LACK OF PLANNING

500-Mile-Long Power Line Hits a Roadblock: Ice Age Fossils

Isaac Schultz
Sat, March 4, 2023 

Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument

A proposal to build a nearly 500-mile-long stretch of transmission line in Nevada has been further delayed due to the discovery of possible fossil deposits in its path.

According to E&E News, an environmental review of the transmission line plan, originally slated to be released in January, may not be made public for a public comment period until May. That’s because the path of the Greenlink West power line, as it’s been proposed by NV Energy, runs through 1.5 miles of Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument, established as a National Park Service site in 2014.

The monument contains thousands of fossils from the Pleistocene Epoch, commonly known as the Ice Age. For about 90,000 years—until around 12,500 years ago—the region was full of wetlands that preserved the Pleistocene fauna, from mammoths and saber-toothed cats to familiar creatures like coyotes, jackrabbits, and snails.

The 22,650-acre park sits north of Las Vegas; the transmission line’s 470-mile-long proposed path slices through the monument and from there roughly runs parallel to Nevada’s western border north to the outskirts of Reno.

According to the Bureau of Land Management’s website, “the Greenlink West Project would be a system of new 525-kilovolt (kV), 345-kV, 230-kV, and 120-kV electric transmission facilities on private, state, and federal lands between northern and southern Nevada.”

As it is currently outlined, the power line would take a 1.5-mile-long path through the national park, 5 feet within its borders near a road that cuts the park into two segments.

The NPS cautioned in comments filed to BLM last year that “The construction of the transmission line…will have the potential to impact paleontological resources, including an undetermined number of fossil remains and unrecorded fossil sites,” according to the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

The National Park Service proposed using ground-penetrating radar to detect fossil deposits in the area. Those scans, funded by NV Energy, were completed by Geotech Global Consulting, and the results were published in September. The report described the detection of Pleistocene vertebrate fossils within the national monument.

One scan “exhibited a collection of anomalies that could well be vertebrate fossils,” according to the report, written by Thomas Urban, a research scientist at Geotech Global Consulting. (Urban and colleagues previously used ground-penetrating radar to find human and proboscidean trace fossil beds in White Sands National Monument in New Mexico.)

Another scan conducted on deposits “that exhibited a large amount of small bone fragments eroding out of the surface” detected “a number of anomalies … some of which resemble vertebrate fossils.” A third scan revealed proboscidean tusks poking out of an escarpment.

All told, the deepest scan found possible fossils deeper than 33 feet (10 meters). Because of the uncertainty of what was causing the anomalies, ground-truth observations (and excavations) may be necessary to understand exactly what the power line could disturb, should it go ahead as planned.

As noted by E&E News, the Bureau of Land Management has a smattering of federal and protected lands to navigate, including an Air Force base, Native American tribal sites, and the Desert National Wildlife Refuge, the largest wildlife refuge outside of Alaska.

How BLM and NV Energy plan to navigate the legal quagmire remains to be seen; the public comment period following the environmental review’s eventual release may bring its own suite of complaints.

More: Bones of Mammoths Seemingly Butchered by Humans Found in New Mexico

PUBLIC OWNERSHIP IS THE WAY TO GO

More than half of US nursing homes are unprofitable—and it's about to get a lot worse

Nursing homes are losing both money and staff, leaving those in need with few options.

By Nate DiCamillo
and Annalisa Merelli
Published February 8, 2023

When the pandemic emergency declarations end on May 11, so too will covid-era government subsidies. And when that happens, perhaps no industry will be more affected than the nursing home industry.

That’s why the American Health Care Association (AHCA) is sounding the alarm. The group, which which represents thousands of nursing homes, warned this week that more than half of all nursing homes in the US are losing money because of rising healthcare costs, low Medicaid reimbursements, and fewer people living in them.

If the government doesn’t do something to help soon, ACHA said seniors could be displaced, families forced to travel farther to see their loved ones, and hospitals overwhelmed with patients they have nowhere to send.

“The current system in combination with the economic and workforce crisis is unsustainable,” Beth Martino, an ACHA spokesperson, told Quartz in an email. “As [covid funding] is being phased out, tragically, we may see more nursing homes close ... Without considerable investments, nursing homes will not be able to compete for the workers they need and rebound from the pandemic.”
Why nursing homes are losing money

Rachel Werner, executive director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, told Quartz that the pandemic only made worse a crisis that had been growing for half a century, mostly because Medicaid underpays for care in nursing homes.

According to ACHA, more than 60% of nursing home patients are on Medicaid, and it only pays 86% of their costs.

Once the pandemic arrived, nursing homes — facing already stressed budgets — had to spend more on things like personal protective equipment. The homes also lost money on short-term patients who would have stayed in a nursing home facility to recover after elective surgery (which wasn’t available during the height of the pandemic), and on long-term residents who died from covid (more than 160,000 nursing home residents have died because of the virus, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).

The pandemic also accelerated a trend toward a preference for receiving nursing home-style care at home. This trend is partially the result of staffing issues, but also because patients realized during the pandemic that they could get a lot of the same care while living in their own homes.

“One of the things we learned about during the pandemic about healthcare delivery is that we can provide a lot of care outside of the four walls of a hospital or a nursing home or even a doctor’s office with remote monitoring, telehealth, and home visits,” Werner said. “That preference persists even as the pandemic wanes in our minds.”

So even while elective surgeries have recovered, nursing home occupancy has not recovered to pre-pandemic levels, Werner said.

The nursing shortage at nursing homes

Staff shortages, meanwhile, have forced reductions in new admissions, cutting revenue even further — which in turn means less money to attract qualified nurses. It is a vicious cycle that predates the pandemic. And it is only getting worse.

Compared to 2020, the nursing home workforce is still more than 280,000 nurses short. Though nurse salaries have gone up by about 30% between 2020 and 2022, a large number of qualified candidates aren’t interested in joining the field. That’s because nurses are in high demand across all healthcare sectors, which means they can make more money elsewhere.

Nursing homes also gained a reputation for being a high-risk work environment since the onslaught of covid. As of Jan. 22, nearly 3,000 nursing home workers have died from the virus. And many of those who survived say they are burned out.

ACHA predicts that at the current pace it will take until 2027 for the industry’s workforce to get back to pre-pandemic levels, if it ever ca

What can be done to save the nursing home industry?

Numerous nursing homes have closed or merged. And about 5% of them have turned to private equity investment — which can come with all kinds of difficult demands on staff and finances — to stay afloat. This would indicate the industry is headed towards a tipping point.

Despite the concerns, however, there’s been little movement by Congress to pass legislation that might alleviate the shortage of healthcare workers in nursing homes. The Biden administration said it would release a staffing mandate in the spring of 2023, but it hasn’t indicated how the government — or the nursing home industry — would pay for such a mandate.

Werner said that Medicaid rates for nursing home care need to be increased, and the benefits should be regulated federally so that the rates paid for nursing home care are uniform across states.

Expanding healthcare coverage for long-term care would also help, she said. Since most private insurance companies don’t cover such care, seniors are often forced to choose between financial independence and getting the help they need. And seniors who have assets or income above the Medicaid eligibility threshold have to spend down their excess cash on medical bills if they want to qualify.

Nursing home workers also need to be paid more, with better benefits, and have an opportunity for advancement within the nursing home industry, Werner said.

Werner also said it remains difficult to see when private equity firms are investing in nursing homes despite the Biden administration’s attempt to increase transparency by releasing ownership data for 15,000 nursing homes.

This makes it harder to hold nursing homes accountable for how they are spending money and easier for private equity firms to take over and implement the kind of cost-cutting strategies that have — according to widespread reporting — increased mortality in nursing homes, both during covid and before it.

HINDUTVA CENSORSHIP
INSIGHT-BBC tax raids shine light on Indian media freedom under Modi, some journalists say

Sat, March 4, 2023 
By Krishn Kaushik, Devjyot Ghoshal, Saurabh Sharma and Aditya Kalra

NEW DELHI, March 4 (Reuters) - At around 11 a.m. on Feb 14, some 20 Indian tax officials and police burst into the BBC's offices in New Delhi, shouting at staff to step away from their computers and hand over their mobile phones, according to two people present.

At the company's bureau in India's financial capital, Mumbai, tax officials launched a second raid. The government said the BBC had failed to respond to repeated requests to clarify its tax affairs related to the profits and remittances from its Indian operations.

The BBC has said it is cooperating fully with tax authorities and hopes to resolve matters quickly, adding its journalists would continue to report "without fear or favour". It declined to comment for this story.

Three weeks before the raids - which the government called a "survey" - the BBC released a two-part documentary that included an examination of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's role in sectarian riots in his home state of Gujarat in 2002 when he was chief minister there. The documentary, which was only broadcast in Britain, accused Modi of fostering a climate of impunity that fuelled the violence.

Modi's government has called the documentary "biased" and reflecting a "colonial mindset". Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar told the ANI news agency last week it was "politics by another means" and suggested its timing was intended to undermine support for Modi. The BBC has said it stands by the reporting.

The 72-year-old prime minister enjoys high approval ratings and is expected to run for reelection next year for the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

In late January, Indian authorities ordered the removal of social media posts sharing the documentary and police detained some Indian students who tried to screen it, saying it would disturb the peace. They were released shortly afterwards.

The tax inspections at the BBC's offices - during which officials cloned the mobile phones of some senior staff and searched computers, according to the two people present - have highlighted the concerns of some journalists and media rights watchdogs about what they say is a decline in press freedom under Modi.

Reuters spoke to eight Indian journalists, industry executives and media analysts who said that some media which reported critically on the government have been targeted with inspections by government agencies, the suspension of state advertising, and the arrest of reporters.

"There's never been a golden age of Indian journalism," said Abhinandan Sekhri, chief executive of independent online media group, Newslaundry, whose offices in New Delhi were surveyed twice by tax officials in 2021 after critical coverage of Modi's administration. "But it has never been like it is now."

A criminal case filed by the tax department against Sekhri alleging tax evasion and forging a valuation report was thrown out by a judge in Delhi in November. Sekhri has sued the government for attacks on his fundamental rights and freedom of expression; the case is being heard in the Delhi High court.

Modi's government has vigorously denied the BBC tax inspection - the first against an international news organisation in decades - was a response to the film.

"The BBC operates under two private companies in India: like any other foreign company, they are open to scrutiny and tax laws apply to them," said Kanchan Gupta, senior adviser to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. The BBC had received more than 10 tax notices before the documentary aired, he said.

Reuters was unable to confirm this independently. The tax agency did not respond to request for comment for this story.

Since Modi took office in 2014, India has slid from 140th in World Press Freedom Index, an annual ranking by non-profit Reporters Without Borders, to 150th place last year, its lowest ever.

Modi's government rejects the Index's findings, questioning its methodology, and says India has a vibrant free press.

The world's most populous democracy with 1.4 billion people, India has thousands of newspapers and hundreds of TV news channels.

Gupta, the advisor to the information ministry, denied any government agency had targeted the media in response to coverage, or suspended any advertising. He said the government had stated repeatedly that harassment of journalists was unacceptable and against the law.

CHOKING FUNDS

The Editors Guild of India, an industry association, said the BBC raids were part of a trend of "government agencies being used to intimidate and harass news organisations." It cited four similar tax inspections against media in 2021.

In one of those, the offices of Dainik Bhaskar, one of India's largest newspapers by circulation, were raided in July 2021 by tax authorities, who alleged it evaded taxes on income worth 7 billion Indian rupees ($84.47 million). The paper has contested the charge and the case is ongoing.

The newspaper - part of DB Corp, one of India's largest newspaper groups – had published a series of articles alleging authorities mishandled the COVID-19 pandemic and underreported deaths. The government has denied mistakes in its response and undercounting.

A senior Dainik Bhaskar executive, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue, said the raids followed an unexplained halt in advertising by the federal government and six BJP-controlled states from February 2021. The suspension lasted until August 2022 and cost the newspaper more than 1 billion rupees ($12.25 million), he said.

A spokesman for the newspaper declined to comment. The state governments did not respond to requests for comment. Asked about the case, Gupta, the senior advisor at the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, said the government did not pull advertising because of critical reporting.

In a report last year, Reporters Without Borders said that, despite high readership, many Indian news organisations were vulnerable to economic pressure because of their reliance on government advertising.

The acquisition of some media groups by billionaires seen as close to Modi has also led to the silencing of independent voices in the Indian press, it said.

Between 2014 and early December 2022, the federal government spent 64.9 billion Indian rupees ($784.34 million) on advertising in print and electronic media, it said in a statement to parliament at the end of last year. However, the figures showed spending has declined in recent years.

Gupta said there had been complaints after the government reduced its advertising spending but that was not an assault on media freedom.

"Government doesn't exist to fund media. We don't want a media which is loyal to us or beholden to us because of the money that we give them," he said.

'CRITICS AS AN ENEMY'

Reports from international press freedom watchdogs, including the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), say that - in addition to the financial pressures on media organizations - the federal and state governments in India have detained an increasing number of journalists for their reporting.

At least seven journalists remained behind bars in India as of December, the highest number in 30 years, according to the CPJ’s annual global tracker released on Dec 14.

In some instances, reporters have been detained by state governments - which control local police forces - after reporting on minor issues.

On March 29, 2022, Ajeet Ojha, a reporter with the Hindi-language newspaper Amar Ujala in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, wrote a story about high school examination test papers being leaked to students in advance in the town of Balia. Ojha wrote that an investigation into who leaked the papers was ongoing.

The next day, the 42-year-old reporter was arrested by police and accused of leaking the test papers himself, according to the police report, reviewed by Reuters.

"I spent 27 nights in jail," Ojha said, adding that he is still accused on two counts, though police dropped some criminal charges. Balia police did not respond to requests for comment.

Gyanendra Shukla, a veteran reporter who led the campaign for Ojha's release, said the BJP-controlled state government viewed "critics as an enemy".

"They have forgotten that the work of a journalist is to highlight problems and criticise the system," he said.

The Uttar Pradesh government did not respond to requests for comment. Gupta, the ministry advisor, said the arrest was a matter for the state authorities. (Reporting by Devjyot Ghoshal, Aditya Kalra and Krishn Kaushik in NEW DELHI and Saurabh Sharma in LUCKNOW. Additional reporting by Fayaz Bukhari in SRINAGAR Editing by Daniel Flynn)

2022's Emissions Tell the Story of a Hot, Violent Year

Angely Mercado
Thu, March 2, 2023 

An American Airlines plane lands at Logan International Airport, Thursday, Jan. 26, 2023, in Boston.

The world emitted more carbon dioxide last year compared to any other year on record, according to data released Thursday from the International Energy Agency. And while the growth of emissions was slower last year than it had been in past years—thanks to an explosion of renewable energy around the world during the energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine—the report finds that emissions from fossil fuels could have been even lower in 2022, had extreme heat not raised cooling needs around the world.

Energy-related emissions grew about 0.9% from 2021 to 2022, reaching a new high of 36.8 gigatons last year, the report explained. And though any CO2 record is depressing, last year’s growth was small compared to 2021’s emissions rebound, which was a more than 6% increase from 2020. The world’s emissions took a slight dip in 2020, when covid-19 lockdowns halted international travel. Once travel started up again, CO2 emissions rose pretty quickly the following year.

Despite the comparatively gentle rise of global CO2 emissions, there were several concerning energy trends highlighted in the report. Global CO2 emissions from natural gas dropped 1.6%, with an especially sharp drop in Europe as the continent weaned itself off Russian supply during the war in Ukraine. But emissions from coal grew by 1.6% as more countries have had to turn to this energy source to make up for the reduction in Russian gas to Europe.

Reliance on fossil fuel energy sources also increased thanks to extreme weather throughout 2022, the IEA’s analysis found. This past summer, natural gas use surpassed 40% in July and August in the U.S., and coal generation in China spiked in August. Before summer temperatures skyrocketed, both countries’ emissions for the first half of 2022 were actually lower than reported emissions for 2021.

Some of the slowdown in rising emissions, the IEA said, can be attributed to more adoption of green technology—think more solar panels and more electric vehicles on the road. Renewable energy met 90% of global growth in electricity demand last year. And although droughts were reported all over the world, hydro-generated power actually increased from 2021 to 2022. The IEA reported that, without those droughts, which caused hydropower generation to plummet, the world could have avoided even more emissions.

Though slow growth is better than what we’ve seen in previous years, our emissions are already too damn high.

“We can’t afford growth. We can’t afford stasis. It’s cuts or chaos for the planet,” Rob Jackson, a professor of earth system science at Stanford University and chairman of the Global Carbon Project, told the Associated Press. “Any year with higher coal emissions is a bad year for our health and for the Earth.”

More from Gizmodo

Universal Hydrogen takes to the air with the largest hydrogen fuel cell ever to fly


Mark Harris
Thu, March 2, 2023

As a Universal Hydrogen-branded plane, equipped with the largest hydrogen fuel cell ever to power an aircraft, made its maiden test flight in eastern Washington, co-founder and CEO Paul Eremenko declared the moment the dawn of a "new golden age of aviation."

The 15-minute test flight of a modified Dash-8 aircraft was short, but it showed that hydrogen could be viable as a fuel for short-hop passenger aircraft. That is, if Universal Hydrogen — and others in the emerging world of hydrogen flight — can make the technical and regulatory progress needed to make it a mainstream product.

Dash-8s, a staple at regional airports, usually transport up to 50 passengers on short hops. The Dash-8 used in Thursday's test flight from the Grant County International Airport in Moses Lake had decidedly different cargo. The Universal Hydrogen test plane, nicknamed Lightning McClean, had just two pilots, an engineer and a lot of tech onboard, including an electric motor and hydrogen fuel cell supplied by two other startups.

The stripped-down interior contained two racks of electronics and sensors, and two large hydrogen tanks with 30 kg of fuel. Beneath the plane's right wing, an electric motor from magniX was being driven by the new hydrogen fuel cell from Plug Power. This system turns hydrogen into electricity and water -- an emission-free powerplant that Eremenko believes represents the future of aviation.

The fuel cell operated throughout the flight, generating up to 800kW of power and producing nothing but water vapor and smiles on the faces of a crowd of Universal Hydrogen engineers and investors.

"We think it's a pretty monumental accomplishment," Eremenko said. "It keeps us on track to have probably the first certified hydrogen airplane in passenger service."

Aviation currently contributes about 2.5% of global carbon emissions, and is forecast to grow by 4% annually.

Still using jet fuel

universal hydrogen engines

The Universal Hydrogen-branded plane also relied on jet fuel. Notice the Pratt and Whitney turboprop engine under one wing. Image Credits: Mark Harris

The test flight, which was a success, doesn't mean entirely zero-carbon aviation is just around the corner.

Beneath the Dash-8's other wing ran a standard Pratt and Whitney turboprop engine (notice the difference in the photo above), with about twice as much power as the fuel-cell side. That redundancy helped smooth a path with the FAA, which issued an experimental special airworthiness certificate for the Dash-8 tests in early February.

One of the test pilots, Michael Bockler, told TechCrunch that the aircraft "flew like a normal Dash-8, with just a slight yaw." He noted that at one point, in level flight, the plane was flying almost entirely on fuel cell power, with the turboprop engine throttled down.

"Until both motors are driven by hydrogen, it's still just a show," said a senior engineer consulting to the sustainable aviation industry. "But I don't want to scoff at it because we need these stepping stones to learn."

Part of the problem with today's fuel cells is that they can be tricky to cool. Jet engines run much hotter, but expel most of that heat through their exhausts. Because fuel cells use an electrochemical reaction rather than simply burning hydrogen, the waste heat has to be removed through a system of heat exchangers and vents.

ZeroAvia, another startup developing hydrogen fuel cells for aviation, crashed its first flying prototype in 2021 after turning off its fuel cell mid-air to allow it to cool, and was then unable to restart it. ZeroAvia has since taken to the air again with a hybrid hydrogen/fossil fuel set-up similar to Universal Hydrogen's, although on a smaller twin-engine aircraft.

Mark Cousin, Universal Hydrogen's CTO, told TechCrunch that its fuel cell could run all day without overheating, thanks to its large air ducts.

Another issue for fuel cell aircraft is storing the hydrogen needed to fly. Even in its densest, super-cooled liquid form, hydrogen contains only about a quarter the energy of a similar volume of jet fuel. Wing tanks are not large enough for any but the shortest flights, and so the fuel has to be stored within the fuselage. Today's 15-minute flight used about 16kg of gaseous hydrogen -- half the amount stored in two motorbike-sized tanks within the passenger compartment. Universal Hydrogen plans to convert its test aircraft to run on liquid hydrogen later this year.

Making modules

A Universal Hydrogen module. 

Image Credits: Mark Harris

Eremenko co-founded Universal Hydrogen in 2020, and the company raised $20.5 million in a 2021 Series A funding round led by Playground Global. Funding to date is approaching $100 million, including investments from Airbus, General Electric, American Airlines, JetBlue and Toyota. The company is headquartered just up the road from SpaceX in Hawthorne, California, with an engineering facility in Toulouse, France.

Universal Hydrogen will now conduct further tests at Moses Lake. The company will work on additional software development, and eventually convert the plane to use liquid hydrogen. Early next year, the aircraft will likely be retired -- with the fuel cell heading to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC.

Universal Hydrogen hopes to start shipping fuel cell conversion kits for regional aircraft like the Dash-8 as soon as 2025. The company already has nearly 250 retrofit orders valued at more than $1 billion from 16 customers, including Air New Zealand. John Thomas, CEO of Connect Airlines, which plans to be the first U.S. carrier to use Universal Hydrogen's technology, said the "partnership provides the fastest path to zero-emissions operation for the global airline industry."

Universal Hydrogen isn't just producing the razors -- it's also selling the blades.

Almost all the hydrogen used today is produced at the point of consumption. That's not only because hydrogen leaks easily and can damage traditional steel containers, but mainly because in its most useful form -- a compact liquid -- it has to be kept at just 20 degrees above absolute zero, usually requiring expensive refrigeration.

The liquid hydrogen used in the Moses Lake test came from a commercial "green hydrogen" gas supplier -- meaning it was made using renewable energy. Only a tiny fraction of hydrogen produced today is made this way.

If the hydrogen economy is really going to make a dent in the climate crisis, green hydrogen will have to become a lot easier -- and cheaper -- to produce, store and transport.

Eremenko originally started Universal Hydrogen to design standardized hydrogen modules that could be hauled by standard semi-trucks and simply slotted into aircraft or other vehicles for immediate use. The current design can keep hydrogen liquid for up to 100 hours, and he has often likened them to the convenience of Nespresso units. Universal Hydrogen says it has over $2 billion in fuel service orders for the decade ahead.

Prototype modules were demonstrated in December, and the company hopes to break ground later this year on a 630,000-square-foot manufacturing facility for them in Albuquerque, New Mexico. That nearly $400 million project is contingent on the success of a previously unreported $200+ million U.S. Department of Energy loan application. Eremenko says the application has passed the first phase of due diligence within the DOE.

A long runway

Some experts are skeptical that hydrogen will ever make a meaningful dent in aviation's emissions. Bernard van Dijk, an aviation scientist at the Hydrogen Science Coalition, appreciates the simplicity of Universal Hydrogen's modules, but notes that even NASA has trouble controlling hydrogen leaks with its rockets. "You still have to connect the canisters to the aircraft. How is that all going to be safe? Because if it leaks and somebody lights a match, that is a recipe for disaster," he says. "I think they're also underestimating the whole certification process for a new hydrogen powertrain."

Even when those obstacles are overcome, there is the problem of making enough green hydrogen using renewable electricity, at a price people will be prepared to play. "If you want to get all European flights on hydrogen, you'd need 89,000 large wind turbines to produce enough hydrogen," says van Dijk. "They would cover an area about twice the size of the Netherlands."

But Eremenko remains convinced that Universal Hydrogen and its partners can make it work, with the help of a $3 per kilogram subsidy for green hydrogen in Biden's Inflation Reduction Act. "Of all the things that keep me awake at night," he says, "the cost and availability of green hydrogens is not one of them."

20 Years From Now Honda Might Still Be Making Combustion Engines

Adam Ismail
Fri, March 3, 2023 

A general view of a Honda engine during the CART-Rio 400 at the 

Emerson Fittipaldi Speedway in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil on May 9, 1998.

Honda doesn’t see itself stopping production of gas-burning engines anytime soon, while Germany has successfully delayed the European Union’s final vote on banning gas-burning engines. Also, Hyundai’s going to be in court a lot over the whole immobilizer thing. All that and more in this Friday edition of The Morning Shift for March 3, 2023.

1st Gear: Engines in Honda’s Future

Ever since the waning months of last year, Honda’s been singing a livelier tune around EVs. It’s joining forces with LG to raise a battery facility in Anna, Ohio — a facility that both itself and its partner have agreed to put up at least $3.5 billion for. Its first mass-market EV for North America, the GM Ultium-based Prologue, has been revealed and is on target for a 2024 release, alongside Acura’s version of the SUV, called the ZDX. An EV division will soon be spun off, and then there’s whatever the hell Afeela is.

But much like Toyota’s sudden fascination with EVs, don’t take this to mean that Honda isn’t sticking to its habitual conservatism in the background. The automaker’s CEO, Toshihiro Mibe, recently told Reuters that combustion engines could remain in production even beyond 2040, perhaps with the help of synthetic fuels.

Regarding the Japanese automaker’s accelerating transition to EVs, Chief Executive Toshihiro Mibe said, “I’ve been in the engine development business for more than 30 years, so personally it’s a little threatening. But I have to separate my own feelings from what is best for the business.”

That includes the establishment next month of a standalone business unit to oversee development of Honda’s EV and battery business, which eventually could include an investment in charging stations, similar to Tesla Inc’s Supercharger network, Mibe said in Marysville, Ohio, at the hub of the company’s U.S. operations.

“The charging infrastructure is not at a place that it needs to be for our customers,” he said.

Mibe added that Honda is running feasibility studies on everything from chargers and advanced batteries to aerial vehicles and rockets, as well as new low-carbon e-fuels that could help keep combustion engines around - in performance cars, big trucks and airplanes - for another decade or two.

But Mibe added, “as we move toward carbon neutrality, we are focused on electrification and fuel cells - those are the two core components of future mobility.”

There are pragmatic reasons for the so-called multi-pronged approach that Honda and Toyota keep touting, even once you get past the political factors that may explain a slow embrace of EVs. The infrastructure certainly isn’t where it needs to be, sure. Setting a vague, arbitrary death date for ICE cars has proven to be a popular investor play more than anything else, so I’ll even say the realism both companies have displayed is refreshing.

That said, at the end of the day you’ve still got to have compelling electric cars, because that’s where we’re ultimately headed. And maybe if Honda was a little more bullish, the Prologue would’ve been out two years ago and not next year. Maybe it’d have its own EV architecture by now, instead of having to pay GM for its homework. The wait-and-see strategy makes sense now when EVs comprise 6 percent of the market. But down the line, if it leaves your tech a generation behind everyone else, how might you feel about it then? Honda’s trying to thread that needle between the present and the future, and I only wish I had a crystal ball to see how it works out for them.

2nd Gear: Germany Delays EU ICE Ban Vote

While the European Parliament, Commission and each of the Union’s member states approved a 2035 death date for internal-combustion engines last year, the law still needs one more round of votes to go ahead. Earlier this week, Germany and Italy indicated they wouldn’t continue to support the proposal unless ICE production was permitted with the use of synthetic fuels. That language was never formalized.

Since Germany’s made it abundantly clear that it won’t pledge in favor without that stipulation, the EU has saved itself embarrassment and called off the impending vote, originally scheduled for next week, indefinitely. From Reuters:

German Transport Minister Volker Wissing reiterated on Friday that the use of synthetic fuels should remain possible after the 2035 deadline and that the European Commission’s promised proposal on how to make this happen was still missing.

“We want climate-neutral mobility”, and to do so means being open to all conceivable technologies, he told a news conference.

A non-binding section of the EU law says the Commission will make a proposal on how vehicles running on CO2-neutral fuels can be sold after 2035, if this complies with climate goals. But Germany’s transport ministry wants clearer assurances.

A Commission spokesperson on Friday said it “will consider the potential contribution of CO2-neutral fuels to reach climate neutral mobility”, adding that it was in contact with countries to discuss their issues with the law.

And in case you’re curious about how Italy feels about this whole thing:

Italy, which has previously said it will vote against the EU cars law, on Friday welcomed the postponement of the vote.

“Italy has a very clear position - electric (cars) cannot be the only solution for the future,” Energy Minister Gilberto Pichetto Fratin said, adding that vehicles running on “renewable fuels” should be considered an “equally clean” option.

As convenient as it would be if synthetic fuels were “equally clean” compared with EVs, they simply aren’t. “Lab testing commissioned by European campaigners Transport & Environment shows that cars powered by e-fuels emit just as much poisonous nitrogen oxides as fossil fuel engines,” Australia’s The Driven reported little more than a year ago. Besides, synthetic fuels will continue to be expensive for quite some time, as Bloomberg reiterated around today’s news:

Splitting hydrogen from water and combining it with carbon to make a synthetic fuel requires lots of electricity. The process today is inefficient and thus costly; At best, it converts half of the energy in the electricity into liquid and gaseous fuels according to the International Council of Clean Transportation. By 2030, the production of a liter (roughly a quarter of a gallon) of e-fuel will still cost around $3 or $4, the US-based nonprofit organization forecast in 2020. That’s down from about $5 today, according to a study by German energy agency Dena, but still much more than petroleum-based fuels.

The International Council of Clean Transportation estimated that even by the end of this decade, a liter of synthetic fuel will still cost $3 to $4 to make. As of 2016, a barrel of crude oil — 42 gallons — cost $5.15 to produce in the United States.

3rd Gear: It’s Class Action Season for Hyundai

Hyundai’s got a number of class-action lawsuits on its hands as a result of its decision not equip some 8.4 million vehicles with engine immobilizers. The company issued the first batch of software fixes a few weeks back, but attorneys argue the damage has already been done. They’re pressuring the automaker to compensate owners who have already suffered damages or can’t sell their cars. From Automotive News:

Matt Van Fleet, a senior trial attorney with MLG Attorneys at Law in California, who represents clients in a class-action lawsuit on the issue, called the move “commendable” but not enough to stop the litigation across the country.

“We’re thankful that Hyundai and Kia are recognizing that there’s a problem, but the bell’s already been rung,” Van Fleet said.

“The fix does nothing to address the thousands of dollars that our clients have had to dole out to repair the damage caused to these vehicles after they’ve been stolen, if they’re able to recover their cars at all,” he said.

Litigants are claiming Kia and Hyundai must pay for the economic losses they suffered when their vehicles, which were not equipped with engine immobilizers, were stolen as the result of a social media-driven crime wave.

A spokesperson for Hyundai told Automotive News the company is committed to the security of its customers and plans to continue its ongoing support of the communities affected by this theft issue. But he did not comment directly on whether the automaker would address the damages caused to consumers who claim their vehicles have already been stolen.

It’s hard to see this playing out well for Hyundai, but as long as the amount it ends up forking over to class action members totals less than the cost of installing immobilizers in 8.4 million cars on the production line, I suppose it’s still a win.

4th Gear: Volkswagen <3 Gigafactories

Volkswagen is the latest automaker to start talking broadly about EV and battery-making plants in the U.S., per Reuters. One of the sites might even be dedicated to production of its future Scout electric SUVs that we still weirdly know almost nothing about.

Volkswagen’s supervisory board will on Friday discuss plans for two new factories in North America, one production plant and one battery cell factory, two people familiar with the matter said.

While the committee is expected to approve a site for its Scout brand in the United States, discussions around a gigafactory are open-ended, the sources said. Other issues on the meeting’s agenda are Volkswagen’s annual results and its dividend, the people said.

A person familiar with the matter earlier this week said the supervisory board would discuss a new plant for the Scout brand, which is a key part of Volkswagen’s target to gain 10% market share in the United States. [...]

“We are still working hard to find a suitable location for our first gigafactory in North America and are in good, constructive talks,” a Volkswagen spokesperson said on Friday, adding no decision has been made yet.

It’ll never cease to amaze me how the world’s largest carmaker can so shamelessly copy Tesla’s language without even a hint of embarrassment. They’re down so bad.
5th Gear: Self-Driving Trucks Get More Lights

Tractor-trailer drivers are required to place reflective triangles behind their trucks when stopped on the shoulder. However, self-driving trucks have no drivers and therefore cannot do this. It’s for that very reason that Alphabet’s Waymo and Aurora have jointly filed for an exemption from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. The two companies have proposed an alternate procedure for warning other drivers, per Automotive News:

Instead of triangles or flares at night, Waymo and Aurora have requested their partner motor carriers be allowed to equip truck cabs with flashing warning beacons that would be activated when a truck stops along the side of the road.

The beacons would be mounted on cabs at a height above the upper edge of side-view mirrors, according to the exemption request.

While some companies have experimented with a digital replica of the orange triangle affixed to the rear of trailers, such an arrangement would not be practical because trailers are frequently exchanged between carriers, a Waymo spokesperson said Thursday.

This marks the first time two self-driving technology companies have jointly sought an exemption from FMCSA rules.

Mounting these beacons above the side mirrors does nothing to inform you where the edge of the trailer lies, of course, though Waymo and Aurora claim that their independent studies have found flashing lights to be a more effective tool anyway. To any other drivers plagued by light sensitivity reading this, just know that I am thinking of you and I hate this, too.
Reverse: Some Called It ‘Ladybird’

It was on this very day in 1958 — 65 years ago — that 365 Days of Motoring tells us Subaru launched its very first car, the adorable 360:

At [the] time, Japanese automobile manufacturers were working on developing small cars according to a plan calling for the production of a “people’s car” as advocated by Japan’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry. The Subaru 360 was developed in line with this concept. In those days, passenger cars were too expensive to be within the reach of most people. Building a small, affordable car that could perform well proved to be technologically tough, and many manufacturers were reluctant to tackle the problem. However, with its roots in aircraft manufacturing, the company took up the challenge backed by its pride and prodigious technological strength. It beat the other manufacturers in developing a four-passenger, four-wheel minicar, the Subaru 360, which became a milestone in the history of Japan’s automobile industry. Because of its ladybug shape, the Subaru 360 was affectionately referred to as the Ladybird. For 11 years after its debut, the Subaru 360 enjoyed tremendous popularity. It finally went out of production in May 1970.

 Jalopnik

EVs are far cleaner than gas-powered cars — even if batteries require more mining

Clarisa Diaz and Mary Hui
Fri, March 3, 2023 

The global transition to renewable energy will require vast amounts of minerals. Those minerals will need to be extracted from the ground, processed into purer forms, and turned into batteries and magnets to power things like electric vehicles.

So if the battery in an electric vehicle, or EV, demands so much mining and manufacturing, are they really so much cleaner than gas-fueled internal combustion engines?

The answer is yes.

Are electric vehicles better for the environment?

Comparing greenhouse gas emissions of internal combustion vehicles and EVs throughout their entire life cycles, an EV can emit about a quarter the carbon dioxide as its gas-powered counterpart, according to calculations (PDF) by the International Energy Agency, US Environmental Protection Agency studies, and academic research (PDF).

While mining the material inputs required for an EV battery — and the process of making it — emit more carbon dioxide, the direct emissions from driving an internal combustion engine vehicle over its lifetime far outstrips the total lifecycle emissions of an EV.

A gas-powered vehicle emits about 68 tons of CO2 in its lifetime compared to around 15 tons of CO2 an EV emits in its lifetime.

A typical passenger vehicle like the Toyota Camry emits about 68 tons of CO2 in its lifetime, compared to 15 tons of CO2 emitted for an electric Tesla Model 3 — which includes CO2 emitted during the extraction of materials, the manufacturing of the battery, and power supply, which are the emissions made through charging the battery and operating the vehicle.

Quartz used data from the EPA and the International Energy Agency for these calculations, which were made with the help of Auke Hoekstra, a senior advisor on smart mobility at the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands.

Life-cycle carbon emissions of gas-powered cars (411 grams of CO2 per mile) vs. electric cars (32 grams of CO2 per mile).

Minimizing the environmental impacts of mining for battery minerals

While EVs are undeniably lower-emission than gas-powered cars, it is also true that surging demand for EVs and batteries will require a significant expansion in mining—and the environmental disturbances and waste that come with it.

That’s why it will be important to develop and deploy mining and processing innovations that reduce mining waste and toxicity, as researchers from Australia’s University of Queensland outlined in a recent journal article.

According to the researchers, waste generated by copper, nickel, manganese, and lithium extraction will total nearly one trillion tons over the next 30 years. But there are ways to dramatically reduce that waste, which includes waste rock resulting from mining and excavation, as well as byproducts known as tailings that are left behind after the target mineral is extracted.

The researchers proposed several alternative extractive methods. One involves reprocessing waste rock and tailings to extract residual amounts of valuable minerals. Another is known as environmental desulphurization, a process that separates sulphide minerals to reduce the toxicity of tailings.

The repurposing of byproducts from one mining activity to economize another mining process is already a well established method. For example, the Chinese state-owned iron and steel giant Baotou Steel mines iron ore that contains rare earth metals, then provides the critical metals to its rare earths subsidiary. Similarly, a US-EU rare earth supply chain takes advantage of monazite sands left behind from mining heavy minerals for titanium and zirconium.

Insuring against human rights violations in EV production

Another major concern is the high human cost associated with mining projects in some countries. The Democratic Republic of Congo’s cobalt mining industry, for example, has been linked with worker exploitation, child labor, and other human rights violations.

There are also indications of forced labor in the Chinese EV battery supply chain. Just last month, a company backed by Chinese battery giant CATL won a bid for exploration rights to a lithium mine in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, where the Chinese Communist Party is accused of waging a systematic campaign of human rights abuses against the Uyghur ethnic minority.

More from Quartz

Petrobras posts record profits for 2022
Thu, March 2, 2023 


Brazil's state oil company Petrobras has reported record profits of 188 billion reais (about $36 billion) in 2022, due mainly to the global rise in fuel prices.

The result, published late Wednesday, represents a record in annual profit for a Brazilian company, previously held by mining giant Vale with 129.1 billion reais in 2021.

In the fourth quarter of 2022, Petrobras posted net profit of 43.3 billion reais, down six percent from the previous quarter.

On Wednesday, the company's board approved the payment of dividends at 2.74 reais per share, for a total of 35.8 billion reais.

Chief Financial Officer Rodrigo Araujo Alves said the profit was due to higher prices and "management measures taken in recent years."


Petrobras came under pressure when far-right president Jair Bolsonaro was in office from 2019 to 2022.

Bolsonaro changed the company's CEO four times in as many years due to disagreements over gasoline price hikes, and even went so far as to accuse Petrobras of theft.

Brazil's leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva chose a key ally, former senator Jean Paul Prates, to take over the job, but fuel prices remain at the heart of the new government's concerns.

On Thursday, Prates held his first press conference as CEO, announcing that the firm's pricing policy would no longer be tied solely to the international market.

"There will be other references to achieve the best price for the consumer," he said.

"We are going to charge competitive prices for the national market."

The change in pricing policy will start only in May, when a new board is in place.

On Tuesday, the finance ministry announced the partial reinstatement of fuel taxes canceled under the Bolsonaro government to fight inflation ahead of elections last year that saw him unseated by Lula.

To prevent the price at the pump from spiraling, Petrobras said it would drop prices at its refineries.

lg/pt/mlr/sst

VW-backed Scout Motors to build $2B factory in South Carolina

Tim Stevens
Fri, March 3, 2023 

Scout Motors, the VW Group spinoff taking aim at the U.S. market with rugged all-electric vehicles, is deepening its investment with plans to build a $2 billion factory capable of producing 200,000 EVs a year in South Carolina.

There are a growing number of reasons for Scout Motors to keep the brand as red, white and blue as possible. And it's not just to market itself to U.S. consumers. There are actual incentives on the line thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act and likely some kind of incentives package from South Carolina's state government. The state government has not disclosed details on what incentives may be provided to Scout. However, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster has made it a priority to make the state an EV epicenter through an executive order signed in October 2022 that prioritizes building EV infrastructure, preparing the state workforce for advanced manufacturing jobs and organizing EV planning under a centralized state working group.

Scout Motors will build its factory in Blythewood about 20 miles north of Columbia, which will ultimately employ 4,000 people, on 1,600 acres right in the middle of the developing "battery belt." The plant itself will occupy 1,100 acres of that property.

Groundbreaking is expected to occur in mid-2023, according to the company.

Scout Motors EV teaser 2023
A teaser image of two Scout Motors vehicles, an all-electric truck and an SUV. Image Credits: Scout Motors

Scout revives a classic nameplate with funding and technology from VW Group. This factory, however, represents its independence from its parent company. From here, the EV brand will have to stand on its own four tires up against the Jeep Wrangler, Ford Bronco and Rivian R1S.

Scout Motors isn't going the contract manufacturing route despite rumors that the brand was going to partner with a company like Magna Steyr or Foxconn. Scout CEO Scott Keogh told TechCrunch that after due diligence the company decided to bring manufacturing in-house.

"Look, being a startup, we did our jobs," Keogh told TechCrunch in a recent interview, adding that the company evaluated every option, from taking a green-field approach and building a new factory to partnering with others and even taking over an existing factory.

"At the end of the day, where we landed is 'manufacturing is a core expertise'," he said. "We know how to do it quite well."

Manufacturing in the United States was always a priority, Keogh said, but the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act provided that extra incentive (literally) to commit to the idea of building a factory.

"We think it's important to manufacture in America, certainly without a doubt, the Inflation Reduction Act, combined with what the states are doing, make it a smart time to buy versus rent," Keogh said.

Scout will receive support from the South Carolina government. The incentives package was not disclosed Friday. Keogh said the decision to locate in the state came down to many factors, including an existing infrastructure for the automotive industry and what Keogh called an "extremely strong port."

The port of Charleston, which is about two hours from Columbia, is the eighth-largest in the United States and fastest growing, a strong incentive for an American brand with global roots and aspirations.

Keogh also praised the "beautiful bandwidth" of local talent at all levels thanks to local universities. "That's going to allow us to build a future oriented company that's loaded with engineering talent," he said.

Notably, Scout will have a valuable neighbor and promising player in the EV space: Redwood Materials. The Nevada-based battery materials and recycling startup recently announced its own $3.5 billion plan to create a battery recycling facility in Berkeley County, South Carolina.

"I think what they are doing is brilliant and exactly right," Keogh said when asked about this happy coincidence.

Though he declined to confirm any potential partnership between the two brands, battery recycling is very much on his mind, saying that in time he hopes for upwards of 50% of Scout's battery supply to come from recycled materials. "Yes, we will be doing that. Do we have a deal structured right now? Absolutely not. But fully that is the plan," he said.

For now, Scout Motors is focused on building its American-made, American-focused products by the end of 2026. An all-electric SUV will come first and a truck will follow a few months later. These vehicles will share VW components like motors and inverters but not whole platforms, meaning they'll have to blaze their own trail to market.

How Scout Motors plans to bring rugged, retro cred to the EV era

Tim Stevens
Fri, March 3, 2023

"We're operating out of everywhere," Scott Keogh said with a laugh in his first interview as CEO of Scout Motors, the American EV upstart spun out of VW Group.

While most established automotive players call the shots from sprawling, corporate palaces, Scout bases much of its operations -- at least for now -- out of a WeWork near Washington, D.C.

Scout Motors' base of operations will eventually "anchor" near the $2 billion factory in South Carolina that was announced Friday, but Keogh believes remote work will be key to Scout Motors' success. The company already has critical employees working remotely around the United States and overseas.

"I believe firmly that era is over," Keogh said of the classic days of centralized organizations. "I don't think it exists anymore in the spirit of Americans, in the spirit of the company."

Origins

Capturing the spirit of Americans is a big part of what Keogh hopes and plans to do with Scout Motors, an all-electric brand launched with a $100 million investment from Volkswagen that plans to start shipping its first vehicle, an off-road focused SUV priced around $40,000, by the end of 2026. Scout was the former consumer automotive brand of International Harvester, which ended production in 1980 in the wake of labor disputes and the 1979 energy crisis.

1971 SCOUT 800B COMANCHE WHS 8732
A 1971 Scout 800B Comanche. Image Credits: Scout Motors

The original International Harvester Scout was a go-anywhere, do-anything utility vehicle, following in the footsteps of the original Jeep but with a more practical, enclosed body five years before the Ford Bronco bolted onto the scene. "In our minds, Scout sort of planted the seed, and if you look at almost every SUV, they've basically stolen that name and done some modification of it," said Keogh, who then fired off familiar nameplates like Trailblazer, Pathfinder, Explorer and Discovery.

Those models may be derivative, but they have one significant advantage over Scout: They've all been in production at some point within the past 40 years. Scout, meanwhile, is in the difficult position of trying to honor the past while making up for nearly a half a century of lost time. If that weren't enough, Scout has to distance itself from Volkswagen, too.

Keogh used the phrase "clean slate" four times during our interview, in reference to everything from software to dealership presence. With its Volkswagen ties, Scout Motors seemingly has a distinct advantage over other EV startups in that it could theoretically piggyback into the hundreds of U.S. VW dealers. However, Keogh says, there are advantages to following the trail blazed by Tesla in defining a way for manufacturers to sell cars directly to consumers.

"We have not decided, but we're taking a long, hard look at it," Keogh said about online direct sales. Historically, he said, manufacturers dominated the scene, but lately the dealerships have been calling the shots, often at the expense of everyone else. "It's always been an industry that played more towards legislation, industrialization, networkization, as opposed to what's the best consumer experience," he said. "This is the differentiator: Awesome retail experience focused on the customer, focused on technology."

Launch target

Scout Motors will launch its first two EVs in quick succession starting in late 2026, Keogh confirmed.

First will be a small, off-road focused SUV that Keogh calls an RUV: a "rugged utility vehicle." The second is a larger truck, which will "lean a little bit more on-road" in terms of its driving characteristics. Details like range and power aren't yet set, but pricing for the RUV is meant to start in the $40,000 range, while the truck will be "a bit north of there."

Neither, though, will be lacking in off-road capability, a brand new focus for the Volkswagen Group.

Both vehicles will be built on a bespoke, body-on-frame platform of the sort historically used by the most capable off-road machines. Manufacturing will take place in the United States, at the company's newly announced factory in Columbia, South Carolina.

Scott Keogh Scout Motors

A battery partner has not been announced, but Keogh was adamant about structuring suppliers to take full advantage of the EV incentives offered by the Inflation Reduction Act, which has domestic production requirements.

Scout's new EV platform will share some components with other Volkswagen Group cars, items like HVAC components, motors and inverters. But that's where the similarities end. Scout Motors is aiming to offer driving character and capability unlike anything else under VW Group, a behemoth company that includes a long string of EV platforms. VW Group created the MEB that lies beneath the Volkswagen ID.4, its successor MEB+, the J1 Performance platform under both the Porsche Taycan and Audi E-Tron GT, and the upcoming PPE platform for the upcoming Porsche Macan EV.

In addition to a bespoke platform, Scout's cars will also take radically different approaches to software integration and the overall user experience. Some core aspects of the software will be provided by Cariad, the software arm of Volkswagen. Keogh said the base software architecture is in place. The user experience will be radically different, he added.

Keogh points to physical touchpoints as a main differentiator. VW's ID.4 has been panned by many for its over-reliance on touch surfaces, for example.

"We really want to keep a lot of the mechanical nature," Keogh said. "I think if you look at the American buyers, yes, they appreciate software, but they don't want software to be all-dominating. I think you'll see a lot more, let's say old-school physicality, but in a good way."

So no touchscreen-controlled vents à la the Tesla Model Y, then? "I can pretty much confirm yes," Keogh told me.

Unveils ahead

Scout's two models are set for unveiling in early 2024. The company has already had a limited screening at focus groups in California and Texas, where the prototype vehicles were stacked up against traditional offerings like Broncos and newer entries from Rivian. Keogh expected the concepts to do well among more EV-aware and friendly viewers in California, but even the feedback in Texas was strong. "We got some of the best results that we've ever had in clinics, period," he said.

And what about the Scout loyalists, who're still repping the brand at annual events like Harvester Homecoming? "In fairness, it runs the gamut," Keogh said of the feedback they received, with some finding the style a bit too progressive. But, Keogh says, they need to move the brand forward. "We would now be on the Scout 8," he said, if International Harvester had never stopped making the cars after the Scout II. "Certainly you would not want the Scout VIII to be like the Scout II."

For Keogh, the key to attracting customers is in the name. "It's a simple line that we've been using, but I think it works, this concept that the world does need more Scouts. Scouts can manifest themselves in things like hiking, climbing Everest, let's say the more extreme side of scouts, or they can be dramatically less extreme as well, to tailgating to someone who knows the latest ideas."

While Keogh is adamant that the new Scout will honor the past, it won't be a brand hung up on legacy like some of its gas-burning competition: "I don't want to make Scout a fossilized retro brand that says: 'Dear America, it's 1977. Again.'"

PEOPLE TALK PEACE WITH ZELENSKIY
Brazil's Lula discusses peace effort with Zelenskiy in video call


Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva attends a breakfast with journalists at Planalto Palace in Brasilia

Thu, March 2, 2023 

BRASILIA (Reuters) -Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Thursday told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that he will encourage countries to join peace talks to end the conflict between Ukraine and Russia.

"I reaffirmed Brazil's desire to talk with other countries and participate in any initiative related to building peace and dialogue. Nobody wants war," Lula said on Twitter after the video call with Zelenskiy.

Lula will discuss the peace effort with China when he visits Beijing next month, and also with Russia, his office said in a statement. It said Zelenskiy had invited Lula to visit Kyiv.

"We discussed diplomatic efforts to bring peace back to Ukraine and the world," Zelenskiy tweeted. He said he thanked Lula for Brazil's vote in favor of the U.N. resolution last week that called for peace and demanded Moscow withdraw its troops.

Lula said Brazil backed the resolution because it defends the territorial integrity of Ukraine.

The leftist Brazilian leader has been advocating the creation of a group of countries that could mediate a peaceful solution to the war.

Lula has declined to provide Ukraine with German-made artillery ammunition that Brazil has, insisting on the South American nation's policy of strict neutrality, though he has said Russia made a mistake invading a sovereign nation.

During a trip to the United States last month, Lula called for a negotiated solution to the conflict that would be achieved through the involvement of more neutral global players.

As Russia's invasion of Ukraine hit the one-year mark last week, Zelenskiy called for a summit with Latin American leaders and said he was willing to leave Ukraine to attend such a meeting.

In an interview with Time magazine last year, when he was still a presidential candidate, Lula said that both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Zelenskiy were responsible for the conflict.

At the time, Lula said that Zelenskiy "wanted war" and, if he did not, "he would have negotiated a little more," although he reaffirmed that Russia "was wrong" to invade its neighbor.

(Reporting by Lisandra Paraguassu; Writing by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Paul Simao and Marguerita Choy)