Sci-Tech

Volvo gives up plan to sell only EVs by 2030

Published

4 days ago

September 5, 2024

Car company Volvo has announced it has abandoned its target to produce only fully electric cars by 2030, saying it now expects it will also be selling some hybrid vehicles by that date.

The car maker blamed changing market conditions for its decision to give up a target it had announced only three years ago.

It comes as the industry faces a slowdown in demand in some major markets for electric vehicles (EVs) and uncertainty due to the imposition of trade tariffs on EVs made in China.

Volvo, which has traditionally flaunted its environmental credentials, joins other major car makers General Motors and Ford, which have also rowed back on their EV ambitions.

Volvo now expects at least 90% of its output to be made up of both electric cars and plug-in hybrids by 2030.

The Swedish company may also sell a small number of so-called mild hybrids, which are more conventional vehicles with limited electrical assistance.

“We are resolute in our belief that our future is electric,” said Jim Rowan, chief executive of Volvo, in a statement.

“However, it is clear that the transition to electrification will not be linear, and customers and markets are moving at different speeds.”

The company also said the business climate for EVs had changed, due to factors such as a slow rollout of charging infrastructure and the withdrawal of consumer incentives.

A slowdown in demand for EVs has been felt particularly in Europe in part due to the end of subsidies for purchases in countries like Germany.

Registrations of EVs across the European Union dropped by nearly 11% in July, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers Association.

Volvo is majority-owned by Chinese car giant Geely and because it uses factories in China, it will also be affected by tariffs on imports of Chinese-made EVs in Europe and North America.

Last week, Canada announced it was imposing a 100% tariff on imports of China-made electric vehicles, after similar announcements by the US and the EU.

Western countries have accused China of subsidising its EV industry, giving its car makers an unfair advantage.

China has rejected those allegations and criticised the tariffs as “discriminatory”.

Ford has also been scaling back on its EV ambitions. Just last month, the US car giant announced it was scrapping plans for a large, three-row, all-electric sport utility vehicles (SUVs) and postponing the launch of its next electric pick-up truck.

Its rival General Motors has also been cutting EV production goals in the last year.

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Sci-Tech

Google’s lucrative ad tech business goes on trial

Published

11 hours ago

September 8, 2024

Lily Jamali

The US government is taking aim at the engine of Google’s immense wealth – its extremely lucrative ad tech business.

A trial beginning on Monday will hear the Department of Justice’s case that the search engine’s parent company Alphabet illegally operates a monopoly in the market.

The company earned more than $200 billion (£152bn) last year through the placing and selling of ads seen by internet users.

Alphabet has argued its success is due to the “effectiveness” of its services – but prosecutors say it has used its market dominance to stifle rivals.

“It is a really important industry that grabs billions of consumer dollars every year,” said Laura Phillips-Sawyer, a professor at the University of Georgia School of Law.

“I think all consumers have an interest in this litigation.”

It is the second major antitrust case the tech giant has faced in the US.

In August a judge ruled its dominance of search was illegal, with the penalties Google and Alphabet will face as a result of that decision so far unclear.

According to the lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice (DoJ) and a coalition of states in 2023, Google dominates the digital ad marketplace and has leveraged its market power to stifle innovation and competition.

Google meanwhile contends it is just one of several hundred companies that facilitate the placement of digital ads in front of consumers.

It argues that competition in the digital ad space is growing, not contracting – citing increased ad growth and revenues for companies such as Apple, Amazon and TikTok as proof in a blog post responding to the DoJ’s lawsuit in 2023.

Both sides will present their cases to US District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who is expected to deliver a verdict.

The bench trial comes on the heels of a landmark decision last month in a different monopoly case brought by the Justice Department against Google.

Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google acted illegally to squelch competition in its online search business.

“Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” he wrote.

During last year’s trial, Google said it dominated online search because it had a better product.

And the company is seemingly deploying a similar defence in the ad tech case.

When asked for a statement, it referred the BBC to its 2023 blog post, in which it states that “no-one is forced to use our advertising technologies – they choose to use them because they’re effective.”

Judge Mehta held a status conference on Friday as he begins the process of deciding on remedies for Google’s conduct.

“The DoJ clearly had a big win, and they’re going to ride that momentum,” Dan Ives, managing director at Wedbush Securities, told the BBC.

He said he expects those remedies to involve “business model tweaks, not a breakup” of the company.

Meanwhile, in Justice Brinkema’s courtroom, the arcane process that governs advertising technology could make the DoJ’s attempts to prove its case an uphill climb.

“We all use search. We all intuitively understand that product,” said Rebecca Haw Allensworth, an antitrust professor at Vanderbilt University Law School.

By comparison, advertising technology is “so complex that I think that’s going to be a real challenge for the government to make a clear, simple monopolisation argument here.”

The US is not the only country where regulators are unhappy with Google’s ad tech business.

On Friday, the UK Competition and Markets Authority said it believed Google was abusing its dominance in the ad tech industry, according to the findings of its initial investigation.

It said it found that Google used anti-competitive practices to dominate the market for online advertising technology – and the potentially unlawful behaviour could be harming thousands of UK publishers and advertisers.

A Google representative said the decision was based on a “flawed” understanding of the ad tech sector.

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Sci-Tech

Thieves snatched his phone in London

Published

2 days ago

September 6, 2024

Graham Fraser

Akara Etteh had his phone stolen as he walked out of a Tube station.

Akara Etteh Akara Etteh — Akara Etteh had his phone stolen as he walked out of a Tube station.

Early on a Saturday morning in April, Akara Etteh was checking his phone as he came out of Holborn tube station, in central London.

A moment later, it was in the hand of a thief on the back of an electric bike – Akara gave chase, but they got away.

He is just one victim of an estimated 78,000 “snatch thefts” in England and Wales in the year to March, a big increase on the previous 12 months.

The prosecution rate for this offence is very low – the police say they are targeting the criminals responsible but cannot “arrest their way out of the problem”. They also say manufacturers and tech firms have a bigger role to play.

Victims of the crime have been telling the BBC of the impact it has had on them – ranging from losing irreplaceable photos to having tens of thousands of pounds stolen.

And for Akara, like many other people who have their phone taken, there was another frustration: he was able to track where his device went, but was powerless to get it back.

Phone pings around London

He put his iPhone 13 into lost mode when he got home an hour or so later – meaning the thieves couldn’t access its contents – and turned on the Find My iPhone feature using his laptop.

This allowed Akara to track his phone’s rough location and almost immediately he received a notification to say it was in Islington. Eight days later, the phone was pinging in different locations around north London again.

In a move says he “wouldn’t recommend” with hindsight, he went to two of the locations his phone had been in to “look around”.

“It was pretty risky,” he said. “I was fuelled by adrenaline and anger.”

A map showing the phone's locations popping up across London, before appearing in China.

He didn’t speak to anyone, but he felt he was being watched and went home.

“I am really angry,” he said. “The phone is expensive. We work hard to earn that money, to be able to buy the handset, and someone else says ‘screw that’.”

Then, in May, just over a month after the theft, Akara checked Find My iPhone again – his prized possession was now on the other side of the world – in Shenzhen, China.

Akara gave up.

It is not uncommon for stolen phones to end up in Shenzhen – where if devices can’t be unlocked and used again, they are disassembled for parts.

The city is home to 17.6 million people and is a big tech hub, sometimes referred to as China’s Silicon Valley.

Police could not help

In the moments after Akara’s phone was stolen, he saw police officers on the street and he told them what had happened. Officers, he said, were aware of thieves doing a “loop of the area” to steal phones, and he was encouraged to report the offence online, which he did.

A few days later, he was told by the Metropolitan Police via email the case was closed as “it is unlikely that we will be able to identify those responsible”.

Akara subsequently submitted the pictures and information he had gathered from the locations where his stolen phone had been. The police acknowledged receipt but took no further action.

The Metropolitan Police had no comment to make on Akara’s specific case, but said it was “targeting resources to hotspot areas, such as Westminster, Lambeth and Newham, with increased patrols and plain clothes officers which deter criminals and make officers more visibly available to members of the community”.

Lost photos of mum

Many other people have contacted the BBC with their experiences of having their phones taken. One, James O’Sullivan, 44, from Surrey, says he lost more than £25,000 when thieves used his stolen device’s Apple Pay service.

Meanwhile, Katie Ashworth, from Newcastle, explained her phone was snatched in a park along with her watch, and a debit card in the phone case.

“The saddest thing was that the phone contained the last photos I had of my mum on a walk before she got too unwell to really do anything – I would do anything to get those photos back,” the 36-year-old says.

Again, she says, there was a lack of action from the police.

“The police never even followed it up with me, despite my bank transactions showing exactly where the thieves went,” she said.

“The police just told me to check Facebook Marketplace and local second-hand shops like Cex.”

‘Battle against the clock’ for police

So why are the police seemingly unable to combat this offence – or recover stolen devices?

PC Mat Evans, who has led a team working on this kind of crime for over a decade within West Midlands Police, admitted that only “quite a low number” of phones that are stolen actually get recovered.

He says the problem is the speed with which criminals move.

“Phones will be offloaded to known fences within a couple of hours,” he said.

“It’s always a battle against the clock immediately following any of these crimes, but people should always report these things to the police, because if we don’t know that these crimes are taking place, we can’t investigate them.”

And sometimes just one arrest can make a difference.

“When we do catch these criminals, either in the act or after the fact, our crime rates tank,” he said.

“Quite often that individual has been responsible for a huge swathe of crime.”

But the problem is not just about policing.

In a statement, Commander Richard Smith from the National Police Chiefs’ Council, which brings together senior officers to help develop policing strategy, said it would “continue to target” the most prolific criminals.

“We know that we cannot arrest our way out of this problem,” he said.

“Manufacturers and the tech industry have an important role in reducing opportunities for criminals to benefit from the resale of stolen handsets.”

Tracking and disabling

Mr Evans told the BBC phone snatchers will often wrap stolen phones in tinfoil to block its signal – meaning the device will only give a location when it is shown to others to be sold

PC Mat Evans PC Mat Evans — Mr Evans told the BBC phone snatchers will often wrap stolen phones in tinfoil to block its signal – meaning the device will only give a location when it is shown to others to be sold

Stolen phones can already be tracked and have their data erased through services such as “Find My iPhone” and “Find My Device”, from Android.

But policing minister Dame Diana Johnson said this week the government wanted manufacturers to ensure that any stolen phone could be permanently disabled to prevent it being sold second-hand.

Police chiefs will also be tasked with gathering more intelligence on who is stealing phones and where stolen devices end up.

A growing demand for second-hand phones, both in the UK and abroad, is believed to be a major driver behind the recent rise in thefts, the government said.

The Home Office is to host a summit at which tech companies and phone manufacturers will be asked to consider innovations that could help stop phones being traded illegally.

PC Evans said there was “no magic bullet”, but he said there was one thing manufacturers could do which would be “enormously helpful” to the police – more accurate tracking.

“At this moment in time, phone tracking is okay,” he said.

“But it’s not that scene in Total Recall yet, where you’re able to run around with a tracking device in your hand, sprinting down the road after a little bleeping dot.

“I appreciate it’s a big ask from the phone companies to make that a thing, but that would be enormously helpful from a policing perspective.”

Apple and Android did not provide the BBC with a statement, but Samsung said it was “working closely with key stakeholders and authorities on the issue of mobile phone theft and related crimes”.

Additional reporting by Tom Singleton

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Sci-Tech

Google abusing ad tech dominance, UK competition watchdog finds

Published

3 days ago

September 6, 2024

Chris Vallance

Google uses anti-competitive practices to dominate the market for online advertising technology, a UK watchdog has provisionally found.

The potentially unlawful behaviour could be harming thousands of UK publishers and advertisers, an investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has warned.

It accuses Google of preventing rivals from “competing on a level playing field” with its own tech for the billions of pounds spent by UK businesses on online advertising.

Google said the watchdog’s findings were “flawed” and said it would respond.

According to the CMA, the vast majority of businesses use Google’s services when placing digital ads on websites.

Google maintains it has a strong business incentive to help UK firms thrive, and argues that advertisers choose to use Google because its products work well and help their businesses grow.

The watchdog will now consider representations from Google before deciding what action to take.

If Google is found to have broken competition law, the watchdog could impose a financial penalty of up to 10% of annual worldwide group turnover and issue legally binding directions to the firm.

“We’ve provisionally found that Google is using its market power to hinder competition when it comes to the ads people see on websites,” Juliette Enser, the CMA’s interim executive director of enforcement, said in a statement.

She pointed out that many businesses were able to keep their digital content free by using revenue from digital adverts, which reach millions of people across the UK.

“That’s why it’s so important that publishers and advertisers – who enable this free content – can benefit from effective competition and get a fair deal when buying or selling digital advertising space,” she wrote.

But Google’s vice president of global ads, Dan Taylor argued the search giant’s advertising technology helped websites and apps fund their content, and effectively reach new customers.

“The core of this case rests on flawed interpretations of the ad tech sector. We disagree with the CMA’s view and we will respond accordingly,” he wrote.

Google’s activities in ad tech are also subject to continuing probes by the US Department of Justice and the European Commission.

Competition economist Dr Cristina Caffarra, told the BBC that while the CMA’s statement of objections certainly presented “another headache” for Google, the regulator was merely “joining the club” of those who have already taken action.

“The UK is by no means some sort of pathfinder here,” she said.

The Department of Justice, state of Texas – which along with nine other states sued Google over alleged abuse of its ad tech dominance in 2020 – and the EU are all far ahead, Dr Caffarra added.

In 2023, EU competition regulators told Google it might need to sell part of its ad-tech business to address their concerns.

But the tech-giant has argued this would be a “disproportionate” step.

Separately, Google is seeking to appeal a UK court decision in June to allow a £13.6bn collective-action lawsuit against it to proceed.

The case alleges the search giant behaved in an anti-competitive way which caused online publishers in the UK to lose money.

Google has vowed to oppose the claim “vigorously and on the facts”.

Additional reporting by Liv McMahon

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