Andrew J. Hawkins

Curbed’s Alissa Walker has a great interview with Globe and Mail reporter Josh O’Kane, who’s new book Sideways: The City Google Couldn’t Buy is the definitive account of the failed effort by Sidewalk Labs to build “a city from the internet up.” It’s also an interesting look into the rise and fall of the smart city movement in the 2010s, which presumed that residents would willingly share their own personal data in exchange for city services.

I’ll take the L on this: back when Ford first filed the patent on a new technology that would allow vehicle owners to rev their engines remotely by using a key fob, I predicted we wouldn’t see it in a production car anytime soon. How wrong I was! “Remote Rev” is coming to the seventh generation pony car next year. Why would anyone want to do this, you might ask? TBD!

The Wall Street Journal reports that the electric automaker is pausing its plans to make batteries at its Gigafactory in Berlin. The shift in strategy came about after the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes $10 billion in tax credits for companies who build clean-tech facilities in the US. The company is also exploring building a lithium processing plant on the Gulf Coast. Meanwhile, Tesla’s vehicles will re-qualify for the $7,500 EV tax credit starting January 1st. (The company was the first to lose eligibility back in 2019.)