Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) charging is still in its early days, but electrified fleets could soon provide the first opportunities to prove its significance.

“That’s where a lot of vehicle-to-grid has strong application—in fleet environments,” Brendan Jones, president of Blink Charging, told Emerging Tech Brew.

Typically, when we think of EV charging, we think about people pulling electrons into their EVs, but electric buses or vans that sit idle for predictable periods of time throughout the day could be used as networks of large batteries to support the power grid.

• And a lot of vehicles may fit the bill: More than 8 million trucks and automobiles in the US qualified as part of a fleet in 2020, according to the Department of Transportation.

Fleet electrification

The lower total cost of ownership over the lifetime of EVs could be enough to convince many fleet operators—from public transit to logistics companies—to make the switch from internal combustion engines.

Very few of these buses, trucks, and vans have made it to the roads so far, but that could change rapidly in the next few years. Some examples...

• Amazon is awaiting the first of the 100,000 delivery vans Rivian is building for the company. UPS ordered 10,000 vans from Arrival, an EV startup in the UK.
• President Biden wants to electrify the entire federal fleet—about 645,000 vehicles.
• Hertz announced in October that it would buy 100,000 cars from Tesla.

“When it comes to the medium- and heavy-duty segments, whether those are vans or small trucks or bigger trucks, those are taking a little longer right now, because vehicle availability has been limited,” Jonathan Levy, chief commercial officer at charging company EVgo, told Emerging Tech Brew. “But I think this next 12 to 24 months is a really big deal.”

Big picture: Beyond the incentive of improving energy resilience, fleet owners could actually make money by using V2G technology.

If EV fleet owners charge when demand is lower and electricity costs less, store that energy in the fleet’s batteries, and then send it back to the grid during peak periods when demand and cost for power are higher, fleet owners should be able to turn a profit.

Click here to read the full story.—GD

Yesterday, an ACLU–led group of activists proposed a big question at Microsoft’s annual shareholder meeting: Should the tech giant bow out of selling facial-recognition technology to government entities worldwide?

At the meeting, the group presented a shareholder proposal that demanded the company stop selling facial-recognition tech to governments. The proposal received just 4% of the vote—and would have been nonbinding, even if it had passed—but it highlights yet another dimension of activist pushback against facial-recognition tech, which research shows is biased against people with darker skin tones.

Behind the proposal...Is the Tech Equity Coalition, a group of civil rights and civil liberties organizations representing communities “historically targeted by surveillance” and convened by the ACLU of Washington.

• The TEC co-presented the proposal with Harrington Investments, an investment and shareholder advocacy group that has helped persuade publicly traded companies to increase economic, social, and environmental efforts.

“In 2020, after the murder of George Floyd, a number of tech companies—Microsoft, Amazon, and IBM—all placed different types of moratoria on sale of face recognition to police,” Jennifer Lee, tech and liberty project manager for the ACLU Washington, told us.

“But those self-imposed moratoria were limited and were contingent upon different factors, and some of those moratoria were unclear to which government entities they were and were not selling to,” she said.

For context, shareholder proposals are tools favored by activist investors looking to spark change in a company’s practices. They’re usually opposed by management and often fail, but with enough support from key shareholders, they can pass.

Zoom out: Back in 2020, Microsoft announced it would not sell facial-recognition tech to US police departments until federal regulations were put in place, and the company has remained committed to the moratorium. But the pressure for both companies and regulators to outright ban government use of facial recognition is ongoing.

In a statement representing Microsoft and its board, Hossein Nowar—Microsoft’s CVP, general counsel, and corporate secretary—said the proposal doesn’t recognize the company’s “extensive public commitments” to restricting the sale of facial-recognition tech.

Click here to read the full story.—HF

Nissan was among the very first of first movers when it released its Nissan Leaf EV in 2010.

Now, the company plans to spend twice as much money over the next five years on EVs as it has over the last decade, in hopes it can reclaim a dominant position in the industry. The Japanese automaker announced Monday that it would spend $17.6 billion on EVs over the next five years as it adds new battery-powered vehicles to its lineup.

• Nissan’s “Ambition 2030” plan includes concepts for future EVs, including a crossover, a convertible sports car, an adventure truck, and an SUV—dubbed Chill-Out, Max-Out, Surf-Out, and Hang-Out, respectively.
• By 2030, Nissan plans to roll out 23 new “electrified” vehicles with 15 models being fully electric, according to CNBC.

In 2011, Nissan’s then–CEO Carlos Ghosn said the company would sell a cumulative 1.5 million EVs by 2016, but failed to reach that goal. Nissan now aims to have half its global sales come from electric cars or hybrids by the end of the decade, but did not share specific EV sales targets this time around.

To achieve these goals…The company plans to expand its lithium-ion-battery production substantially. The capacity of Nissan’s plants in the US, UK, and Japan today is about 7.5 gigawatt-hours (GWh) per year. The automaker is working with Chinese battery maker Envision AESC Group to grow that battery production to 52 GWh in 2026 and 130 GWh in 2030.

Click here to read the full story.—GD

Stat: Clearview AI, the controversial facial-recognition company, was fined $22.6 million for breaching the UK’s data privacy regulations. If the fine holds up, it would amount to 60% of the company’s funding to-date.

Quote: “What is the dialogue that needs to happen between and across society about what technologies we develop and in what direction? And what kind of risk are we willing to take at each point of the journey?”—Azeem Azhar, tech analyst, entrepreneur, and author to Emerging Tech Brew

Read: Behold, the world’s first living, self-reproducing robots.

That’s a wrap: Your endless search for the perfect holiday gift is over. Our 2021 Holiday Gift Guide has something for everyone on your nice list. Check it out here.

Exactly one year ago, Quibi shut down.

The short-form, billionaire-backed, subscription-based, mobile-only, premium-video thing-that-was-not-a-thing had raised $1.75 billion to start, and sought to revolutionize video-watching with its “quick-bite” format.

Spoiler alert: It didn’t work. The company struggled to attract subscribers and shut down less than a year after its debut in April 2020.

Extremely large survey on AI sentiment alert: YouGov asked almost 19,000 people across 17 different geographies about their perception of AI and related tech. Some highlights:

• Respondents in Western markets generally feel less positive about AI than both respondents in Eastern markets and those in emerging markets.
• When it comes to automation, just 10% of respondents agree that they are “very well informed on it and possibilities it presents us.”
• Overall, respondents trust big tech companies to develop “ethical automated solutions” more than they trust governments. Nearly one-third (32%) trust Big Tech, compared to just 16% for their own government.

Catch up on the top Emerging Tech Brew stories from the past few editions:

• Tech is improving at an exponential rate. Here’s what that means for society
• Anatomy of an online shopping AI system
• Ford’s future is electric. But how fast can it get there?