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Wheels Pulls Out of Culver City and West Hollywood
Maylin Tu
Maylin Tu is a freelance writer who lives in L.A. She writes about scooters, bikes and micro-mobility. Find her hovering by the cheese at your next local tech mixer.
Last month, Helbiz announced that it had officially acquired Wheels, the West Hollywood-based startup founded by Joshua and Jonathan Viner, co-founders of Wag. But in Los Angeles, there were already signs that things were in flux.
In early August, Culver City announced that Wheels would no longer be operating within its boundaries. Then in September, Wheels also ceased operations in West Hollywood, pending adoption of sidewalk detection technology.
In the past, Wheels has prided itself on being the only shared e-scooter or e-bike operator to serve riders across the greater L.A. metro area — including the city of L.A., Santa Monica, Culver City and West Hollywood. There are 88 municipalities in L.A. County and each one controls its own shared micromobility program with different rules, regulations and fees. Beverly Hills does not allow scooters to operate or park within its boundaries, while the city of L.A. has six different operators competing for space in lucrative zones like Downtown and Venice (Lyft is out as of mid-November).
In a September city council meeting, West Hollywood announced a new sidewalk detection requirement for its three operators, Bird, Lime and Wheels. While all three have geofencing technology, sidewalk detection is more precise and meant to deter riders from riding on the sidewalk.
“[Wheels] didn't want to roll it out if it was going to be off by a couple of feet,” said Coby Wagman, parking operations supervisor for West Hollywood. “That could be the difference between someone on the street, a bike lane or a sidewalk.”
Once Wheels can demonstrate to the city that they have the technology, the company will be allowed to rejoin the Dockless Mobility Pilot Program.
But in Culver City, things are less certain.
According to Ryan Hund, a transportation planner for the Culver City Transportation Department, the city is currently evaluating their shared micromobility program to determine whether they will accept new applications.
“In order to operate in Culver City,” he said via email, “Wheels would have to go through the same RFQ [request for qualification] process as any other potential operators.”
Currently, Bird is the only operator in Culver City’s shared micromobility program.
In an emailed statement to dot.LA, Wheels CEO Marco McCottry said that Wheels is planning to return to both cities eventually.
"We’ve had to make tough decisions in our business and operating in Culver City doesn’t make sense for us at this time. We hope to work with [the] city to relaunch in the future. We look forward to returning to West Hollywood as they recently added a sidewalk detection requirement for operators which we will be demoing soon."
These strategic moves come at a rocky moment for shared micromobility. Bird just announced that it overstated revenue for the last two years, causing its stock to plummet. The company says it might not have enough cash to continue operations. Earlier this month, Lyft laid off 13% of its employees and last week it pulled all e-bikes and e-scooters from Santa Monica and L.A.
In an email, Juan Matute, deputy director of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies, said that Santa Monica’s future shared micromobility program is the one to watch as companies start to drop out of the market.
“Investors subsidized scooter operations for years,” he said. “Though some of this investment went into technology, most went into unprofitable competition because the company wanted to [be] the last standing.”
Santa Monica will begin recruiting two operators for a three-to-five year term in January 2023.
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Maylin Tu
Maylin Tu is a freelance writer who lives in L.A. She writes about scooters, bikes and micro-mobility. Find her hovering by the cheese at your next local tech mixer.
Here's How Much It Costs To Charge An Electric Vehicle
10:20 AM | November 22, 2022
Wikimedia CommonsAlthough zero-emission vehicle use continues to grow and California dominates the market, there’s still factors hindering its ability to achieve mass adoption. These can include reservations about performance, safety and quality – but also, concerns regarding range anxiety and the cost of charging.
So, let’s try to break down how much it costs to charge an electric vehicle in California.
How We Calculated Cost
It is difficult to pinpoint one figure that will apply to every EV driver. Even within a single state, there’s variables – such as mileage driven, the type of vehicle and battery, plus the type of charger as well as if the car owner is opting to fuel up at a public station versus installing a personal home charging point.
But the general formula for calculating how much charging an electric car will cost is pretty simple: divide your car’s maximum range by its range per kWh, then multiply it by the average cost of electricity per kWh.
That figure, range per kWh, is an estimate that can vary greatly depending on vehicle and also driving factors. More intense driving, say, uphill in the wind, would lower your overall range per kWh since the car needs more power.
Regardless of driving conditions, though, you’re always likely to pay more to charge an EV in California than other parts of the country.
California’s average electricity cost in August was about 27 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh). Compared to the national average price of around 16 cents per kWh, that’s quite high. In part because California’s “fixed” costs of operating its electric system are used to offset public programs including wildlife mitigation.
Based on data from the Department of Tax and Fee Administration and Energy Commission, as well as the U.S. Energy Information Administration we also calculated the average California driver spends around $230 on gas monthly, or around $2,760 per year.
How Much Does It Cost To Charge a Tesla?
Tesla Model 3.
Photo courtesy of Tesla
So, say you drive a Tesla Model 3, one of the most popular Tesla cars.
Tesla says the standard 2022 Model 3’s long-range battery has a top range of 350 miles per full charge, and while it doesn’t report range per kWh, auto analysts at Edmunds estimate it to be around 25 kWh/100 miles or 2.5 miles. All told, it should cost about $29.36 to fully fuel a Model 3 in California – but bear in mind that you can only use Tesla’s network of proprietary Superchargers unless you have an adapter.
Or, as the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) estimated, charging a Tesla Model 3 costs about $550 per year.
Tesla’s 2022 Model S sports car, on the other hand, requires more charging for higher performance. It costs $39.05 per charge, or around $1 per 25 miles.
Teslas are more expensive to charge than most of their counterparts in part because of their Supercharger network – which most drivers will find a worthy trade-off, given that they’re fast, and can charge an EV from 0% to 80% in about 30 minutes.
How Much Does It Cost to Charge a Rivian?
An R1T in Rivian Blue at the main entrance to the plant in Normal, IL.
Courtesy of Rivian
If you’re one of the few driving a 2022 Rivian R1T electric truck, it’ll cost around $17.66 per charge. Rivian’s battery models have varying range, but on the high end, contain 400 miles on a full charge. The DOE estimates that driving 25 miles in a 2022 R1T will cost about $1.68 or about $1,000 annually.
Rivian’s other model, the R1S, is almost identical in price (it costs about 20 cents less than the R1T, by our estimates).
How Much Does It Cost to Charge a Nissan Leaf?
2023 Nissan Leaf charging.
Photo courtesy of Nissan
A 2022 Nissan Leaf’s base model comes with a 40 kWh battery pack. The DOE estimates this version of Nissan’s affordable commuter car has a maximum range of 149 miles, and gets about 3 miles per kWh, pretty much on par with the overall average for electric vehicles.
Using this information, we can estimate that the Nissan Leaf will cost around $13.41 to charge once. The DOE calculates that a 2022 Leaf’s annual fuel cost will total $650.
How Much Does It Cost to Charge a Ford F-150 Lightning EV?
2023 Ford F-150 Lightning
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Ford’s much-hyped electric F-150 all-wheel drive truck debuted last May to much fanfare, including a test drive from President Joe Biden.
The F-150 Lightning has a max range of 230 miles, and on average a higher fuel cost than competing electric trucks like Rivians. On average, it’ll cost roughly $12.67 for one charge, though the DOE estimates this will amount to around $1,050 annually.
This year Ford also released an electric Mustang, the Mach-E SUV. The standard Mach-E has a top range of 247 miles on a full charge, and gets about 3 miles per kWh. One full charge of the Mach-E will cost around $22.23, and the DOE surmises that’ll add up to a yearly charging expense of roughly $700.From Your Site Articles
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Samson Amore
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He holds a degree in journalism from Emerson College. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter @Samsonamore.
https://twitter.com/samsonamore
samsonamore@dot.la
Dental Startup Pearl Gets FDA Clearance for AI-Powered X-Ray Platform
04:57 PM | March 08, 2022
Courtesy of Pearl
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A West Hollywood-based startup has received Food and Drug Administration clearance for what it calls the first artificial intelligence-enabled product that can read dental x-rays and identify cavities, plaque and other dental conditions.
Second Opinion is an AI detection platform created by Pearl, a dentistry startup founded in 2019 to leverage machine learning and AI to help dentists detect problems in otherwise healthy teeth. The startup raised $11 million in Series A funding in 2019 from Craft Ventures and Santa Monica-based Crosscut Ventures.
To develop Second Opinion, Pearl gathered over 100 million dental x-rays from dental practices and academic institutions. The AI platform points out discrepancies found in an x-ray and also serves as a patient communication tool, allowing dentists to show different models of a patient’s teeth and point out problem areas.
“I do think that this is going to become very fundamental to the category [of dentistry] very quickly, and therefore will actually serve as a model for the rest of medicine—for how to infuse and deploy a AI widely at scale, with the ultimate benefit and potential of really elevating the standard of care in a provable way,” Pearl founder and CEO Ophir Tanz told dot.LA.
Pearl’s AI program examine teeth.Courtesy of Pearl
The FDA’s clearance comes amid ongoing skepticism from some within the medical community about the effectiveness of AI applications. A presentation made by the American College of Radiology to the FDA in 2020 reported that 95% of clinicians thought AI was too inconsistent or inaccurate to be used by medical practices. Though the FDA is the largest regulatory body in health care, it has no consistent framework for signing off on a piece of AI that can guide diagnostics, such as the number of reference images used, the diversity of its dataset or its accuracy rate. This has slowed down the clinical adoption rate of such technologies—and while the FDA has proposed a framework to address some of these challenges, nothing has been implemented yet.
Second Opinion’s journey to receiving FDA clearance involved a multi-year process to test every single use case that the platform is trained to do—such as identifying tooth decay, plaque, bone lesions around a tooth and a handful of other discrepancies in otherwise-healthy teeth. Receiving FDA clearance entails a separate and different process than receiving FDA approval; while the former indicates that a product is as good as existing alternatives already on the market, the latter requires a different set of processes for more novel or riskier products to prove that their benefits outweigh potential drawbacks. Tanz noted that the FDA sought only clearance for Second Opinion, and neither required nor asked for approval to allow the product to be marketed in the U.S.
A patient goes under the lights in the dentist’s office.Courtesy of Pearl
Though some critics claim that AI can’t pick up on certain nuances that a human dentist might, Pearl contends that those critics often fail to account for the counter-argument of human error. Through the nonprofit Dental AI Council, the startup commissioned a study that found when presenting a panel of 136 dentists with an X-ray to review, roughly half of them found a cavity, while the other half found none.
Tanz said he is not interested in expanding Pearl’s services into radiology at large, and acknowledged that bottlenecks in the FDA process make it harder to develop, clear and adopt similar technology. Already, the startup has received regulatory approvals from Canada, Australia, the U.K., the European Union and the United Arab Emirates, and is working with roughly 4,000 dental organizations and radiograph manufacturers.
“We think of this as a utility, kind of like water or power,” Tanz said. “You're not going to have any dental practice where this is not going to be powering the radiographic side of things… We really do believe that this will be integrated into every practice in the world in a relatively short period of time.”
Update, March 10: This article has been updated to clarify the difference between FDA clearance and FDA approval, and to specify that Pearl's Second Opinion product did not require FDA approval to be marketed in the U.S.
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Keerthi Vedantam
Keerthi Vedantam is a bioscience reporter at dot.LA. She cut her teeth covering everything from cloud computing to 5G in San Francisco and Seattle. Before she covered tech, Keerthi reported on tribal lands and congressional policy in Washington, D.C. Connect with her on Twitter, Clubhouse (@keerthivedantam) or Signal at 408-470-0776.
https://twitter.com/KeerthiVedantam
keerthi@dot.la
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