Author: Reporter

Advocates for the self-driving cars and trucks industry on July 26 warned that years of regulatory inaction is putting American manufacturers at a competitive disadvantage and urged Congress to expand their ability to test and eventually sell autonomous vehicles (AV). “I’m sure it’s rare for you that someone from the private sector comes before you to ask, to plead, for their business to be regulated,” said John Bozzella, president for the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents several major auto manufacturers. “We’re at a crossroads, and without a comprehensive AV framework, companies are not going to succeed.” While most...

Seven major automakers say they are joining forces to build a North American electric vehicle charging network that would rival Tesla’s and nearly double the number of fast-charging plugs in the U.S. and Canada. General Motors, BMW, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes, and Stellantis said in late July that they will share in a multibillion-dollar investment to build “high power” charging stations with 30,000 plugs in urban areas and along travel corridors. The dramatic move is intended to speed the adoption of electric vehicles, allaying fears that chargers will not be available for long-distance travel. The companies would not disclose...

The explosion early on a June morning ignited a blaze that engulfed a New York City shop filled with motorized bicycles and their volatile lithium-ion batteries. Billowing smoke quickly killed four people asleep in apartments above the burning store. As the ubiquity of e-bikes has grown, so has the frequency of fires and deaths blamed on the batteries that power them, sparking a push to better regulate how the batteries are manufactured, sold, reconditioned, charged, and stored. Consumer advocates and fire departments, particularly in New York City, are urging the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission to establish national safety...

As hospitals and health care systems turn to artificial intelligence to help summarize doctors’ notes and analyze health records, a new study led by Stanford School of Medicine researchers cautions that popular chatbots are perpetuating racist, debunked medical ideas, prompting concerns that the tools could worsen health disparities for Black patients. Powered by AI models trained on troves of text pulled from the internet, chatbots such as ChatGPT and Google’s Bard responded to the researchers’ questions with a range of misconceptions and falsehoods about Black patients, sometimes including fabricated, race-based equations, according to the study published in October in...