Author Archives: GretchenGatliff

Sharing tractors? There’s an app for that.

by GretchenGatliff Posted on October 17, 2016

The company is reportedly focusing instead on developing software for driverless vehicles that could be used by other car companies.

The shift has led to a mass exodus at Apple’s secretive car division, Project Titan, anonymous sources tell Bloomberg News. Hundreds of people from the once-1,000-person-strong team have either been reassigned to other divisions, been let go, or quit, though some new people have also been added.

In 2008, after Apple released the iPhone, Steve Jobs talked with Tony Fadell, a senior VP at Apple, about taking on a car as the company’s next game-changer, and redesigning it from scratch. “What would a dashboard be?” Fadell said, describing one conversation. “What would seats be? How would you fuel it or power it?”

But those big dreams seem to have hit hard realities. Among other things, Apple had trouble getting suppliers to make small quantities of parts, Bloomberg reports. Ultimately, it’s very difficult for a company to get into the car manufacturing business — even an established tech behemoth. And for those of us who’d like to see more innovation in the transportation sector, that’s too bad.

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Sharing tractors? There’s an app for that.

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The Feds Have a Secret Plan to Stop the Next Car Pollution Scandal

by GretchenGatliff Posted on September 25, 2015

Mother Jones

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Days after Volkswagen admitted that half a million cars it sold in the US contained software enabling them to evade clean air laws, top Environmental Protection Agency officials said they are planning to toughen emissions testing for all automakers. The EPA now plans to examine vehicles for so-called defeat devices.

In a letter released this morning, the EPA said that federal regulations allow the agency to “test or require testing on any vehicle at a designated location, using driving cycles and conditions that may reasonably be expected to be encountered in normal operation and use, for the purposes of investigating a potential defeat device.” The EPA said it planned to begin conducting these additional procedures when vehicles undergo emissions and fuel economy testing, and it warned that the new procedures “may add time to the confirmatory test process and…additional mileage may be accumulated.”

“We are stepping up our testing,” Janet McCabe, the EPA’s acting assistant administrator, told reporters. “We take seriously our responsibility to oversee the enforcement of clean air regulations. The VW violations have made it clear that we need to adapt our oversight.”

Last Friday, the EPA issued a citation to Volkswagen for equipping nearly 500,000 diesel-powered cars sold since 2009 with software that can detect when the car is undergoing federal testing for smog-forming emissions. During the test, the cars meet the standard; under normal driving conditions, emissions are up to 40 times higher. Similar devices were installed on some 11 million VW cars worldwide, producing illegal air pollution that may contribute to thousands of deaths. The resulting scandal devastated VW’s share value and forced the ouster of its CEO.

The EPA is currently investigating the full extent of the illegal software program and could ultimately deliver up to $18 billion in fines. Today’s announcement doesn’t affect that investigation. Officials said that no recall has been announced and that if one is eventually called for, VW drivers will hear about it directly from the company.

EPA chief Gina McCarthy said the agency is concerned that other automakers could have similar devices that have gone undetected. Even if they don’t, VW is responsible for a new raft of regulatory headaches for all companies that want to sell cars in the US.

Chris Grundler, director of the EPA’s Office of Transportation, wouldn’t say how exactly his agency would sniff out defeat devices. But it would add additional time and rigor to the testing process, he said.

“We’re not going to tell them what the test is,” he said. “They don’t need to know.”

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The Feds Have a Secret Plan to Stop the Next Car Pollution Scandal

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Here’s How Many McDonald’s Workers Aren’t Getting Raises

by GretchenGatliff Posted on April 2, 2015

Mother Jones

On Wednesday, McDonald’s announced that starting this July, it will increase wages for the 90,000 workers who are directly employed by one of the company’s restaurants. The plan is to bring the current hourly wage up by $1; the average McDonald’s employee will make $9.90 by July and $10 by 2016. Benefits like paid vacation time will be available for employees who have worked for the company for more than a year.

The raise, however, only applies to employees of the actual restaurant. The 750,000 workers employed by franchises, which make up 90 percent of McDonald’s restaurants, are not included in this wage hike.

“The fact that a $1.00 raise for 90,000 workers is headline news is evidence of how low the bar has been set,” the Economic Policy Institute noted in a statement. “All workers should receive regular wage increases as productivity rises, and yet despite rising productivity, Americans’ wages have been stagnant for three-and-a-half decades.”

The battle over meager fast food pay has been in the spotlight since November 2012, when the Fight for $15 campaign began with 200 New York fast food workers talking part in a walk out. Since then, the group, which protests for a minimum wage of $15 and the right to organize, has grown into a national movement. This past September, more than 400 individuals were arrested in 32 cities during a Fight for $15 multi-state strike.

Much of the frustration over wage inequity stems from the gaps between worker pay and the large sums that CEOs of fast food companies are raking in. In 2013, the EPI published a report which found that those at the helm of the nation’s top 25 restaurant corporations were bringing in an average of 721 times more than the average minimum wage worker.

“It’s a picture of uncontrolled greed,” EPI vice president Ross Eisenbrey told my colleague Jaeah Lee this past summer. “How can it be that the CEOs are making more in half a day than many of their workers are making in an entire year—and yet they can’t afford to raise the pay of those workers?”

The answer many franchise owners give when asked about wage hikes is that their profit margins are too thin to support any employee pay increases. It’s worth noting, though, that in Denmark, the base rate for fast food workers is $20 an hour. This past fall New York Times reporters Liz Alderman and Steven Greenhouse wondered: “If Danish chains can pay $20 an hour, why can’t those in the United States pay the $15 an hour that many fast-food workers have been clamoring for?”

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Here’s How Many McDonald’s Workers Aren’t Getting Raises

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