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EV battery replacement rare, most covered by warranty [Study] By Techagents

Battery replacements are rare in electric cars, and most replacements occur during the life of the vehicle’s warranty, concludes a recent study by Recurrent Motors, which provides battery health reports and range estimates for used electric cars. does.

Based on a sample of 15,000 cars, recidivism researcher Liz Najman found that only 225 cars (1.5%) had their batteries replaced outside of a battery recall.

The study also found that battery degradation is not linear. This happens rapidly in the first few years of a vehicle’s life, then slows down as it ages.

Battery replacement can be a serious issue for the EV owner. A new battery can cost from US$5,000 to US$22,000 and up to US$100,000 for a luxury brand like Jaguar.

Although car makers say EV batteries should last 20 years, Najman wrote, there is little understanding of how they degrade over time, but so far, it seems that EV batteries are far from spec. have a very high lifespan because there are so few of them replaced even after the eight-year, 100,000-mile warranty period expires.

“EV batteries are exceeding basic expectations because battery management systems are more sophisticated than most people realize, and early adopters are well educated about battery health,” Andy Gerberson, head of marketing at TechNewsworld, told TechNewsworld.

stay away from fast chargers

Edward Sanchez, senior analyst for automotive at TechInsights, a global technology intelligence company, explained that engineers design modern EV batteries to last a typical vehicle lifetime of 150,000 miles.

“Some are long gone,” he told TechNewsWorld.

The auto industry, however, appears to be adjusting its outlook on vehicle lifespans.

“The industry is recognizing that most vehicles are on the road for much longer than 10 years and 150,000 miles,” said Sam Abuelsamid, principal analyst for e-mobility at Guidehouse Insights, a market intelligence company in Detroit.

“The average age of a vehicle on the road in the US is more than 12 years, and it is not unusual to have vehicles with 200,000 to 300,000 miles,” he told TechNewsWorld.


“The industry knows that, and it wants to reduce the risk of the owner replacing the battery during the useful life of the vehicle,” he continued. “They’re trying to align battery life with the life of the rest of the vehicle.”

EV batteries can last for the life of the car if they aren’t “cooked,” said Rob Enderle, president and principal analyst at the Enderle Group, an advisory services firm in Bend, Ore.

“The battery that cooks are Level 3 fast chargers, like the battery in your smartphone will wear out faster if you’re constantly charging it,” he told TechNewsWorld.

Abuelsamid also recommended reducing the use of fast chargers. “If you charge a battery at a slower rate, you’ll put less strain on it,” he said.

Charging your battery is a physical process that moves lithium ions and electrons around in the cells. At faster charging rates, physical processes are more forceful, and battery materials are subjected to greater physical stress or microscopic damage.

With very high voltage charging, such as DC fast charging, a lot of heat is also generated, which is not ideal for battery longevity, it continued. DC fast charging is the double bacon cheeseburger of charging: great on road trips but best avoided on an everyday basis.

heat is a battery killer

Experts recommend never to discharge the battery below 10% capacity or charge it above 100% so as not to stress the battery and cause premature dendrite formation.

“Battery corrosion is typically caused by the formation of dendrites, which are metal projections that can form on a lithium surface and penetrate the solid electrolyte, eventually moving from one electrode to another and shorting out the battery cell.” Can,” Sanchez explained.

He added that the exception to the 100% rule is Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) batteries, which are recommended to be 100% charged for the battery management system to obtain more accurate readings.

He noted that LFP batteries typically operate at a lower voltage than those with other chemistries.

Lithium-ion batteries used by EVs differ in several ways from those used in consumer devices. Consumer appliance batteries are engineered to last only two or three years, whereas an EV Li-ion can drive a vehicle for 150,000 miles and still retain 70% capacity.


One of the most important differences between lithium-ion batteries used in consumer devices and EVs is thermal management, Abulsamid noted.

“Laptop and phone batteries have no thermal management,” he said. “There is nothing to control its temperature over the lifetime of the battery.”

“The faster you charge a battery, the more heat goes into that battery,” he continued. “Heat is a killer for batteries. If a cell gets too hot, it damages the cell internally.”

“In a vehicle, the battery has a lot of sophisticated thermal management that works hard to keep the battery temperature at its optimum, neither too cold nor too hot,” he explained.

Avoiding the Solid Waste Apocalypse

As batteries degrade, the study found that the range of an EV declines. For example, Tesla’s Model S, with its 100 kilowatt-hour battery pack, loses about 75 miles of range after 100,000 miles on average.

However, the older Model S, which has smaller 70- and 85-kilowatt-hour battery packs, lost almost no driving range after covering the same distance.

By comparison, the 2014 and 2017 models of the BMW i3s clocked 100,000 with about 80% of their original battery capacity remaining.

Meanwhile, the 2021 Hyundai Ioniq 5 lost about 15 miles of range over the first 20,000 miles, but saw no further decline through about 90,000 miles.

While some see EVs as a necessary step toward addressing climate change, others see a deluge of hazardous waste generated by vehicles. According to some experts this should not be the case.


“As EV production increases, there will inevitably be end of life materials management, but companies like Redwood Materials – founded by Tesla co-founder JB Strobel – Li-Cycle and others are working to move beyond this issue and Recycle responsibly and recover EV batteries,” said Sanchez.

“Some utilities also repurpose used EV batteries as a means of load-leveling the grid and night-time renewable energy storage,” he continued.

“Those who claim that EV batteries will be a catastrophic environmental disaster do not factor in the value of reclaimed elements and metals from EV batteries, which will have significant demand in the future,” he said.

Abuelsamid agreed that we can avoid the solid waste problem.

“You can recover 98% of the important minerals in a battery during recycling,” he said. “Since it is unreasonable to expect that we are going to meet all future demand for batteries with new materials, the industry will rely heavily on recycled materials.”

“We don’t want to throw batteries in landfills,” he declared. “It’s not a viable option.”

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Study shows social media boosted Silicon Valley Bank By Techagents

The social media boost to the Silicon Valley bank run sent shock waves throughout the US banking industry, according to a 53-page report released last week by a group of university professors.

In their study, Boffins used Twitter data to show that the SVB failure was preceded by a large spike of public communication on Twitter by apparent depositors, who used the platform to discuss the bank’s troubles and More importantly, their intention is to withdraw their deposits from SVB.

The openness and speed of this coordination around a bank run is unprecedented, the researchers said.

Mark T. Williams, master’s lecturer in finance at the Questrum School of Business at Boston University, explained that before the advent of social media, banks operated because individuals communicated through much slower communication methods, such as mail, phone, or word of mouth. . ,

He told TechNewsWorld, “The impact of influencer tweets on the speed and size of the SVB bank run demonstrates the speed in which social media has accelerated the speed and reach of communication.”

“SVB failed due to poor risk management and a crypto infection spreading throughout the industry,” he continued. “What Twitter did was hasten the process of failure.”

“When influencers can touch so many people so quickly, it’s dangerous,” he said. “They can move the stock price or the value and stability of the company.”

“But Twitter did not cause the failure of SVB,” he said. “SVB caused it. Twitter forced it.

Unique Risk Channel

The social-media-fueled run on SVBs has serious implications for the banking industry, according to researchers — J. Anthony Cookson, Corbin Fox of James Madison University, Javier Gil-Bajo of Université Pompeu Fabra, Juan F. Imbet,

The researchers noted that the Silicon Valley bank faced a novel channel of run risk unique to the social media era.

“SVB depositors who were active on social media played a central role in driving the bank,” the researchers wrote. “These depositors were concentrated and highly networked through the venture capital industry and founder networks on Twitter, exacerbating the risks of running another bank.”


More importantly, he continued, SVB is not the only bank facing this novel risk channel: open communication by depositors via social media has exposed the bank to other banks exposed to such discussions in social media. increased risk of driving.

“When information travels faster, people can run to the bank faster,” said Will Duffield, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute, a Washington, DC think tank.

However, trying to regulate that information is not a good solution to the problem, he said.

“You want efficient markets. You want people to share information about the health of different firms,” ​​he told TechNewsWorld. “I can’t see the First Amendment tolerating regulation.”

social media passes

Duffield said social media platform operators are not in a position to solve the problem.

“I don’t think social media is a place to make such calls,” he said. “If you’re Twitter, you don’t know if a bank is solvent. You can’t see their balance sheet.

“You can suppress any claim that the bank is insolvent,” he continued, “but then you prevent a lot of people from knowing that the bank is in fact insolvent, and that they should try to get their money out of it.” Was.”

“When a rumor is doing the rounds, social media is in no position to verify its veracity,” he added.

Cookson agreed. “There’s not much that social media outlets can do,” he told TechNewsWorld.

“I don’t think of our paper as a call to action on social media because what users can post, or interruptions in communication, seem off limits, even when they are associated with significant real impacts,” he explained. .

“I don’t think it’s possible to regulate social media,” said Vincent Reynold, an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Emerson College in Boston.

“Any attempt to do so would be viewed as an attack on an individual’s right to express themselves,” he told TechNewsWorld.

dangerous group

Mark Ann Vena, president and principal analyst at SmartTech Research in San Jose, California, acknowledged that market vulnerabilities certainly exist when social media posts run amok and cause bank runs or even push stocks higher or lower.

However, he added that since social media posts are a form of communication, he doubts that “normal” posts can be regulated in a meaningful way to prevent these actions from occurring.


He told TechNewsWorld, “I could see that company executives and individuals who own shares in the stock could be prevented from posting insider-related posts, but existing laws and regulations already manage that, and those individuals are There are serious legal consequences for those who disclose insider information.”

“Where the danger for this really exists is if groups of individuals come together to create and promote posts that collectively have a stronger effect than if the individuals in the group posted themselves,” he said.

“If the information is intentionally misleading so as to create market distortion so that someone can take advantage, then there may be an opportunity for some regulatory work around that,” he added.

Absence of white-knuckling banking

Cookson notes that even in the absence of action by bank regulators to curb the accelerated effects of social media on bank runs, there is much that banks can do to keep their deposit runs short.

“Our results are that social media amplifies existing bank run risks, such as a larger percentage of uninsured deposits, so one key change we could see is that banks begin to manage their deposit risks more carefully. Because social media and digital banking make it risky to trust uninsured deposits,” he said.

Duffield said the Federal Reserve bailout procedures could be improved. For example, he pointed out that there is a 4 p.m. cut-off for transfers every day, even though the business operates in a world of real-time, global electronic transfers.

“The lenders of last resort in our system need to take a good look at how they can keep pace with the digital world,” he added. “These mechanisms may have worked fine in the 1970s and 1980s when everyone stopped trading at 4 p.m., but now everything moves much faster.”

“That’s a huge shortcoming that has been exposed by all this,” he said. “There’s just a mismatch in speed between the drawdown side and the pullout side.”

Another lesson learned from the SVB debacle is the difference between East Coast and West Coast banking cultures.

“West Coast capital culture is young,” Duffield said. “What we saw with Silicon Valley Bank was the downside of that. Trust developed over a very long time. ran for.

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Edtech Study Game Approach Eases Made School Test Curve By Techagents

Advances in education technology, or edtech, come from a change in approach in the face of shortcomings. Innovative educational technology can adapt existing tools or create new tools to help people overcome barriers to learning.

King of the Curve (KOTC) is a disruptive edtech startup that is all set to help address the growing shortage of doctors. KOTC combines sports and social strategies to help science students score better on medical school entrance exams and related challenges. The company is also developing productivity-style apps to help health care workers in the field better manage the challenges of medical treatment.

Heather Rutledge-Jukes founded the company to pursue a career in psychology before focusing on becoming a surgeon. He is now a medical student at Washington University School of Medicine.

Before entering medical school, however, he took an unlikely detour to put his science skills to use as a software developer. Rutledge-Jucks transitioned from designing instructional strategies for people with dyslexia to creating a series of exam preparation apps for medical school applicants.

KOTC does not copy other self-learning products and is not based on typical learning app thinking.

“People have their own learning paths. Education should be based on that. It’s not just cookie-cutter templates for everyone,” Rutledge-Jukes told TechNewsWorld.

The app is optimized for user performance

That philosophy is evident in his educational path. As a psychology major, Rutledge-Jukes researched various teaching methods. His research focused primarily on using video games to learn valid skills such as eye-hand coordination, strategic thinking, critical thinking, and more.

After graduating from college, he designed learning tools for children with dyslexia. That effort included the creation of tactile devices for young students to better understand and retain information.

Unlike other learning tools, KOTC does not become routine or less useful to users due to over-familiarity. Instead, the app adapts to the user’s performance so that they can improvise, not just memorize predetermined answers.

King of the Curve's gamification app for MCAT study

The King of the Curve app uses game-based elements to help students study for the Medical School Entrance Exam. Its features include Adaptive Question Bank, Review Mode, Endless Mode, Timed Mode and Multiplayer Mode. (Photos courtesy of King of the Curve)

Educational apps may remain without updates for extended periods. Or they rely on rote learning strategies, which limit progress to the test of learning. “It makes users more desperate to try something else,” Rutledge-Jukes said.

make a better mousetrap

Rutledge-Jucks launched KOTC in 2020 with a focus on preparing students for the Medical School Admissions Test, known as the Medical College Admission Test or MCAT. Test prep for admission to medical schools was a logical starting point for his company’s first educational app. The developer was already well aware of its contents.

“That’s how we started. That was the seed to put together this app to help people qualify for various tests,” he said.

KOTC’s mission, as its founders see it, is simple: to turn student stress into success. In this way the student of today becomes the professional of tomorrow.

Solving a National Medical Crisis

KOTC’s unique strategy for preparing students for the MCAT is helping it accept more applicants in its own way. It could take up to 10 years to train competent physicians, according to 2022 AMA President Gerald E. Harmon, MD, in a Leadership Viewpoint column.

In its report released in June 2021, the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) projected that the US faces a shortfall of 37,800 physicians – and 124,000 within 12 years. Preventing “game over” for Doctor Optimistic.


Routledge-Jukes said that 60% of people who apply to medical school are not accepted. Applicants are three times more likely to attend medical school if they score above 510 on the MCAT, and it is the only part of the med school application that is standardized.

KOTC has an impressive success rate in helping applicants score high marks. The score range for the MCAT is 472 to 528 for the four-part written test. The scores of the four sections are added to form the total score. The midpoint is 500.

The KOTC development team is staffed by people who are intimately familiar with the MCAT testing process. To be hired, they must score in the 99th percentile.

expansion plans

The app developer also meets that standard, which makes sense from the app user’s point of view. Rutledge-Jucks took the MCAT and scored well “above the curve,” so she’s well-versed in its content. To start with, he handled most of the query silo and app building tasks himself.

Heather Rutledge-Jucks is the founder of King of the Curve
Heather Routledge-Jukes, Founder
king of curves

“I consider myself a tech founder in that sense as well. Not just tech on the content side, but tech on the development side,” he offered.

He built most of the early apps and taught himself app programming when the pandemic shut down. He started the KOTC project with the help of two co-founders and an angel investor. One of his primary jobs now, while still attending medical school, is leading the team.

Since earning more revenue by adding in-app features, he has been able to engage more workers. Once users are in the app, they can purchase customizations and additional upgrades.

His company’s staff fluctuates between two to 10 full-time and part-time employees, who either excel in the testing content areas or app building. This includes four interns, two content specialists and two developers.

“We are definitely expanding the team as we grow. Right now, we are about to open an investment round to expand the team even further,” said Rutledge-Jukes.

Test Prep Course Inventory

KOTC’s learning lineup now offers test prep apps for a range of professional entrance exams, with more updates to come. Staff includes students and researchers in each test preparation area. They maintain high level content.

The primary course list includes the Medical School Entrance Examination for Nursing Examination (NCLEX), the Physician Assistant College Admission Test (PA-CAT) and the Registered Dietitian Examination (RDE) for the Master’s Examination.


According to Rutledge-Jukes, the company plans to expand into two other high-pressure academic test preparation areas: the LSAT for law school candidates and the Bachelor of Accounting (BACC) entrance exam.

To provide a more all-inclusive option for future users, the company plans to expand its existing website as a home base for online learning, apart from offering Test Prep through a mobile app. Yes, Rutledge-Jukes agreed.

Apps are now available for Android, iPhone and iPad devices. However, some are not available on all three platforms.

for established medical professionals

The ongoing purpose of KOTC is to help students and entry-level health care professionals enhance their knowledge. It is now also catering to the needs of already established practitioners. These other app categories address a much broader range of content and target specific business areas that are mostly medical-related.

For example, current procedural terminology (CPT) aims to improve the patient experience with medical providers at the bedside. A team of pre-medical students devised their intuitive technique to limit barriers for patients in discussing the finances involved in important medical decisions.

One of the latest is the Rutledge-Jukes Telecatalyst, due to be introduced in March 2022. This app specifically caters to the needs of medical personnel in Tanzania who require a data collection and telehealth app.

Regenerative Pain and Spine App is also under development for medical support. Anesthetists will use it to generate reports about their patients to record blood pressure, machine checks and patient information during surgery.

Simplify the process with deep learning

According to the developer, med school candidates have few options besides taking industry-standard tests or paying the higher tuition associated with hiring tutors.

“We have designed our app to promote a sports and social element as all these students are going through the same process. As soon as they move on, they should be in the same team,” Rutledge-Juks said.

Some 7,000 questions built into this all-in-one MCAT study game are divided into six categories: biology, biochemistry, general chemistry, organic chemistry, physics, and behavioral science.

“We basically leave all the questions up to the user in the beginning. We’re able to provide people with the product if they can’t subscribe at all. They can still use it and still prepare effectively.” Huh.’


But the add-on lets students maximize their effectiveness by zeroing in on specific parts of the test, he said. The app recommends videos to watch and points students to particular parts of the study guide based on the accuracy of the answers.

Another benefit of KOTC is the comment section on individual questions where people can explain their rationale. Test Prep challenges students to compare section-by-section scores to other users as they go through the program.

“This is an oversimplification, but we also have monthly competitions between schools. For example, every March, we mimic March Madness, but we do it with schools across the United States, and their users compete with theirs. Will improve,” the developer explained.

covering all bases

KOTC is built on a holistic picture of edtech, including elements from adaptive learning fields. Competency based education is also an important element.

“I think competency-based learning is the future of education,” Rutledge-Jucks said. “Once you have the foundation, it hits these checkboxes.”

King of the Curve is available on Google Play and the App Store.

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Study finds sport is king among livestreamers By Techagents

Events that are streamed live over the Internet are growing in popularity among Internet homes, especially live sports, according to a study released by Parks Associates.

The report, “Livestreaming: The Next Hot Video Market,” reveals that more than 40% of US Internet households have streamed content in the past three months. More than three out of five families (61%) were watching a streaming sports event.

The study also found that consumers who livestream spend half their online video time watching live events.

“Traditionally, live sports programming has done well,” said Parks Contributing Analyst Eric Sorensen, Sr.

However, “pre- and post-event programming doesn’t perform nearly as well in terms of ratings as the actual event,” he told TechNewsWorld. “These facts apply to both linear television and live streaming platforms.”

“Games are popular because they survive and matter little when viewed afterward,” said Michael Pachter, managing director of equity research at Wedbush Securities in Los Angeles.

“You don’t care about a baseball game that ends 12 – 2 or about a football game that ends 49 – 14, and there’s no point in watching a replay,” he told TechNewsWorld told. “Some one-off wins may be worth it if records are broken – Brady’s 500th touchdown or a no-hitter in baseball – but they are largely worth little when viewed after the fact.”

eyeball chase

Sorensen pointed out that live sports programming is migrating to online platforms as more rights become available.

“Many streaming providers continue to outbid each other for coveted sports media rights,” he said. “Sports consumers don’t want to miss ‘water cooler’ moments with their favorite sports teams.”

Professional sports leagues don’t want fans to miss those moments. “Leagues want to be where their audience is and these days, that’s online,” said Michael Goodman, director of digital media strategy at global research, advisory and analytics firm Strategy Analytics.

“Streaming is giving them additional revenue streams,” he told TechNewsWorld. “Amazon is paying a huge amount for Thursday Night Football. Streaming is also raising rights fees as there are new competitors for them.”

Michael Inoue, a principal analyst at ABI Research, said sports has always been the biggest driver for livestreaming due to the nature of programming, audience size and market potential.

“One issue with live streaming was latency,” he told TechNewsWorld. “OTT [over-the-top] In the past the services lagged far behind live broadcasting. A typical live broadcast is six to eight seconds behind a live event, while livestreaming is 30 to 45 seconds or more behind.”

“We are now seeing more live streaming hitting the same broadcast level – all 10 seconds, so this, too, is making this type of programming more equitable with traditional broadcast channels,” he said.

edge on netflix

Inouye observes that live sports streaming is on the rise as more viewers cut the pay TV cord. “Securing distribution rights is the biggest hurdle, but more and more streaming is often part of new deals and negotiations and as direct to consumer continues to grow, we will see more content through streaming channels,” He continued.

“The strong growth in video advertising in the streaming markets is also a key driver for bringing sports and other live streaming content to a wider audience,” he said. “It’s still not there at traditional broadcast levels, but it’s seen as a major complementary channel, at least now.”

Neil Macker, an equity analyst at Morningstar, said some online platforms see livestreaming as an edge in the market. “Live streaming is something that companies competing with Netflix are adding to the package to differentiate themselves, not only here in the States, but internationally as well,” he told TechNewsWorld.

Those moves by its competitors cannot be ignored for long by Netflix, which is reportedly considering a livestreaming strategy.

“Streaming is getting more attention from Netflix because it’s having a harder time competing against companies with huge reserves of intellectual property like Disney and Warner Bros. This could be a way to diversify a little bit,” said principal analyst at Reticle Research Ross Rubin said. , a consumer technology consulting firm in New York City.

“It’s also interesting, given the recent discussion of Netflix opening up an advertising tier, that live events — news and sports in particular — usually have ads associated with them,” he told TechNewsWorld.

“It is questionable, however, how much investment livestreaming will receive when Netflix wants to cut budgets and be more financially conservative,” he said.

a momentous occasion

Sorensen noted that Hulu along with Live TV, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+ are the major providers that now offer live streaming services that are challenging Netflix’s leadership position in the OTT ecosystem.

He added that offering live streaming content is not only an opportunity for Netflix to gain new subscribers, but also to retain existing ones. “Sixty-four percent of Netflix subscribers currently live stream content on other services,” he explained. “By livestreaming, Netflix can maintain longer engagements with its service.”

“This is especially important in light of Netflix’s recent earnings call that they will lose millions of subscribers in 2022,” he said. “There are many opportunities for a service like Netflix to provide eGaming, esports, and red-carpet premiere events as livestreaming entertainment, in addition to sports and news.”

“As people venture away from their homes, Netflix appears to be suffering from higher spending and lower viewership due to increased competition and behavioral changes.” Added Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT, a technology advisory firm in Hayward, Calif.

“Livestreaming popular events could help the company strengthen its fortunes,” he told TechNewsWorld.

not for netflix

Pachter insisted that Netflix would fail miserably at livestreaming.

“Live streaming is by appointment, and Netflix is ​​on-demand,” he explained. “Its customers will never associate it with events that are watched live, and I think they’ll give up on the idea after working with it and failing.”

“Netflix is ​​holding onto the straw. Its brand is not built around livestreaming,” said Mark N. Vena, president and principal analyst at SmartTech Research in San Jose, Calif.

“I think many of the mistakes Netflix is ​​making are self-inflicted wounds,” he told TechNewsWorld. “Livestreaming won’t help them get out of their quagmire.”

“The amount of content that the average consumer has is way too high, but Netflix is ​​acting like 2010, not 2022,” he said. “The amount of content available to users is exponentially higher than it was 10 to 12 years ago, when Netflix didn’t have much competition.”

“Now they have a lot of competition,” he continued. “They’re not going to be able to get themselves out of that situation.”

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