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XIn Southern California, Volvo's Electric Revolution Is Ahead of Schedule
Zac Estrada is a reporter covering transportation, technology and policy. A former reporter for The Verge and Jalopnik, his work has also appeared in Automobile Magazine, Autoweek, Pacific Standard, Boston.com and BLAC Detroit. A native of Southern California, he is a graduate of Northeastern University in Boston. You can find him on Twitter at @zacestrada.

When Volvo rolls out its new EV, the 2022 C40 Recharge, early next year, the Swedish carmaker will feel confident about sales in at least one market: Southern California.
In June and July, Volvo Cars USA reported sales of plug-in hybrid and fully electric versions of its cars made up more than half of its sales in California.
"It's our biggest market within our biggest market [North America]," said Volvo spokesman Russell Datz. "I think the buyers in Southern California are progressive, tech-savvy. They like the idea of hybrids and EVs, and there are certainly lots of incentives. Not just in terms of money, but in terms of parking, charging, familiarity with the tech."
Even with last year's pandemic-induced slump in new car sales, plug-in hybrid and fully electric vehicle sales stood at just over 8% of the market. Nationally, plug-in vehicles made up 1.8% of sales last year, a record.
Datz says Volvo also has another strong plug-in market in suburban Chicago, but the share of hybrid and electric Volvos sold in June and July for the entire U.S. hovered around 20%. That means not all of its U.S strongholds are on board with its electric movement — especially in places with cold and snowy seasons.
"This is a big roadblock, not just for Volvo, but any consumer new to the idea of owning an electric car," said Robby DeGraff, an analyst with Tustin-based AutoPacific. "Regardless of the automaker, this is something that really needs to be addressed with language that's super clear and easy to understand."
There's also the issue of maximum range — that is, how far the car can go on a full charge. Volvo's first all-electric car, the 2021 XC40 Recharge SUV, is rated by the Environmental Protection Agency to get up to 208 miles before it runs out of power. Early estimates put the C40 at about 210 in EPA testing.
That's a step behind some of their competitors. New EVs from Ford and Volkswagen, for example, get closer to 250 or offer different battery sizes. The four cars that Tesla now offers all start around 240 miles of range as a base — and are generally cheaper than Volvo's offerings.
Volvo's C40 electric vehicle
DeGraff says Volvo's larger SUVs are its bestselling "moneymakers," so when those models go all-electric in the next two to four years, range and price will be more comparable to their luxury rivals.
"If Volvo can offer full-electric versions of its lineup at prices that are comparable in a sense to the gas models, that'll be their key to success," he said.
The $58,750 C40 will include a leather-free interior, an advanced driver assistance system that performs minor steering functions, and built-in Google Maps and Google's voice assistant.
Even for California, the C40 Recharge will be a big test. The C40 is only available as an electric car. There is no internal combustion engine option at all. It's the first new Volvo without a gasoline or hybrid-powered counterpart, which is how the company will introduce its new cars until the entire line is electric in 2030.
There's an online component to the way all electric Volvos will be sold. Customers have been able to reserve the car since the C40 was first announced earlier this year. Even before the prices were announced last week they've been able to visit Volvo's U.S. website and put down a $500 place in line, and are still able to.
"I think EV customers are different from standard vehicle buyers, at least now," Datz said. "Frankly, the Tesla model is what they're most familiar with and Tesla has been successful. I defy you to find a customer who would turn down a simpler car buying experience, that's what we're trying to achieve."
But unlike Tesla and other EV startups, Volvo's partners in this new model are its franchised dealers. All of its U.S. dealers will continue to provide the option of a traditional sales experience to customers. And while those will continue to continue to provide in-person sales and repair service for electrics and other Volvos, the dealers in California and a few other states have not been pleased with some of the company's new sales strategies.
In August 2019, the California New Car Dealers Association were granted approval by the state to protest a program called Care by Volvo. The subscription-based service let customers pick a car online and, for one set price, pay for the car, insurance and any minor damage costs. And dealers weren't allowed add-on usual fees or options.
While Volvo uses this program successfully in other countries where laws are different, it's continued to refine the system in the U.S. to get it into more than 40 states as of now. But not in some big EV markets like California.
"We can't come in and say we're going online only and cut out all the dealers," Datz said. "One, it's bad business, and, two, it's illegal."
For now, Volvo's EVs have a sort of hybrid model when it comes to sales. And even those customers who choose to reserve and purchase the car online will also pick a local dealer to work with to get the car once it arrives.
What the company won't do is take too much inspiration from its subsidiary, Polestar, when it comes to sales. Polestar's sales process is almost entirely online, and the only brick-and-mortar pieces are so-called Spaces, which are retail storefronts where people can sit in the car and test drive it. One in Santa Monica opened last year and another is slated for Orange County later this year.
Datz says Polestar works independently and Volvo isn't looking at too many of that brand's sales strategies right now. But that could change.
"That's where customers are headed," he said. "It's very difficult to argue with a concept like Amazon where you just click a button and it shows up. Will that happen with cars? Maybe."
Editor's Note: This story was updated to clarify Volvo's relationship with its existing dealer network and the implementation of the online sales component of the 2022 C40.
Zac Estrada is a reporter covering transportation, technology and policy. A former reporter for The Verge and Jalopnik, his work has also appeared in Automobile Magazine, Autoweek, Pacific Standard, Boston.com and BLAC Detroit. A native of Southern California, he is a graduate of Northeastern University in Boston. You can find him on Twitter at @zacestrada.
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A New Tide of LA Startups Is Tackling the National Childcare Crisis
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.
The pandemic exacerbated a problem that has been long bubbling in the U.S.: the childcare crisis.
According to a survey of people in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) careers conducted by the city’s WiSTEM Los Angeles program and shared exclusively with dot.LA, the pandemic exposed a slew of challenges across STEM fields. The survey—which consisted of 181 respondents from L.A.County and was conducted between March 2021 and 2022— involved respondents across medical fields, technical professions and science industries who shared the pandemic’s effects on their professional or education careers.
The survey found 60% of the respondents, primarily women, were balancing increased caretaking roles with work or school responsibilities. And while caretaking responsibilities grew, 49% of respondents said their workload also increased during the pandemic.
“The pandemic threw a wrench into lots of folks' experiences both professionally and academically,” said Kathryne Cooper, a health tech investor who sits on the advisory board of WiSTEM. “So we need to acknowledge that.”
In the L.A. area, an increasing number of childcare startups are aiming to address this massive challenge that is a growing national crisis. The U.S. has long dealt with a crippling childcare infrastructure plagued by low wages and a labor shortage in preschools and daycares, but the COVID-19 crisis made it worse. During the pandemic, women left the workforce due to the lack of childcare and caretaking resources. By 2021, women made up the lowest percentage of the workforce since 1988, according to the National Women’s Law Center. Despite the pandemic forcing everyone indoors, caretaking duties fell disproportionately on women.
“I almost actually left my job because everything that I looked at was either waitlisted or the costs were so astronomical that it probably made sense for me to stay at home rather than pay someone to actually look after my child,” said Jessica Chang, the CEO of childcare startup WeeCare.
The Marina del Rey-based WeeCare, one of the startups that helps people open their own childcare facilities, announced it raised $12 million in April (to go along with an additional $5 million in bridge funding raised during the pandemic). The company helps people build daycare centers and works with employers to provide access to WeeCare centers and construct child care benefits programs.
Some of these startups strive to boost the number of daycare centers by helping operators with financial costs, licensing fees and scheduling. Wonderschool, a San Francisco-based child care startup, raised $25 million in January and assisted with hundreds of childcare facilities in L.A.-based Playground, which raised $3 million in seed funding last year per PitchBook. Playground acts as an in-house platform for childcare providers to communicate with staff and parents, track attendance, report student behavior and provide automatic invoicing services.
L.A.-based Brella, which launched in 2019, raised $5 million in seed funding in January to create a tech-enabled daycare scheduling platform that could meet the demand of flexible childcare as parents navigate a hybrid work environment, and recently opened a new location in Hollywood. The startup aims to address the labor shortage among childcare workers by paying its workers roughly $25 an hour and offering mental health benefits and career development opportunities for its educators.
“It's this huge disconnect in our society because these are really important people who are doing arguably one of the most important educational jobs,” said Melanie Wolff, co-founder of childcare startup Brella. “They often don't get benefits. They don't have a lot of job security.”
Venture capital funding has poured into the relatively new childcare sector. A slew of parent-tech companies aimed at finding flexible child care and monitoring children saw $1.4 billion worth of venture investments in 2021, according to PitchBook, largely to meet the demands of parents in a pandemic era who have more flexible work commutes and require more tech-enabled solutions.
“I think a lot of it has to do with what employers expect for workers,” said Darby Saxbe, an associate professor of psychology and family relationships expert at USC. “There's still a lot more stigma for men to build their work around caregiving responsibilities–there's a lot of evidence that men are often discouraged from taking paternity leave, even if it's available.”
Childcare benefits are also becoming a more attractive incentive as workers grapple with unorthodox work schedules in a hybrid setting.
“Employers, because of COVID, were having a hard time retaining and recruiting employees,” said Chang. “And they were actually incentivized to actually find a solution to help the employees.”
WeeCare primarily partners with employers of essential workers, like schools, hospitals and grocery stores, and the benefits programs account for the majority of WeeCare’s revenue.
Childcare works are part of a massive labor shortage in caretaker roles that also include nurses, and health aids for the eldery. These workers, which allow women to maintain careers in STEM and other high-paying industries, are vital, according to Saxbe.
“Women can advance in the workplace,” Saxbe said. “But if there's no support at home and there is no one who is helping take care of kids and elderly people, women can't just advance in a vacuum.”
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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.
MaC Venture Capital Raises $203M for Its Second Fund
Decerry Donato is dot.LA's Editorial Fellow. Prior to that, she was an editorial intern at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.
While venture capital funding has taken a hit this year, that hasn’t stopped MaC Venture Capital from raising $203 million for its second fund.
The Los Angeles-based, Black-led VC firm said Monday that it had surpassed its initial $200 million goal for the fund, which dot.LA reported in January, over the span of seven months. MaC said it expects to invest the capital in up to 50 mostly seed-stage startups while remaining “sector-agnostic.”
“We love seed-stage companies because that’s where most of the value is created,” MaC managing general partner Marlon Nichols told dot.LA. While the firm has invested in local ventures like NFT gaming platform Artie, space startup Epsilon3 and autonomous sensor company Spartan Radar, Nichols said MaC—whose portfolio companies span from Seattle to Nairobi—would continue to eye ventures across the rest of the country and world.
“Talent is ubiquitous; access to capital is not,” Nichols noted. “What they’re building needs to matter; we’ve got to believe that this group of founders is the best team building in the space, period.”
Launched in 2019, MaC is led by four founding partners: VC veteran Nichols, former Washington, D.C. mayor Adrian Fenty, and former William Morris Endeavor talent agents Charles D. King and Michael Palank. Nichols described the team’s collective background in government, consulting, media, entertainment and talent management as its “superpower.”
In a venture capital industry where few people of color are decision-makers, MaC Venture Capital has looked to wield its influence to provide opportunities for founders of color. The firm says 69% of its portfolio companies were started by BIPOC founders and 36% are led by women, while MaC has also diversified its own ranks by adding female partners Zhenni Liu and Haley Farnsworth.
MaC’s second investment fund nearly doubled the size of the firm’s $110 million first fund, which it closed in March 2021. The new fund’s repeat institutional investors include Goldman Sachs, ICG Advisors, StepStone, the University of Michigan, the George Kaiser Family Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation, while the likes of Illumen Capital and the Teachers’ Retirement System of the State of Illinois also pitched in as new investors.
“It’s a great combination of having affirmation from people who have been with us from the beginning and new people coming in that want to be a part of it,” Fenty told dot.LA.
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Decerry Donato is dot.LA's Editorial Fellow. Prior to that, she was an editorial intern at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.
California Debates Data Privacy as SCOTUS Allows Abortion Bans
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.
The United States Supreme Court called a Mississippi law banning abortion after 15 weeks constitutional on Friday, overturning the country’s founding abortion rights decision Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court also upheld that there cannot be any restriction on how far into a pregnancy abortion can be banned.
When Politico first broke the news months before SCOTUS’s final ruling, a slew of bills entered Congress to protect data privacy and prevent the sale of data, which can be triangulated to see if a person has had an abortion or if they are seeking an abortion and have historically been used by antiabortion individuals who would collect this information during their free time.
Democratic lawmakers led by Congresswoman Anna Eshoo called on Google to stop collecting location data. The chair of the Federal Trade Commission has long voiced plans for the agency to prevent data collection. A week after the news, California Assembly passed A.B. 2091, a law that would prevent insurance companies and medical providers from sharing information in abortion-related cases (the state Senate is scheduled to deliberate on it in five days).
These scattered bills attempt to do what health privacy laws do not. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, was established in 1996 when the Internet was still young and most people carried flip phones. The act declared health institutions were not allowed to share or disclose patients’ health information. Google, Apple and a slew of fertility and health apps are not covered under HIPAA, and fertility app data can be subpoenaed by law enforcement.
California’s Confidentiality of Medical Information Act (or CMIA), goes further than HIPAA by encompassing apps that store medical information under the broader umbrella of health institutions that include insurance companies and medical providers. And several how-tos on protecting data privacy during Roe v. Wade have been published in the hours of the announcement.
But reproductive rights organizations say data privacy alone cannot fix the problem. According to reproductive health policy think tank Guttmacher Institute, the closest state with abortion access to 1.3 million out-of-state women of reproductive age is California. One report from the UCLA Center on Reproductive Health, Law and Policy estimates as many as 9,400 people will travel to Los Angeles County every year to get abortions, and that number will grow as more states criminalize abortions.
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.