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USA Today
Volkswagen is trying to push past the dieselgate scandal and polish its brand in America around a fresh set of high-tech autos.
Just before heading to a major auto show in Frankfurt, VW brand chief Herbert Diess told an in-house Volkswagen publication the automaker’s future compass will point directly to the new technology –- electric cars powered entirely by batteries.
“In the old world, it is Toyota, Hyundai, and the French carmakers. In the new world it is Tesla,” Diess said, referring to a nimble California manufacturing startup influencing Detroit, Shanghai, Stuttgart and Tokyo with its electric-car ambitions.
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The Detroit Bureau
Study shows unbelted occupants account for half of deaths.
While seat belt usage rates in the United States are – and have been – above 90% for more than a decade, there is still a “problem” area: rural America.
According to a new study from Centers for Disease Control, America’s most rural counties had motor-vehicle death rates 3 to 10 times higher than those in the most urban counties, largely due to a lack of seatbelt use.
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Royal Dutch Shell Group
Royal Dutch Shell is preparing to open Britain’s first “no-petrol” service station in the capital next year as part of its drive towards cleaner motoring.
The forecourt is expected to offer motorists biofuels, electric vehicle charge points and hydrogen cell refuelling instead of traditional petrol and diesel pumps.
Meanwhile, the buildings are due to be powered by renewable energy from solar panels on the forecourt roof.
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The Verge
They’re completely airless, last virtually forever, and could be the perfect tire for our autonomous future.
Michelin, the 128-year-old tire manufacturer based in Clermont-Ferrand, France, recently unveiled a 3D-printed tire concept that it says could be the ideal ride for self-driving cars. It just needs to figure out how to actually manufacture them first.
Dubbed “Vision,” these spidery, psychedelic-looking sponges are printed from bio-sourced and biodegradable materials, including natural rubber, bamboo, paper, tin cans, wood, electronic and plastic waste, hay, tire chips, used metals, cloth, cardboard, molasses, and orange zest.
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Fortune
You know a topic is trending when the likes of Tesla’s Elon Musk and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg publicly bicker about its potential risks and rewards.
In this case, Musk says he fears artificial intelligence will lead to World War III because nations will compete for A.I. superiority. Zuckerberg, meanwhile, has called such doomsday scenarios “irresponsible” and says he is optimistic about A.I.
But another tech visionary sees the future as more nuanced. Ray Kurzweil, an author and director of engineering at Google, thinks, in the long run, that A.I. will do far more good than harm.
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By Wendy Eichenbaum
Remember the last time you participated in a product brainstorming session.
You sat with your colleagues in a meeting room, and came up with as many ideas as possible. At the end, everyone organized the ideas into logical groups. The moderator recorded all of the ideas. You went off to your next meeting.
A few months later you heard about the new features for the product. But these were the same ideas that management had discussed all year. What happened to all of those innovative ideas you came up with during the brainstorm?
Brainstorming is a spontaneous method to compile ideas. It allows team members to consider new and better ways to delight the customers. But too often, the effort ends there. Exciting ideas are forgotten in meeting notes. Team members never see their own ideas considered. They feel no sense of ownership, and lose interest in participating. Brainstorming it a great generation tool, but alone it’s not sufficient to generate new designs.
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Strategy-Business
The list of human foibles is long. The 2015 s+b article “Beyond Bias” lists 24 of the most common biases, including blind spots, the illusion of control, and the concept of sunk costs.
Since the early 2000s, Princeton University psychology professor Alexander Todorov has been studying one of those long-standing human foibles: the first impression.
In his new book, Face Value, Todorov pulls together all he’s learned about first impressions. At first glance — and upon a careful reading — it makes for a fascinating and thorough examination of the subject.
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