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Why Do People Resist New Technology Like Electric Vehicles?
David Shultz
David Shultz reports on clean technology and electric vehicles, among other industries, for dot.LA. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Outside, Nautilus and many other publications.
Last week California air regulators voted to ban all new internal combustion car sales starting in 2035. The news was met with a predictable mix of responses: Some lauded the decision as forward-thinking and environmentally responsible; others saw it as government overreach–an attack on consumer freedom and the free market.
Whether the arguments against EVs are in good faith or not (they’re often not), the fact remains that this burgeoning technology has been met with fierce resistance since Teslas started hitting the road back in 2008. It’s easy to find examples of people keying EVs, rolling coal to spite them or blocking chargers with gas-powered cars.
A part of human nature is naturally resistant to change and to the unknown. It has served us well evolutionarily over the past 200,000 years. Tradition keeps us safe when it comes to eating the right wild berries or choosing a route to the next town. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that there were people in the Roman Empire spreading myths about how using indoor plumbing makes your sword hand weak, or that riding in a chariot would make your uterus fall out. Even without political tribalism and pressure from the fossil fuel industry, new tech can be divisive.
Rosabeth M. Kanter, a professor of business at Harvard Business School, who studies these ideas, says the number one reason people resist change is that they fear a loss of control over their lives. This may explain why the ban on new gas cars in California has faced some backlash.
“For people who are feeling like life is slipping out of their control–that sinister forces are pushing them around–they're likely to not want to be forced into making a change,” says Kanter. Whether or not the state could have accomplished the same goal without a mandate is debatable, but due to the California Air Resources Board’s successful history of driving national policy with ambitious state-level laws, it’s not surprising they chose to take that risk.
However, Kanter also notes that plenty of new tech innovations have been welcomed with open arms. Take the smartphone, for instance. Steve Jobs announced the iPhone in 2007. By 2017, 77% of Americans owned a smartphone. Cars, of course, were always going to be slower transition—after all, the lifecycle of a car is at least three or four times as long as that of a smartphone. But why has there been so much cultural resistance to the growing EV market share?
The biggest and most obvious answer is cost. Smartphones aren’t cheap, but there’s a big difference between $700 and $70,000. The current batch of EVs on the road are simply too expensive for the average person to afford. Knowing that demand would outstrip initial manufacturing capacity, EV makers have chosen to offer luxury models first in order to make as much money as possible while ramping up production. And while legacy OEMs are beginning to enter the scene and change this dynamic, we’re still early in this story and costs are still extremely high.
Kanter says that to get consumers to adopt new tech, the transition has to be smooth. It has to be easy. Remember taking your flip phone to a Verizon or AT&T and trading it in for a smartphone? These companies made it simple and offered excellent financing plans–just a few extra dollars added to your bill every month. And while there are about a thousand different EV rebates and incentives on offer (see Wednesday’s newsletter) finding and understanding how to apply these deals is a whole lot harder than trading in a Motorola Razr for an iPhone.
Regarding smooth transitions: Charging infrastructure remains another huge impediment. While EV range anxiety is perceived to be much more of an issue than it actually is, the fact remains that America’s charging infrastructure is inadequate–especially rural areas in the middle of the country. If California wants to get everyone in an EV as quickly as possible, the state will need to make EV charging as seamless as gassing up.
Another thing Kanter says made the transition to smartphones different from EVs and other technology. New phones offered immediate and obvious benefits. Maps and internet access alone would’ve sold the devices. They also connected customers to networks that were pretty much inaccessible without the device. Nobody wants to miss out on the group chat drama. “The minute they see things that are benefits for themselves, you don't have to argue with them anymore,” says Kanter. “The benefits are right there in front of them.”
The benefits of electric vehicles, on the other hand, are more subtle or even existential. Calculating the cost of recharging the vehicle or the cost per mile of driving almost requires some familiarity with high-school physics. While the math isn’t necessarily complex or difficult, it’s new and foreign enough to present a barrier. Yes, it’s usually cheaper per mile to drive an EV than to fill up with gas, but to figure that out you have to know what a kilowatt hour is and how many your car consumes per mile of travel and how much electricity costs per kilowatt hour. Climate benefits only really apply at a society- and perhaps planetary level.
Of course you have this entire debate playing out against a climate in which batteries and gasoline have somehow become political footballs. If “opposing any policy from the other side” remains de rigueur in Washington, EV adoption will be slowed by politics…until the transition is truly seamless and the benefits are impossible to ignore.
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David Shultz
David Shultz reports on clean technology and electric vehicles, among other industries, for dot.LA. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Outside, Nautilus and many other publications.
Salt AI Secures $10M to Untangle Healthcare’s Toughest Workflows
09:22 AM | September 26, 2025
🔦 Spotlight
Hello Los Angeles,
Not every startup raise deserves the spotlight, but this week’s news from Salt AI is worth paying attention to. The LA based company just closed a $10 million round led by Morpheus Ventures with participation from Struck Capital, Marbruck Investments and CoreWeave. The goal is to expand what it calls “contextual AI,” and if it works, it could quietly change how some of the most complex corners of healthcare get untangled.
Healthcare is notorious for slow, clunky systems. Even the smallest workflow, like drug trial data, clinical documentation, or compliance reviews, can drag on for weeks because the tools were never built for speed. Salt AI is betting that the fix is not flashy consumer apps or billion parameter models, but something more practical: AI that slots directly into the day to day grind of life sciences. Their platform lets non technical teams visually build and deploy workflows that would normally take months of coding. Drag, drop, done.
It sounds simple, but the implications are not. Imagine a biopharma team testing a new drug, able to cut through compliance hurdles in days instead of months. Or clinical researchers spinning up experiments and seeing usable results in real time. Salt AI’s pitch is not about replacing scientists, it is about giving them back time in an industry where time can literally mean lives.
The new capital will help scale engineering, grow its customer footprint, and push further into healthcare and biopharma. But more importantly, it gives Salt AI the chance to prove that “contextual AI” is more than a buzzword. If they succeed, the company will not just chip away at bottlenecks, it could reshape how innovation itself moves through one of the world’s most heavily regulated and mission critical industries.
🤝 Venture Deals
LA Companies
- Bonsai Health raised $7M in a seed round led by Bonfire Ventures and Wonder Ventures. The Santa Monica based company builds an agentic AI platform that automates front office healthcare workflows, things like patient outreach, scheduling and clinical follow-ups, working behind the scenes to keep patients connected to care and reduce administrative burden. It plans to use the funding to accelerate its specialty AI agents, expand into new medical specialties, and scale its commercialization nationwide. - learn more
- Genstore raised a $10M Seed round led by Weimob, with participation from Lighthouse Founders’ Fund. The Los Angeles based startup is building an AI-native e-commerce platform that lets merchants launch and run online stores using conversational prompts, automating everything from product listings and copywriting to customer service. The funds will go toward accelerating product development, expanding into new markets, and refining features that simplify online commerce for small and midsized sellers. - learn more
- TransAstra secured a $5M investment to scale its asteroid capture technology in partnership with NASA. The company aims to advance systems that can snag and repurpose small bodies in space, contributing to sustainable space infrastructure and debris mitigation. With this funding, TransAstra will expand development, deepen its relationship with NASA, and accelerate deployment of its capture hardware. - learn more
LA Venture Funds
- Fika Ventures led a seed round investing in MaxHome, joining BBG Ventures, Four Acres and 1Sharpe Ventures. MaxHome is building an AI-native platform focused on automating real estate transaction coordination, the messy, manual work that slows deals. Fika backed the team because it sees a huge opportunity in streamlining broker workflows, reducing errors, and improving the experience for agents and homebuyers alike. - learn more
- MANTIS Ventures joined NEA, Sequoia, NVIDIA, J.P. Morgan and others in leading a $50M Series B for Factory, valuing the AI coding company at $300 million. Factory builds “droids,” AI agents that automate software development tasks across environments, and claims their platform now tops the Terminal Bench benchmark. With this capital, Factory aims to expand enterprise adoption, deepen integrations, and scale its engineering team globally. - learn more
- SafeHill (formerly Tacticly) announced a $2.6M pre-seed round led by Mucker Capital, with participation from Chingona Ventures, Techstars, Chicago Early Growth Ventures, The Source Groups, and others. The Chicago-based cybersecurity startup is launching from stealth with SecureIQ, a continuous Threat Exposure Management platform that blends AI-driven testing with human validation to help organizations find and shore up attack paths. The funding will be used to expand engineering, enhance AI-assisted ethical hacking, deepen enterprise partnerships, and broaden compliance and monitoring capabilities. - learn more
- Prototype Capital was among the investors in Nilo Technologies’ $4M seed round, alongside backers like Supercell, a16z Speedrun, KFund, and Flex Capital. Nilo is building an AI native 3D creation platform that makes game development more accessible, letting creators build interactive worlds in their browser without complex tooling. The funding will help accelerate product development, bring in more users as “Founding Builders,” and expand the platform’s capabilities for real time, multiplayer creation. - learn more
- Rebel Fund participated in a $7.5M funding round for Indian fintech Gold Firm Gullak backed by Y Combinator. Gullak offers digital gold savings and lending solutions targeted at underbanked consumers in India. Rebel Fund’s investment will help Gullak scale operations, deepen financial inclusion, and expand its product offerings. - learn more
- B Capital joined Wellington Management, General Catalyst and others in a $400M funding round for Capital Rx, which is rebranding as Judi Health. The company, which operates a pharmacy benefits management platform, will use the capital to expand into full-spectrum health benefits, integrating medical, dental and vision claims processing with its existing PBM capabilities. The move positions Judi Health as a unified tech backbone for benefits administration across employer and plan clients. - learn more
- Supply Change Capital joined a seed funding round that raised $4.7M for Helios AI, a startup building the first AI co-pilot for food and agriculture supply chains. Helios’ platform combines climate modeling, commodity forecasting, and real-time data to help buyers and suppliers make smarter decisions in volatile markets. The funding will be used to scale the product, expand data coverage globally, and bring its AI tools to more players across the agri-food sector. - learn more
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Here's How To Get a Digital License Plate In California
03:49 PM | October 14, 2022
Photo by Clayton Cardinalli on Unsplash
Thanks to a new bill passed on October 5, California drivers now have the choice to chuck their traditional metal license plates and replace them with digital ones.
The plates are referred to as “Rplate” and were developed by Sacramento-based Reviver. A news release on Reviver’s website that accompanied the bill’s passage states that there are “two device options enabling vehicle owners to connect their vehicle with a suite of services including in-app registration renewal, visual personalization, vehicle location services and security features such as easily reporting a vehicle as stolen.”
Reviver Auto Current and Future CapabilitiesFrom Youtube
There are wired (connected to and powered by a vehicle’s electrical system) and battery-powered options, and drivers can choose to pay for their plates monthly or annually. Four-year agreements for battery-powered plates begin at $19.95 a month or $215.40 yearly. Commercial vehicles will pay $275.40 each year for wired plates. A two-year agreement for wired plates costs $24.95 per month. Drivers can choose to install their plates, but on its website, Reviver offers professional installation for $150.
A pilot digital plate program was launched in 2018, and according to the Los Angeles Times, there were 175,000 participants. The new bill ensures all 27 million California drivers can elect to get a digital plate of their own.
California is the third state after Arizona and Michigan to offer digital plates to all drivers, while Texas currently only provides the digital option for commercial vehicles. In July 2022, Deseret News reported that Colorado might also offer the option. They have several advantages over the classic metal plates as well—as the L.A. Times notes, digital plates will streamline registration renewals and reduce time spent at the DMV. They also have light and dark modes, according to Reviver’s website. Thanks to an accompanying app, they act as additional vehicle security, alerting drivers to unexpected vehicle movements and providing a method to report stolen vehicles.
As part of the new digital plate program, Reviver touts its products’ connectivity, stating that in addition to Bluetooth capabilities, digital plates have “national 5G network connectivity and stability.” But don’t worry—the same plates purportedly protect owner privacy with cloud support and encrypted software updates.
5 Reasons to avoid the digital license plate | Ride TechFrom Youtube
After the Rplate pilot program was announced four years ago, some raised questions about just how good an idea digital plates might be. Reviver and others who support switching to digital emphasize personalization, efficient DMV operations and connectivity. However, a 2018 post published by Sophos’s Naked Security blog pointed out that “the plates could be as susceptible to hacking as other wireless and IoT technologies,” noting that everyday “objects – things like kettles, TVs, and baby monitors – are getting connected to the internet with elementary security flaws still in place.”
To that end, a May 2018 syndicated New York Times news service article about digital plates quoted the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which warned that such a device could be a “‘honeypot of data,’ recording the drivers’ trips to the grocery store, or to a protest, or to an abortion clinic.”
For now, Rplates are another option in addition to old-fashioned metal, and many are likely to opt out due to cost alone. If you decide to go the digital route, however, it helps if you know what you could be getting yourself into.
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Steve Huff
Steve Huff is an Editor and Reporter at dot.LA. Steve was previously managing editor for The Metaverse Post and before that deputy digital editor for Maxim magazine. He has written for Inside Hook, Observer and New York Mag. Steve is the author of two official tie-ins books for AMC’s hit “Breaking Bad” prequel, “Better Call Saul.” He’s also a classically-trained tenor and has performed with opera companies and orchestras all over the Eastern U.S. He lives in the greater Boston metro area with his wife, educator Dr. Dana Huff.
steve@dot.la
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