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Streetlights, headlights, and apartments with lights on around noon on Sept. 9, 2020, in Russian Hill, San Francisco.
Christina Farr | CNBC

One year ago today was the most terrifying day of my life.

I’ve faced personal tragedies and professional setbacks, but there are templates to deal with those. You rely on friends and family, you nurse your grief and anger, you seek counseling. With any luck and a lot of hard work, you heal and you move on.

But the day the sky turned orange in San Francisco from widespread wildfire smoke was a different kind of tragedy, precisely because it wasn’t personal — it was communal. It affected all of us. Nobody could help. Everybody was equally freaked out. We had been breathing wildfire smoke for about three weeks, and all I could think about was how long this new phase, this deep-orange darkness, would last. A day? A week? Three weeks? We were already locked down at home from the Covid pandemic, with the kids out of school and most businesses closed. The added feeling of isolation from this new phase was almost too much to bear.

Those of us who are old enough might remember a brief window in the 1990s when it seemed like the environmental movement was ascendant. Politicians and corporations were paying attention. The entire world banned chlorofluorocarbons in less than a couple years after it became clear they were depleting the ozone layer, exposing us to more solar radiation. The ozone layer is now recovering.

But that moment faded, replaced by the urgency of the War on Terror and the gridlock of hardcore partisan politics, along with a global economic expansion that has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and into the middle class.

That global economic expansion has been fueled by cheap fossil fuels and accompanied by a dramatic rise in greenhouse gas emissions. This year’s report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released in August, shows the picture very starkly. We are currently averaging 410 parts-per-million of CO2 in the atmosphere — well above the 382ppm figure that Al Gore used in his famous chart of CO2 concentrations in the 2006 movie, “An Inconvenient Truth.”

The wildfires in the west aren’t caused entirely by climate change — fires have always been part of the landscape, and forest management practices have definitely played a part. But so did two decades of record heat and a drought that has killed millions of trees. Today’s fires burn hotter and spread faster than any in recent memory, according to scientists and firefighters.

Climate change has been hard for most of us to see and feel. That’s beginning to change. This year’s continuous parade of extreme weather events — floods, hurricanes and wildfires — is a foretelling of what the world faces. If you haven’t faced your orange day yet, chances are you will.

The positive side of all this: More people than ever before are committed to finding solutions. Personally, the orange day in San Francisco inspired me to shift some of my attention from the tech industry, which I’ve been covering for more than 25 years, to focus on what I believe will be the most important news story of the next few decades.

Similar events are inspiring people to take action all over the world.

Many are advocating for major political changes, and the upcoming COP26 conference in Glasgow will almost certainly be a lightning rod for protests.

But while political solutions are a necessary part of the puzzle, those changes can be reversed or their impact blunted by the next election cycle.

More excitingly, the business world is finally, belatedly climbing aboard. Venture capitalists and billionaires like Bill Gates and Tom Steyer are racing to fund start-ups dealing with everything from clean energy to agriculture to transportation. Companies are boasting about their plans for reaching net-zero carbon emissions. Banks and insurance companies are quietly acknowledging the risks associated with climate change and adjusting their practices accordingly. ESG funds with a strong emphasis on green solutions are immensely popular — although not always effective. Tesla, the biggest auto company in the world by market cap, pioneered making zero-emission electric vehicles at scale, sending the auto giants and dozens of scrappy start-ups to follow as fast as they can.

At CNBC, we intend to cover the climate crisis from a business news perspective. We know what the predictions say could happen 20, 50 and 100 years into the future — but what’s happening today? How is climate change affecting businesses and individuals right now? Who’s proposing ambitious new solutions to reduce carbon emissions and suck carbon out of the atmosphere, who’s funding those solutions, and what are their chances of success? How are companies preparing for an uncertain future? What can you do to prepare yourself and your family — financially, physically, and mentally?

Pledges are less important than action. Rather than focusing on what companies say they intend to do, we’ll focus on what they are actually doing, where they are actually spending money and whether that money is doing any good — or is simply a half-hearted attempt to garner some positive press. Greenwashing is rampant, and ripe for exposure. We’ll look closely at trends like ESG investing and carbon offsets to explain how they work — or don’t work — and talk to policy experts about alternative financial solutions that could be more effective. We’ll treat every start-ups claims with the same kind of cautious “show-me” skepticism we’ve learned to adopt through collective decades of experience covering the tech industry.

There are no magic bullets. The carbon we’ve already pumped into the atmosphere is not going away any time soon, and the effects will probably get worse before they get better. The political, cultural and psychological barriers to change are a huge challenge — nobody likes being told to consume less. Nobody likes being told they must suddenly revamp their business at great expense with no guarantee of higher future profits. Investors will continue to seek returns, as they always have.

But as the world wakes up to the reality of climate change, there’s more money flowing toward the problem than ever before. Collective human ambition and the desire to improve our condition got us into this mess. They’re necessary to get us out.

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Cybertruck backlog runs out, Model S gets stuck, GM hits a sales milestone

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Cybertruck backlog runs out, Model S gets stuck, GM hits a sales milestone

On today’s episode of Quick Charge, Tesla’s Cybertruck is now available in Canada – and, like in the US, there’s no waiting! Plus, we’ve got an “actually” smart summon Tesla that’s actually stuck, GM reaches a sales milestone, and we get a brand-new title sponsor!

Today’s episode is the first with our new title sponsor, BLUETTI – a leading provider of portable power stations, solar generators, and energy storage systems.

Prefer listening to your podcasts? Audio-only versions of Quick Charge are now available on Apple PodcastsSpotifyTuneIn, and our RSS feed for Overcast and other podcast players.

New episodes of Quick Charge are recorded, usually, Monday through Thursday (and sometimes Sunday). We’ll be posting bonusLucid proves than an EV company can keep its promises while Xiaomi teams up with Chevrolet and Honda to prove – at least conceptually – that records are made to be broken. audio content from time to time as well, so be sure to follow and subscribe so you don’t miss a minute of Electrek’s high-voltage daily news!

Got news? Let us know!
Drop us a line at tips@electrek.co. You can also rate us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or recommend us in Overcast to help more people discover the show!

Read more: Renewables now make up 30% of US utility-scale generating capacity

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This ‘supercharger on wheels’ brings fast charging to you [update]

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This 'supercharger on wheels' brings fast charging to you [update]

Mobile car care company Yoshi Mobility launched a DC fast charging EV mobile unit that it likens to “a supercharger on wheels.”

November 4, 2024 update: Yoshi Mobility will only be charging EVs on the side of the road now – it announced today that it’s selling its fleet fueling operation to EZFill Holdings (Nasdaq: EZFL).

It was originally founded as a direct-to-consumer, mobile fueling business in 2016, but now it’s going to focus on mobile EV charging, virtual vehicle inspections for partners like Uber and Turo, and onsite preventative maintenance.

Bryan Frist, Yoshi Mobility’s CEO & cofounder, said, “By spinning off our fuel business and focusing all of our energy on solving hair-on-fire problems that fleet owners face, we are meeting the changing needs of enterprise customers while making the future of transportation safer, cleaner, and more sustainable.”


May 22, 2024: Yoshi Mobility saw that its existing customers needed mobile EV charging in places where infrastructure has yet to be installed, so the Nashville-based company decided to bring the mountain to Moses.

“We recognized a demand among our customers for convenient daily charging, reliable private charging networks, and proper charging infrastructure to support their fleet vehicles as they transition to electric,” said Dan Hunter, Yoshi Mobility’s chief EV officer and cofounder.

The company says its 240 kW mobile DC fast charger, which can turn “any EV” into a mobile charging unit, is the first fully electric mobile charger available. It can provide multiple charges in a single trip but doesn’t detail how they charge the DC fast charger or who manufactured it. (I asked for more details, and they replied that they won’t disclose client names or the manufacturer of its DC fast charger yet.)

Yoshi is launching its mobile charger on two GM BrightDrop Zevo 600s and will introduce additional vehicles throughout 2024. It aims for full commercialization by Q1 2025. (I wonder if the Zevo 600 ever charges itself? Yes, I asked that too.)

Yoshi Mobility says it’s already deployed its EV charging solutions to service “major OEMs, autonomous vehicle companies, and rideshare operators” across the US. Its initial customers are made up of large EV operators managing “hundreds” of light-duty vehicles requiring up to 1 megawatt of energy per day that don’t yet have grid-connected EV chargers. I’ve asked Yoshi for details of who it’s working with, and will update if they share that info.

The company says pricing is based on location and enterprise charging needs. Once under contract for service, the service will be deployed to US-based customers within 10 days.

To date, Yoshi Mobility has raised more than $60 million, with investments from GM Ventures, Bridgestone, ExxonMobil, and Y-Combinator in Silicon Valley.

Read more: Mercedes-Benz just opened more DC fast chargers at Buc-ee’s in Texas


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Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisers to help you every step of the way. Get started here. –ad*

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Marqeta shares plunge more than 30% on big forecast miss

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Marqeta shares plunge more than 30% on big forecast miss

Marqeta celebrates its initial public offering at the Nasdaq on June 9, 2021.

Source: The Nasdaq

Marqeta shares tumbled more than 30% in extended trading on Monday after the company issued weaker-than-expected guidance for the fourth quarter.

Here’s how the company did compared with Wall Street estimates, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG:

  • Loss per share: 6 cents adjusted vs. a loss of 5 cents expected
  • Revenue: $128 million vs. $128.1 million expected

While third-quarter results showed a slight disappointment on the top and bottom lines, Marqeta’s forecast for the current period was more concerning.

The payment processing firm said revenue in the fourth quarter will increase 10% to 12% from a year earlier. Analysts were looking for growth of more than 17%, according to LSEG.

Marqeta, which primarily functions as a card-issuing platform, attributed the guidance miss to “heightened scrutiny of the banking environment and specific customer program changes.” The company has been struggling for a while, and its stock is now down more than 80% from its peak in 2021, the year it went public. The stock was down 15% for the year prior to the report.

Total processing volume of $74 billion was up more than 30% from a year earlier. Net revenue and gross profit were up 18% and 24%, respectively.

Marqeta’s digital commerce business sells payment technology designed to detect potential fraud and ensure that money is properly routed. It also issues customized physical cards that look like a credit or debit card that can be used for point-of-sale purchases.

The company has been trying to break into the buy now, pay later business with a recently launched product called Marqeta Flex. The service brings BNPL from lenders such as Affirm or Klarna to any credit card wherever Mastercard and Visa are accepted.

“It’s an orchestration layer, but it’s tied to issuing and processing and disputes and chargebacks,” CEO Simon Khalaf told CNBC at Money2020 in Las Vegas last week. “So it is not actually a Wild West in BNPL. It is actually very well established. And there is a reason why a lot of people are jumping to it.”

Don’t miss these insights from CNBC PRO

Marqeta CEO on Q2 earnings, consumer trends and the end of cash

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