Transportation

Auto Execs Are Coming Clean: EVs Aren't Working (businessinsider.com) 352

Amiga Trombone shares a report from Insider: With signs of growing inventory and slowing sales, auto industry executives admitted this week that their ambitious electric vehicle plans are in jeopardy, at least in the near term. Several C-Suite leaders at some of the biggest carmakers voiced fresh unease about the electric car market's growth as concerns over the viability of these vehicles put their multi-billion-dollar electrification strategies at risk. Among those hand-wringing is GM's Mary Barra, historically one of the automotive industry's most bullish CEOs on the future of electric vehicles. But this week on GM's third-quarter earnings call, Barra and GM struck a more sober tone. The company announced with its quarterly results that it's abandoning its targets to build 100,000 EVs in the second half of this year and another 400,000 by the first six months of 2024. GM doesn't know when it will hit those targets.

While GM's about-face was somewhat of a surprise to investors, the Detroit car company is not alone in this new view of the EV future. Even Tesla's Elon Musk warned on a recent earnings call that economic concerns would lead to waning vehicle demand, even for the long-time EV market leader. Meanwhile, Mercedes-Benz -- which is having to discount its EVs by several thousand dollars just to get them in customers' hands -- isn't mincing words about the state of the EV market. "This is a pretty brutal space," CFO Harald Wilhelm said on an analyst call. "I can hardly imagine the current status quo is fully sustainable for everybody."
"It's clear that we're dealing with a lot of near-term uncertainty," said Barra. "The transition to EVs, that will have ups and downs."
Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda said that people are "finally seeing reality" regarding EVs. "I have continued to say what I see as reality," Toyoda, who recently stepped down as Toyota's CEO, said. "There are many ways to climb the mountain that is achieving carbon neutrality," such as hybrids and plug-in hybrids which have long made up a significant share of Toyota's EV sales.

"The reason (hybrids) are so powerful is because they fit the needs of so many customers," Toyota North America's vice president of sales Bob Carter told CNBC last year. "The demand for hybrid has been strong. We expect it to continue to grow as the entire industry transitions over to electrification later this decade."
Windows

Windows 11 Now Lets You Write Anywhere You Can Type (theverge.com) 51

An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft is starting to roll out new changes to Windows Ink that let you write anywhere you can type in Windows 11. After months of previewing the changes, the handwriting-to-text conversion now works inside search boxes and other elements of Windows 11 where you'd normally type your input. [...] If you have a Surface device with a stylus or any other Windows tablet that supports Windows Ink then you'll immediately see this new feature if you head into Settings and start to write into a search box, or in other text edit fields in Windows 11.
Google

Google Paid a Whopping $26.3 Billion in 2021 To Be Default Search Engine Everywhere (theverge.com) 52

The US v. Google antitrust trial is about many things, but more than anything, it's about the power of defaults. Even if it's easy to switch browsers or platforms or search engines, the one that appears when you turn it on matters a lot. Google obviously agrees and has paid a staggering amount to make sure it is the default: testimony in the trial revealed that Google spent a total of $26.3 billion in 2021 to be the default search engine in multiple browsers, phones, and platforms. From a report: That number, the sum total of all of Google's search distribution deals, came out during the Justice Department's cross-examination of Google's search head, Prabhakar Raghavan. It was made public after a debate earlier in the week between the two sides and Judge Amit Mehta over whether the figure should be redacted. Mehta has begun to push for more openness in the trial in general, and this was one of the most significant new pieces of information to be shared openly.

Just to put that $26.3 billion in context: Alphabet, Google's parent company, announced in its recent earnings report that Google Search ad business brought in about $44 billion over the last three months and about $165 billion in the last year. Its entire ad business -- which also includes YouTube ads -- made a bit under $90 billion in profit. This is all back-of-the-napkin math, but essentially, Google is giving up about 16 percent of its search revenue and about 29 percent of its profit to those distribution deals.

The Internet

Internet Access in Gaza is Collapsing as ISPs Fall Offline (techcrunch.com) 446

As the conflict between Israel and Hamas reaches its third week, internet connectivity in Gaza is getting worse. From a report: On Thursday, internet monitoring firm NetBlocks wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that the Palestinian internet service provider NetStream "has collapsed days after the operator notified subscribers that service would end due to a severe shortage of fuel supplies." According to Doug Madory, an expert who for years has worked at various companies that monitor networks across the world, internet connectivity in Gaza is dramatically worsening.

"The evidence of the crippled internet in Gaza is not hard to find. By every metric of internet connectivity, things are in bad shape," Madory, who is now the director of internet analysis at Kentik, told TechCrunch. Madory said that he monitored internet connectivity in Gaza during the 2014 war. At the time, despite some outages, "the ISPs were able to keep their connections to the outside world up using backup power, etc, even if many people were unable to access service due to power outages and infrastructure failures."

Google

The Restaurant Nearest Google (theverge.com) 30

Thai Food Near Me, Dentist Near Me, Notary Near Me, Plumber Near Me -- businesses across the country picked names meant to outsmart Google Search. Does it actually work? From a report: Thai Food Near Me isn't the first business to think of the Google-first naming convention. There are reminders of Google's kingmaker status in online discoverability everywhere in cities across the country. Among the businesses I was able to find: a chain of half a dozen Affordable Dentist Near Me's in Texas; an Antiques Near Me two hours outside of New York City; seven Plumber Near Me businesses; a Phone Repair Near Me in Cape Cod, Massachusetts; a Psychic Near Me in Chicago; and more than 20 iterations of "Notary Near Me" across the US. Felix Silva decided on the name Barber Shop Near Me after considering more than 20 other options for his Coral Springs, Florida, store in 2019. The name is meant to be neutral and memorable -- another one in contention was "The Barber Shop" -- but Silva fully leaned into the Google joke: the logo is a red location pin resembling Google's own, with a blue, white, and red barber pole pattern in the middle.

[...] As with Thai Food Near Me, the most powerful thing an SEO-driven name might be able to do is get customers in the door. From there, it's up to a business to give them a good experience, whether that's a great plate of pad see ew or the perfect haircut. Then, the cycle continues -- happy customers leave good reviews. Good reviews help the business's Google Maps profile rank higher. Silva uploads high-quality photos and videos to the page and shares updates, too. That's another SEO move; some experts say active profiles can improve a business's rankings. Still, the naming scheme has caught on: one acquaintance selling Christmas trees, for example, rebranded his business to be called Christmas Trees Near Me, Silva says. (Silva's is not the only Barber Shop Near Me, either -- there are also shops with the same name in Oak Park, Illinois; Queens, New York; and Muskogee, Oklahoma, according to Google Maps.)

Microsoft

PIRG Petitions Microsoft To Extend the Life of Windows 10 (theregister.com) 117

The Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) has delivered a petition to Microsoft calling on the company to rethink the impending abandonment of Windows 10 in the face of millions of PCs potentially being rendered eligible for landfill overnight. From a report: There are now less than two years until Microsoft is due to cut support for Windows 10, and at current estimates, 400 million PCs can't make the jump to Windows 11. The petition, addressed to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, criticizes its plans and states that customers expect their devices to last rather than be rendered obsolete by an arbitrary decision. PIRG warns that tipping that much hardware into landfills is somewhat at odds with the company's stance on the environment.

The petition reads: "All software reaches a point at which it's no longer supported, but when the consequences to our environment are this large we shouldn't accept it." As a reminder, while Windows 10 was largely backwards-compatible with computers running older operating systems, Microsoft slapped hardware requirements on Windows 11 that rendered machines even just a few years old unable to upgrade -- the main issues center on the CPU and TPM requirements.

Crime

Barcode Leads To Arrest of Texas Litterbug Behind 200 Pounds of Dumped Trash (chron.com) 106

"Illegal dumping is way too common, and often leads to no consequences," writes Slashdot reader Tony Isaac. "In some urban neighborhoods, people dump entire truckloads of waste in ditches along the streets. Maybe authorities have found a way to make a dent in this problem." Houston Chronicle reports: The Texas Game Wardens were recently able to track down and arrest a litterbug allegedly behind an illegal dumping of over 200 pounds of construction materials using a barcode left at the scene of the crime, according to a news release from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD). The pile of trash, which included sheetrock, housing trim, two-by-fours and various plastic items, was reportedly dumped along a bridge and creek on private land instead of being properly disposed of.

However, hidden among the garbage was also a box containing a barcode that would help identify the person behind the heap. A Smith County Game Warden used the barcode to track down the materials to a local store, and ultimately the owner of the credit card that was used for the purchase, TPWD said. The game warden interviewed the home owner who had reportedly just finished remodeling his home. "The homeowner explained that he paid someone familiar to the family who offered to haul off their used material and trash for a minimum fee," Texas Games Wardens said in a statement. "Unfortunately, the suspect kept the money and dumped the trash onto private property."

Working with the game warden, Smith County Sheriff's Office environmental deputies eventually arrested the suspect on charges of felony commercial dumping. At the time of the arrest, the suspect's truck was reportedly found loaded with even more building materials and trash, TPWD said. The state agency did not identify the suspect or disclose when or where they were arrested.

Facebook

Meta's Threads App Has 'Just Under' 100 Million Monthly Active Users, Says Zuckerberg (9to5mac.com) 23

"Threads is officially a success," writes long-time Slashdot reader destinyland. 9to5Mac reports: During Meta's quarterly earnings call today, CEO Mark Zuckerberg offered an update on the Threads, saying that the service has "just under" 100 million monthly active users. When Threads launched in July, the app quickly rocketed to having 100 million users within just a few days. While that growth is believed to have slowed down, as expected when something takes off so quickly, Zuckerberg says the service is currently at almost 100 million active users. Note the difference in terms, too. Having 100 million "users" is one thing, while having 100 million monthly active users is quite different -- and more impressive.

The number is also impressive when you consider that Threads isn't available to the millions of people who live in the European Union. As noted by The Verge, Zuckerberg also reiterated today that Meta's goal is to turn Threads into a "billion-person public conversations app" that is "a bit more positive" than some of the competition. According to Zuckerberg, Threads is on the way to achieving that goal.

The Internet

Google Fiber Is Getting Outrageously Fast 20Gbps Service (arstechnica.com) 53

Google Fiber plans to upgrade some users to 20Gbps service by the end of the year. Ars Technica reports: Google's Wednesday blog post calls this part of a "GFiber Labs" experiment and says the service "will initially be available as an early access offering to a small group of GFiber customers in select areas." The 20Gbps service is made possible by new networking gear: Nokia's 25G PON (passive optical network) technology, which lets Internet service providers push more bandwidth over existing fiber lines. Google says it's "one of the first" ISPs to adopt the technology for consumers, though at least one other US ISP, the Tennessee provider "EPB," has rolled out the technology. Customers will need new networking gear, too, and Google says you'll get a new fiber modem with built-in Wi-Fi 7.

Fierce Telecom spoke with Google's Nick Saporito, head of product at Google Fiber, who said, "We definitely see a need" for 20Gbps service. For now, Saporito says the service is "a very early adopter product," but it will eventually roll out "in most, if not all, of our markets." According to that Fierce report, Fiber is built on Nokia's "Quillion" Fiber platform, which is upgradable, so Google only needed to "plug in a new optical module and replace the optical network terminal on the end-user side" to take its 5 and 8Gbps infrastructure to 20Gbps.

There's no word yet on the price or which utopian Google Fiber cities will get access to the 20Gbps service, but Google has already run trials in Kansas City, Missouri. Currently, Google Fiber costs $70 for 1Gbps and $150 for 8Gbps. Interested customers can sign up for early access at this link.

Google

Google Adds Generative AI Threats To Its Bug Bounty Program (techcrunch.com) 3

Google has expanded its vulnerability rewards program (VRP) to include attack scenarios specific to generative AI. From a report: In an announcement shared with TechCrunch ahead of publication, Google said: "We believe expanding the VRP will incentivize research around AI safety and security and bring potential issues to light that will ultimately make AI safer for everyone." Google's vulnerability rewards program (or bug bounty) pays ethical hackers for finding and responsibly disclosing security flaws.

Given that generative AI brings to light new security issues, such as the potential for unfair bias or model manipulation, Google said it sought to rethink how bugs it receives should be categorized and reported. The tech giant says it's doing this by using findings from its newly formed AI Red Team, a group of hackers that simulate a variety of adversaries, ranging from nation-states and government-backed groups to hacktivists and malicious insiders to hunt down security weaknesses in technology. The team recently conducted an exercise to determine the biggest threats to the technology behind generative AI products like ChatGPT and Google Bard.

Transportation

Hyundai To Hold Software-Upgrade Clinics Across the US For Vehicles Targeted By Thieves (apnews.com) 59

Hyundai said this week that it will set up "mobile clinics" at five U.S. locations to provide anti-theft software upgrades for vehicles now regularly targeted by thieves using a technique popularized on TikTok and other social media platforms. From a report: The South Korean automaker will hold the clinics, which will run for two to three days on or adjacent to weekends, in New York City; Chicago; Minneapolis; St. Paul, Minnesota; and Rochester, New York. The clinics will take place between Oct. 28 and Nov. 18. Hyundai said it will also support single-day regional clinics run by dealerships before the end of 2023, although it didn't name locations or dates.
AI

OpenAI Forms Team To Study 'Catastrophic' AI Risks, Including Nuclear Threats (techcrunch.com) 16

OpenAI today announced that it's created a new team to assess, evaluate and probe AI models to protect against what it describes as "catastrophic risks." From a report: The team, called Preparedness, will be led by Aleksander Madry, the director of MIT's Center for Deployable Machine Learning. (Madry joined OpenAI in May as "head of Preparedness," according to LinkedIn, ) Preparedness' chief responsibilities will be tracking, forecasting and protecting against the dangers of future AI systems, ranging from their ability to persuade and fool humans (like in phishing attacks) to their malicious code-generating capabilities.

Some of the risk categories Preparedness is charged with studying seem more... far-fetched than others. For example, in a blog post, OpenAI lists "chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear" threats as areas of top concern where it pertains to AI models. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is a noted AI doomsayer, often airing fears â" whether for optics or out of personal conviction -- that AI "may lead to human extinction." But telegraphing that OpenAI might actually devote resources to studying scenarios straight out of sci-fi dystopian novels is a step further than this writer expected, frankly.

Google

Google Exec Testifies Innovation Key To Avoid Becoming 'Next Road Kill' (reuters.com) 17

Google executive Prabhakar Raghavan on Thursday detailed challenges the search and advertising giant faces from smaller rivals, describing efforts to avoid becoming "the next road kill." From a report: Raghavan testified at the ongoing antitrust trial in the suit brought by the U.S. Justice Department and a coalition of state attorneys general, alleging Alphabet's Google unlawfully abused its dominance in the search-engine market to maintain monopoly power. Raghavan, asked about a 1998 article about Yahoo!'s dominance of search at the time, said he was acutely aware rivals from Expedia.com to Instagram to TikTok competed for users' attention.

"I feel a keen sense not to become the next road kill," said Raghavan, a senior vice president at Google who reports to chief executive Sundar Pichai. Raghavan said Google had some 8,000 engineers and product managers working on search, with about 1,000 involved in search quality. Raghavan's description of Google struggling to stay relevant clashed with the Justice Department's depiction of a behemoth that broke antitrust law to retain dominance of online search and some aspects of advertising, including paying an estimated $10 billion annually to smartphone makers and wireless carriers to be the default search engine on devices. Google's share of the search engine market is near 90%.

AI

Bloomsbury Chief Warns of AI Threat To Publishing (ft.com) 44

The chief executive of Bloomsbury Publishing has warned of the threat of artificial intelligence to the publishing industry, saying tech groups are already using the work of authors to train up generative AI programmes. From a report: Nigel Newton, who signed Harry Potter author JK Rowling to Bloomsbury in the 1990s, also said ministers needed to act urgently to address competition concerns between large US tech groups and the publishing industry given their increasing market dominance in selling books across the world. The warning came as Bloomsbury reported its highest-ever first-half results on the back of the boom in fantasy novels, leading the publisher to boost its interim dividend. The group said revenues grew 11 per cent to $165.7mn, sending profits 11 per cent higher at $21.4mn, for the six months to August 31.

Newton pointed to the "huge" growth in fantasy novels, with sales of books by Sarah J Maas and Samantha Shannon growing 79 per cent and 169 per cent respectively in the period and demand for Harry Potter books, 26 years after publication, remaining strong. The next Maas book, scheduled for January, has already received "staggering" pre-orders of 750,000 copies for the hardback edition, he said, underscoring the resurgence of the book-selling industry. The group's consumer division will also publish new books in the expanding Harry Potter franchise -- such as a new Wizarding Almanac this autumn.

Technology

JPMorgan Says JPM Coin Now Handles $1 Billion Transactions Daily (bloomberg.com) 97

JPMorgan Chase's digital token JPM Coin now handles $1 billion worth of transactions daily and the bank plans to continue widening its usage, Global Head of Payments Takis Georgakopoulos said. From a report: "JPM Coin gets transacted on a daily basis mostly in US dollars, but we again intend to continue to expand that," Georgakopoulos said Thursday in an interview on Bloomberg Television. JPM Coin enables wholesale clients to make dollar and euro-denominated payments through a private blockchain network. It's one of the few examples of a live blockchain application by a large bank, but remains a small fraction of the $10 trillion in US dollar transactions moved by JPMorgan on a daily basis. The company also runs a blockchain-based repo application, and is exploring a digital deposit token to accelerate cross-border settlements.
Google

Inside Google's Plan To Stop Apple From Getting Serious About Search (nytimes.com) 22

Google has worried for years that Apple would one day expand its internet search technology, and has been working on ways to prevent that from happening. From a report: For years, Google watched with increasing concern as Apple improved its search technology, not knowing whether its longtime partner and sometimes competitor would eventually build its own search engine. Those fears ratcheted up in 2021, when Google paid Apple around $18 billion to keep Google's search engine the default selection on iPhones, according to two people with knowledge of the partnership, who were not authorized to discuss it publicly. The same year, Apple's iPhone search tool, Spotlight, began showing users richer web results like those they could have found on Google.

Google quietly planned to put a lid on Apple's search ambitions. The company looked for ways to undercut Spotlight by producing its own version for iPhones and to persuade more iPhone users to use Google's Chrome web browser instead of Apple's Safari browser, according to internal Google documents reviewed by The New York Times. At the same time, Google studied how to pry open Apple's control of the iPhone by leveraging a new European law intended to help small companies compete with Big Tech. Google's anti-Apple plan illustrated the importance that its executives placed on maintaining dominance in the search business. It also provides insight into the company's complex relationship with Apple, a competitor in consumer gadgets and software that has been an instrumental partner in Google's mobile ads business for more than a decade.

Google

AI Risk Must Be Treated As Seriously As Climate Crisis, Says Google DeepMind Chief 120

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The world must treat the risks from artificial intelligence as seriously as the climate crisis and cannot afford to delay its response, one of the technology's leading figures has warned. Speaking as the UK government prepares to host a summit on AI safety, Demis Hassabis said oversight of the industry could start with a body similar to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Hassabis, the British chief executive of Google's AI unit, said the world must act immediately in tackling the technology's dangers, which included aiding the creation of bioweapons and the existential threat posed by super-intelligent systems.

"We must take the risks of AI as seriously as other major global challenges, like climate change," he said. "It took the international community too long to coordinate an effective global response to this, and we're living with the consequences of that now. We can't afford the same delay with AI." Hassabis, whose unit created the revolutionary AlphaFold program that depicts protein structures, said AI could be "one of the most important and beneficial technologies ever invented." However, he told the Guardian a regime of oversight was needed and governments should take inspiration from international structures such as the IPCC.

"I think we have to start with something like the IPCC, where it's a scientific and research agreement with reports, and then build up from there." He added: "Then what I'd like to see eventually is an equivalent of a Cern for AI safety that does research into that -- but internationally. And then maybe there's some kind of equivalent one day of the IAEA, which actually audits these things." The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is a UN body that promotes the secure and peaceful use of nuclear technology in an effort to prevent proliferation of nuclear weapons, including via inspections. However, Hassabis said none of the regulatory analogies used for AI were "directly applicable" to the technology, though "valuable lessons" could be drawn from existing institutions.
Hassabis said the world was a long time away from "god-like" AI being developed but "we can see the path there, so we should be discussing it now."

He said current AI systems "aren't of risk but the next few generations may be when they have extra capabilities like planning and memory and other things ... They will be phenomenal for good use cases but also they will have risks."
Hardware

The Apple Watch's Double Tap Gesture Points At a New Way To Use Wearables (theverge.com) 44

Apple has introduced a completely new way to interact with the Apple Watch without ever needing to use the touchscreen. It's called Double Tap and it arrives today via the watchOS 10.1 update. The Verge reports: With a quick pinching motion, you can use it to scroll through the new smart stack of widgets in watchOS 10, pause or end timers, skip music tracks, and answer phone calls. It's the sort of feature that you might read about and scoff at -- until you're unloading groceries from your car, hands full, and an important call comes through on your watch. [...] Double tap technically isn't a new gesture so much. In 2021, Apple introduced Assistive Touch, an accessibility feature designed for people with limb differences or mobility issues. The idea was to give these folks a way to navigate through menus and control the Apple Watch without needing a second hand.

On the surface, it can seem like double tap is a rebadged version of Assistive Touch. That's led to understandable confusion as to how the two features differ -- and why double tap isn't available on older Apple Watches that support Assistive Touch (Series 4 or later, including the first-gen SE and Ultra). The short answer is that the Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 have a more powerful chip. Specifically, the new S9 features four neural engines for machine learning, which is what powers double tap. On older watches, Assistive Touch was run on the main CPU.

But practically speaking, it's easier to see how Assistive Touch and double tap differ once you try using both. [...] Double tap isn't designed to help you navigate anything. The best way I can describe it is Assistive Touch is like the mouse to your computer. It scrolls, it selects, and it's highly programmable. Double tap is more like the double-click portion of using a mouse. You use it solely to perform the main action of an app. And to do that, Apple had to spend a lot of time researching what people wanted or expected a single double tap to do. [...] And, when double tap performs as intended, it does feel a bit like the watch can read my mind. It's genuinely cool to see double tap work with not just my index finger but the rest of them as well. To my surprise, it feels less gimmicky than I expected. But despite Apple's efforts, it doesn't take long to run into double tap's limitations...

Transportation

Volkswagen To Stop Selling Combustion Vehicles In Norway From 2024 (electrive.com) 82

The Norwegian Volkswagen importer Moller Mobility Group has confirmed that it will stop selling combustion vehicles in Norway from 2024. Electricdrive.com reports: The farewell to the combustion engine in Norway is only logical: already today, e-cars regularly account for more than 80 percent of new registrations in the Scandinavian country, and the government wants them to reach a full 100 per cent by 2025. "It may seem strange to celebrate the milestone by removing model icons from our portfolio, but this has been an ambitious and important initiative over time," says Ulf Tore Hekneby, managing director of Volkswagen importer Harald A. Moller AS. "The goal has been to drive change that we believe is of critical importance."

Harald A. Moller AS has been importing Volkswagens to Norway since 1948. According to the company, around 1.1 million VWs have been sold in the Scandinavian country during these 75 years. This includes a total of 102,000 electric cars in the past ten years. The sale of the last Golf in Norway this December marks the end of an era, but also the beginning of a new one, Hekneby emphasised. "We encourage everyone to consider an electric car in their next car purchase. Switching to an electric car is a crucial step in reducing an individual's carbon footprint and an important overall contribution to combating climate change," he said.
The top-selling car in the country is the Tesla Model Y, "dominating more than 20% of the market share with 15,452 units sold in the first half of this year," reports Electrek. "Almost one in four new passenger car registrations so far this year was Tesla Model Y."
Transportation

GM Offers Chevy Bolt Owners $1,400 For Dealing With Software-Limited, Fire-Prone Batteries (electrek.co) 36

Jameson Dow reports via Electrek: As the latest step in the saga of recalled Chevy Bolts, GM is offering owners of '20-'22 Bolts early payment of $1,400 of an anticipated class action settlement in exchange for installing a piece of diagnostics software that the company says will detect whether batteries require a full replacement. [...] In June, GM announced that it would stop replacing 2020-2022 Chevy Bolt Batteries and would instead verify the integrity of the battery with software over a period of 6,200 miles in which Bolt owners were only allowed to charge their batteries to 80% or ~207 of the original EPA's 259-mile range. GM replaced most batteries on '17-'19 Bolts but then ended up offering software diagnostics instead of battery replacements to many '20-'22 model year Bolts. GM says that the software will detect which batteries actually require a fix, but the software requires 6,214 miles/10,000 km worth of driving to detect these problems, during which time charging must be limited to 80%.

This left many customers aggrieved at being promised a new battery and not receiving it, and further, at needing to wait some number of months with restricted charging before receiving a solution. Or, in the case of low-mileage customers, that 6,214 miles might even take years -- which brings up a conflict with GM's insistence that the diagnostic period be finished by March 31, 2025, in order to qualify owners for an extended warranty for a replaced battery pack. Now, GM is trying to sweeten the pot to get customers to install the "software final remedy" by offering early/upfront payment of an anticipated $1,400 class action settlement. The payment comes in the form of a Visa eRewards card that can be used for online purchases.

But you can only get this early payment if you install the "software final remedy" before December 31, 2023, and sign a legal release associated with taking the payment. If you don't, you'll have to wait for the class action to be sorted out. The compensation program only applies to owners involved in recall N212345944. If the class action settlement ends up being more than $1,400, GM says that the difference will still be paid out to owners who take advantage of this early compensation offer.
As noted in The Verge's report, "[o]lder Chevy Bolt models that were made from 2017 to 2019 were initially provided 'fixes' in 2021 to keep the vehicles from catching fire, but it did not work." A different issue with the batteries appeared in 2020, "during which time at least 19 Bolts caught fire with full batteries."

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