seattle electric bikes Rad Power Bikes has announced four new electric bike models. All these models have the very important feature that the battery is less likely to suddenly catch fire.
The company says its new SafeShield battery, standard on all four new bikes, is certified to UL-2271, the industry standard rating for battery safety. That means the batteries in these models of Rad Power's bikes are the type of batteries that plague low-cost electric bikes and scooters, causing injuries and nearly 20 deaths in the United States. It will be almost unaffected by fire.
Rad Power recalled 30,000 RadWagon 4 electric bikes in 2022 due to misaligned tires, but the company apologized for the problem and said it had fixed it. He has one reported case of a Rad Power bike catching fire, but other than that the company hasn't been implicated in the wave of cheap e-bike battery fires. We tend to like Rad Power bikes quite a bit here at WIRED, so the improved battery safety is welcome news, especially with the emphasis on the whole “don't explode” thing.
Rad Power's new bikes come in several formats. Radster commuter bikes come in road and trail models for a variety of terrain. Prices for both start at $1,999. The company also announced new versions of the $1,899 folding bike RadExpand 5 Plus and the luggage-oriented RadWagon 5, which starts at $2,199.
Here's some other consumer tech news this week:
Ask Wendy anything
Reddit is trying to become more marketer-friendly. This week, the company announced a new suite of tools called Reddit Pro that will be available to businesses for free.
Reddit Pro offers brands a variety of ways to engage with the platform's users to help advertisers remotely capture all the attention possible. Reddit, for example, offers “AI-powered insights” that the company says sift through the site's 17 billion posts to find relevant threads and topics that businesses can use to “join the conversation.” “or even start a conversation” (i.e., deploying highly offensive marketing tactics). ). This means that if you write a comment about, say, Wendy's in a thread far down a small subreddit, it's easy for that brand's social media team to find it and spew out a cheeky brand joke in a reply. is.
This is the latest move in Reddit's slow and controversial quest for profitability (and possibly encitization). Reddit filed to take the company public in February, which would allow it to sell shares to shareholders. Although the company has never proven profitable, it is eager to make its platform more attractive to advertisers who pour money into its forums. This may be why Reddit has taken steps such as charging exorbitant amounts for the tools developers use to access the platform's data, effectively shutting down third-party apps. there is. The move, which gives brands and advertisers an easy portal to all segments of the site, is a new challenge to those ambitions.
avoid this
A new Dodge has arrived on the scene. Yes, it's a Charger. It's the hunky, grotesquely fuel-efficient muscle car that's been roaring down the roads for the better part of the past century. In 2021, Dodge announced that it will eliminate gasoline-powered chargers in favor of electric ones. This week, the first phase of its rollout officially began.
Billed as “the world's first and only electric muscle car,” the Dodge Charger Daytona Scat Pack EV is a fully powered road rage machine that's the closest thing you'll get to driving a Transformer. Boasting up to 670 horsepower, acceleration time from zero to 60 is estimated at 3.3 seconds. The car also comes with a series of features aimed at making it easier to maintain that high-octane driving adrenaline. There are dedicated performance modes for your rubber-burning excursions, including drag, track, drift, and donut modes. Another setting called PowerShot increases horsepower by 40 horsepower in 15 seconds. It's like pumping your car with nitrous oxide while keeping it street legal.
Nikon gets red eye
Camera maker Nikon announced this week that it will acquire movie camera company Red. RED'S PROFESSIONAL DIGITAL His cameras have long had a reputation in the cinematography world for pushing the limits of camera sensors and optics. These are traditionally expensive, rugged devices aimed at professionals producing film-quality content. If you watch big-budget shows and movies on network television or streamers, you've probably seen something shot in red.
Nikon's move shows the company's video ambitions. Nikon makes very good photo cameras, but they struggle to compete with the likes of Canon when it comes to video. Acquiring a high-end video camera company could certainly give the brand an edge.
OK Google, are you okay?
There's always a lot going on at Google. As one of the world's largest technology companies, the company often attracts a lot of scrutiny and criticism, much of it rightfully so. But Google has been on a roll lately, with problems stemming from a rush to push forward with AI products, a recent round of layoffs, and internal discrimination against its own employees. All of this makes for a very confusing situation for the company, which begs the ultimate question: “Is Google okay?”
In this week's “WIRED'' gadget lab In the podcast, we talk about the online buzz about Google's Gemini AI being “woke” and all the internal turmoil that's roiling Silicon Valley's biggest companies.