The Seattle ebike firm Rad Energy Bikes has announced four new ebike models, all of which have the essential distinction of being unlikely to have their batteries out of the blue burst into flames.
The corporate says its new Protected Protect Batteries—which come commonplace on all 4 new bikes—have been licensed at UL-2271, an trade commonplace rating for battery security. Meaning the batteries on these fashions of Rad Energy’s bikes gained’t be practically as vulnerable to the sorts of battery fires which have been plaguing low-end ebikes and scooters and have led to injuries and nearly 20 deaths within the US.
Rad Energy had 30,000 of its RadWagon 4 ebikes recalled in 2022 resulting from misaligned tires, a difficulty the corporate has apologized for and says it has fastened. There’s been one reported case of a Rad Energy bike catching fireplace, however apart from that the corporate hasn’t contributed to the wave of low cost ebike battery fires. We have a tendency to love Rad Power’s bikes fairly a bit right here at WIRED, so this enhance in battery security is welcome information, particularly due to the added emphasis on the entire “not exploding” factor.
Rad Energy’s new bikes are available just a few types. There’s its Radster commuter bike, which is available in Road and Trail fashions for various terrains. Each begin at $1,999. The corporate additionally introduced the RadExpand 5 Plus, an $1,899 folding bike, and its new iteration of the cargo-oriented RadWagon 5, which begins at $2,199.
Right here’s another shopper tech information from this week.
Ask Wendy’s Something
Reddit is attempting to make itself friendlier to entrepreneurs. This week, the corporate introduced a brand new suite of instruments, known as Reddit Pro, that can be accessible to companies at no cost.
Reddit Professional gives manufacturers quite a lot of methods to interact with the platform’s customers, in service of serving to advertisers higher pour themselves into each eyeball remotely doable. For example, Reddit will supply “AI-powered insights” that the corporate says will sift by means of the positioning’s 17 billion posts to seek out related threads and matters that corporations can then use to “be a part of or begin conversations” (aka deploying their deeply cringe advertising techniques). Meaning once you write a remark about, say, Wendy’s, in a thread approach down on a tiny subreddit, the model’s social media staff may have a better time discovering it and spouting off some sassy model banter within the replies.
It’s the newest transfer in Reddit’s sluggish, controversial quest for profitability (and presumably enshittification). Reddit filed to take the company public in February, which can allow it to promote inventory to shareholders. The corporate, which has never proven profitable, is keen to make its platform extra interesting to advertisers who can spend cash in its boards. That is probably why Reddit has made strikes like charging an exorbitant amount of cash for the instruments builders use to entry the platform’s knowledge, successfully killing third-party apps. This transfer of giving manufacturers and advertisers a better portal into each section of the positioning is one other stab at these ambitions.
Dodge This
There’s a brand new Dodge chargin’ onto the scene. Sure, it’s a Charger, the beefy, grotesquely fuel-inefficient muscle automotive that’s been roaring throughout roads for the higher a part of the previous century. In 2021, Dodge introduced it might ditch its gas-powered Chargers in favor of electrical variants. This week, the primary stage of that rollout has formally begun.
Billed—considerably arguably—as “the world’s first and solely electrical muscle automotive,” the Dodge Charger Daytona Scat Pack EV is a fully juiced-up road-rage machine that’s sure to be the closest factor you may get to driving a Transformer. It boasts as much as 670 horsepower and has a quoted zero-to-60 time of three.3 seconds. The automotive additionally comes with an array of options meant to make it simpler to mainline high-octane driving adrenaline. There are devoted efficiency modes for rubber-burnin’ excursions like Drag, Observe, Drift, and Donut modes. One other setting, known as PowerShot, will increase horsepower by 40 hp for 15 seconds. It’s like injecting your automotive with nitrous oxide however conserving it road authorized.
Nikon Takes a Pink Eye
Digicam producer Nikon introduced this week that it’s scooping up the cinematic digital camera firm Pink. Pink’s skilled digital cameras have a protracted repute in cinematography circles for pushing the boundaries of what digital camera sensors and optics can do. They’re traditionally expensive, beefy gadgets geared toward professionals producing cinema-quality content material. In case you watch any big-budget reveals or films on community tv or the streamers, you’ve absolutely seen one thing shot on Red.
This transfer by Nikon factors to the corporate’s video ambitions. Nikon makes superb images cameras however has struggled to compete with the likes of Canon in relation to video. Shopping for a premium video-camera firm might actually give the model a leg up.
Hey Google, U OK?
There’s all the time heaps happening at Google. As one of many largest tech corporations on the planet, the corporate typically attracts plenty of scrutiny and criticism, a lot of it warranted. However Google’s been on a roll currently, with issues stemming from its rush to push out AI products, its latest rounds of layoffs, and inner discrimination against its own employees. All of this makes for a really chaotic time for the corporate, which raises the final word query: Is Google OK?
This week on WIRED’s Gadget Lab podcast, we speak in regards to the on-line uproar about Google’s Gemini AI going “woke” and all the interior turmoil roiling the large Silicon Valley firm.
