of course, became famous for its lack of cooperation with the NSA.
Here’s Rep. Pelosi’s district:
As TechCrunch recently noted, and this is something to take heart in, support for the Amash amendment was by definition bipartisan, and stronger than expected. Functional reform could be possible. One month ago it certainly did not feel that way.
Top Image Credit: idleformat
Stick It To The Military-Industrial Ink Complex By 3D Printing Your Own Printer Cartridges
This has to be one of the most uniquely disruptive uses of 3D printing I’ve seen: an ink refill company has successfully 3D-printed a Kodak ink cartridge, refilled it, and printed with it. Using a Makerbot Replicator 2 and some PLA, the company created an exact replica of the Kodak cartridge casing and stuck in an ink bladder of their own devising, thereby creating a sort of Frankenstein’s monster of ink delivery.
To be clear the company, InkFactory, is fooling no one here. The ability to print an outer casing for an inkjet printer cartridge is fairly limited and is useful only if you have a nice supply of bladders or you break your cartridge. This holds doubly true for cartridges with chips and delivery systems built-in. Until we can make high-resolution, soft prints using a 3D printer, there is no real way to make an entire cartridge on a home printer and there is almost no way to replace the cartridges that have proprietary circuitry built in.
That said, the ease with which they replicated the casing and placed their own ink in is heartening. The fact that you can now measure, design, and build a proprietary object should strike fear in the hearts of ink merchants everywhere and there are plenty of people out there who would, in a fairly unscrupulous manner, supply the proper ink bladders to home makers who simply want the nozzle and ink container and will make their own PLA or ABS cartridges.
As a proof of concept it’s great. It’s a perfect storm of righteous indignation – ink refillers stick it to public enemy #1, ink salesmen, by using the tools of mass production. If Marx had a tech blog, he’d be all over this. It’s a cute, if sensational, way to get the word out about ink replacement and I’m sure it will send someone at what’s left of Kodak scrambling to type up a cease and desist letter.
Apigee Launches Purchase-To-Payment API Platform
Apigee has a new platform for customers to manage API-driven business efforts that extends from purchase-to-payment of digital assets. The service is meant for organizations, such as telecommunications providers, that sell services delivered through an API.
Apigee has designed the platform so a customer can get help with pricing, notifications set-up and limits that tell when a number of products have been sold. It comes with an administration platform and developer platform for billing. Licensed on a yearly basis, the platform is available both in the cloud and on-premise.
The communication through the API monetization platform is two-way. For example, telecommunications customers have often had to send email notifications when there was a change to a rate plan for one of its digital services. With the new platform, the service is automated so a customer can set up notifications for the developer subscribing to the plan.
The issue extends to the finance department with API providers historically collecting money by invoice from developers. With the platform integration, a bill gets automatically sent to the customer with real-time credits and deductions to the developer’s account without having to invoice.
In the overall market, there are companies that are digital native and those that do not have the background with APIs. Apigee is trying to serve both markets. They are offering easier API integration for the more seasoned customers and the expertise to show how the service can be offered and managed for the clients newer to the ways of the API economy.
APIs are becoming part of the mainstream business world. Until most recently, APIs have primarily been viewed as a way to connect apps. But they are increasingly used as a gateway for customers to sell services. This is evident in how they are getting baked deeper into enterprise systems. Intel acquired Mashery for $180 million this spring to offer the API platform to serve as a way to connect back-end systems to the cloud.
In essence Apigee is offering its customers a deeper way to automate the selling process and subsequent management of a customer’s digital assets. That’s something we can expect to see more often as APIs move deeper into the mainstream business world.
Disclosure: Apigee’s Sam Ramji needed a place to stay while here in Portland this week for OSCON so he bunked at our house.
A Week With The Sync Burn, A Battery-Powered Fitness Band
Fitness bands are a dime a dozen these days. Everyone has one, it seems, from audio manufacturers like Jawbone to upstarts like Fitbit and Basis. Now the EB Sports Group, a company that makes fitness devices under a number of brands including Everlast and Men’s Health. I’ve historically been wary of “no name” bands like this one – bands that are created to cash in on a trend rather than from an effort to create a software/hardware ecosystem, but I’ll give this unit a pass for a few reasons.
The most interesting aspect of the Burn is its 1-year battery life. As a regular Fitbit user, I would kill for a device with a fully readable screen that can last longer than two weeks, let alone 365 days. The device is basically a digital watch and is about the size of the Pebble smart watch. The button on the top right controls the readout – you can tag workouts, see your hourly energy expenditure, and see exercise history. The lower right button activates the sync features which, in turn, activates a low energy Bluetooth transmitter.
There is a central button on the bottom of the watch that doubles as a read-out control and heart rate monitor. You can scroll through calories burned, steps taken, and miles walked. If you press and hold the button, however, the watch measures your heart rate. This, in turn, helps estimate calories burned. It’s a wonky system and you have to press fairly hard with your thumb to get a reading but – and this is important – it works 99% of the time and helps conserve the battery.
The Burn is a product of trade-offs. It is a unique product – a quick visit to Alibaba didn’t turn up any similar, unbadged watches – and I’m pleased with the battery life and simplicity of use. To really get the most out of the device, however, you can sync it with an app called MapMyFitness, a free app (with a $29.99/hear training add-on that comes free with the watch for six months) that tracks your runs. By syncing with the app you can simply add your daily walks to the MapMyFitness database. You essentially get a screen like this:
Obviously this isn’t much better than any similar pedometer product but the heartrate monitor built in puts it on par with more expensive devices, like the Basis, and the lower-priced, $99 Withings Pulse. At $130, however, I’m hard pressed to recommend this over, say, a Fitbit Flex or the Pulse. Because of the odd choice to support only MapMyFitness, a popular but not particularly well-integrated piece of software, and the weird method for actually measuring the heart rate, the watch could end up being more trouble than its worth.
I used this primarily as a pedometer, checking my heartrate rarely during the day. To sit there and press and hold a thumb on the sensor is unfortunately too distracting while, say, taking or a walk or going to the gym. I far preferred the Basis’ always-on sensor or even the Fitbit’s overall passivity.
In terms of styling the Burn looks like any other sports watch with a nice red and black color scheme. The screen is a bit dark and unreadable at acute angles but I always enjoyed being able to read my steps taken with a simple direct glance at the watch, something almost none of the other fitness devices offer.
What’s the bottom line? If you’re a fan of MapMyFitness, this could be a solid addition to your regimen. If you’re a fan of a more developed ecosystem I’d recommend the Basis, Nike+, or Fitbit over this device. It’s a clever, nicely built sport-watch/fitness band but it just doesn’t have the depth of data and support afforded by other devices.
No comments:
Post a Comment