Acura will sell its EVs exclusively online starting in 2024

Honda has big plans for the new year and electrification will play a huge part of that, the company’s recently-promoted SVP of Sales, Mamadou Diallo, told reporters on Tuesday. Expect to see a lot more Honda and Acura hybrids on the road this year, ahead of a major EV push come 2024.

Overall, Honda is officially aiming to move 1.2 million units in 2023, with Acura shooting for 160,000 units, a 20 – 25 percent increase over what they sold in 2022. And although the company managed to maintain a single-digit days’ supply of vehicles throughout last year, it enters 2023 with a glut of cars and trucks and a 17-day supply. As such, dealers are going to be looking to move a lot of that inventory before this year’s models start arriving so fingers crossed, we could potentially see some Tesla-level price cuts in the near future.

“In 2023, we will see the strategies we’ve been talking about, including growing sales of light truck models, increasing volume of hybrid-electric models and the start of digital sales at Acura,” Diallo said in a Wednesday press release. “All this leads toward our vision of 100-percent electrified sales by 2040 to fulfill our ultimately goal of zero emissions by 2050.” 

The ZDX and ZDX Type S will be Acura’s first full-EV offerings and serve as the harbingers of the company’s new, exclusively online EV sales strategy. Diallo didn’t have much additional information regarding how the system would work — such as whether haggling was allowed or how individual vehicle prices would be set — but assured the assembled journalists, “as we get closer to [the ZDX debut], we certainly will be discussing this a little bit more with our dealer body and the press in general. For right now we’re still finalizing all those details.” Acura joins Ford, Volvo, GM and VW in shifting its electrified vehicle sales to the digital marketplace. 

For its part, Honda is planning a significant increase in its hybrid vehicle production in 2023, starting with the newly-redesigned Accord and Accord Hybrid (they’ll also be Honda’s first with Google Built-In). The company “will continue to increase hybrid sales through core models as an important step in bridging customers to full electrified vehicles while reducing GHG emissions,” the Wednesday release reads. Honda anticipates a solid half of this year’s CR-V and Accord sales to be of the hybrid variety and its efforts bolstered in 2024 with the introduction of a new Civic hybrid. Sales for the all-electric Prologue begin this year with deliveries set for 2024.

Anker charging accessories are up to 49 percent off in Amazon sale

If you’re looking to buy some accessories for your phone, a bunch of Anker powerbanks, cables and chargers are on sale right now at Amazon. One of the best deals in the list is the Anker Magnetic (MagGo) Battery for the iPhone 12, 13 and 14, which is c…

The Morning After: Ticketmaster wants Congress to fix its bot problem

In November, millions of Taylor Swift fans logged on to Ticketmaster to grab tickets for her 2023 tour. However, the site crashed, rendering verified users unable to purchase. Ticketmaster’s parent company, Live Nation, explained that while 1.5 million people had signed up as legit customers, over 14 million hit the site when tickets went on sale – many of which were bots.

Live Nation president and CFO Joe Berchtold told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday that the company “learned valuable lessons” from the Swift debacle. Three senators shoehorned in Taylor Swift quotes into their statements and questions – which I loved.

Berchtold called for Congress to expand the BOTS Act to “increase enforcement.” Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal reminded Berchtold there are already legal options for going after scalpers using bots to procure tickets. “You have unlimited power to go to court,” Blumenthal said. “Your approach seems to be that everyone else is responsible here.”

– Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

NASA and DARPA will test nuclear engines for crewed missions to Mars

The agencies hope to demonstrate the tech as soon as 2027.

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NASA

NASA is teaming up with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to test a nuclear thermal rocket engine in space, to use the technology for crewed missions to the red planet. The agencies hope to “demonstrate advanced nuclear thermal propulsion technology as soon as 2027,” NASA administrator Bill Nelson said. “With the help of this new technology, astronauts could journey to and from deep space faster than ever – a major capability to prepare for crewed missions to Mars.” There are, of course, risks involved with NTP engines, such as the possible dispersal of radioactive material in the environment should a failure occur in the atmosphere or orbit. Nevertheless, NASA says the faster transit times NTP engines can enable could lower the risk to astronauts – they could reduce travel times to Mars by up to a quarter. Nuclear thermal rockets could be at least three times more efficient than conventional chemical propulsion methods.

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Amazon’s RxPass offers Prime members generic medications for $5 a month

It has medications for 80 common health conditions.

Amazon has launched a new subscription service for customers in the US to get as many eligible medications as they need for $5 a month. The new service, called RxPass, is part of the e-commerce giant’s Pharmacy business, which launched in 2020 as a two-day prescription drug delivery for Prime users. That makes RxPass a $5 add-on for Prime, which sets users back $139 a year or $15 a month in the US. Customers will need to pay $5 out of pocket, since the service does not take insurance, like Amazon Pharmacy does, for purchases outside of the program. People enrolled in Medicare, Medicaid and any other government healthcare program will not be able to sign up for RxPass, either.

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‘Forspoken’ review: A magical world with several cracks

Fluid battles, uneven plot.

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Square Enix

In Forspoken, you control the agile, angry Frey, slinging elemental attacks (and f-bombs) at multiple monsters before leaping off a cliff face and swinging from a molten outcrop. You keep moving, through the lands of Athia, through the adventure, because it’s enjoyable and satisfying, but also because when you slow down, you start to see the cracks. Delayed twice, while the fighting system is generally solid, Forspoken has a lot of sub-quest padding, and most of it’s pretty dull.

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WhatsApp’s native Mac app beta is now available to all

It’s optimized to run fast and efficiently on Mac hardware.

Mac users now have a native version of WhatsApp. The new app is optimized for Mac hardware and built with Mac Catalyst, so it should be faster and more efficient than the current web-wrapped Electron version. You also get a new interface with three panels to easily flip between chats, calls, archived and starred messages, while seeing contacts and interactions at a glance.

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Microsoft services including Teams, Outlook and Xbox Live go down across the world

Multiple Microsoft 365 services went down for thousands of users around the world, prompting the tech giant to investigate the incident affecting several of its products. In an announcement about the outage posted in the early morning (ET time) of January 25th, the company said users were unable to access its services, including Microsoft Teams, Exchange Online, Outlook, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, Microsoft Graph, PowerBi and Microsoft 365 Admin Center. The tech giant admitted that the outage might not be limited to those products, however, and true enough, over a thousand users also reported having problems with accessing Xbox Live on Down Detector.

In an update to its announcement, Microsoft said it “isolated the problem to a networking configuration issue.” The company added that it had to plan its next troubleshooting steps carefully and analyze “the best mitigation strategy” in order to come up with a solution that wouldn’t cause any additional impact. By 4:26AM ET, Microsoft tweeted that it “rolled back a network change” that it believed was causing the outage and that it was monitoring its services as they start coming back online. 

新年優惠最後機會：Casetify、Logitech、微軟以及更多折扣

來到了年初四，連假也即將完結，必須要好好收拾心情迎接兔年的挑戰。不知道大家在過年期間收到的紅包是否豐收，如果沒有儲存起來的打算，可以參考一下早前 Engadget 中文版為大家推介的網購產品及優惠，好好善用這些額外拿到的預算。…

Bowers & Wilkins updated its Pi7 and Pi5 earbuds with better battery life

Bowers & Wilkins debuted its first true wireless earbuds in the spring of 2021. In fact, it announced two models at that time: the Pi7 and Pi5. Today, the company revealed updated versions for both which will carry the S2 label Bowers & Wilkins typically uses for retooled but not entirely brand new products. While the Pi7 S2 and Pi5 S2 aren’t rebuilt from the ground up, there are still some notable upgrades to both.

The Pi7 S2 and Pi5 S2 now both offer five hours of battery life on a charge. That’s up from four hours on the Pi7 and Pi5. A 15-minute quick-charge feature still gives you two hours of use and the included cases carry an additional 16 hours for the Pi7 S2 and 19 hours for the Pi5 S2. Both still have wireless charging capabilities, though the case for the Pi7 S2 is equipped with Wireless Audio Retransmission. Like it did for the Pi7, the case can connect to can external audio source — like in-flight entertainment — and wirelessly send sound to the earbuds. This isn’t novel to Bowers & Wilkins earbuds, but it is a handy feature nonetheless. Bowers & Wilkins says it also updated the antenna design on the Pi7 and Pi5 to increase Bluetooth range up to 25 meters. 

The key difference between the two models is audio quality. The Pi7 S2 supports aptX Adaptive with 24-bit/48kHz streaming from compatible devices and services. 9.2mm balanced armature dynamic drivers are paired with Bowers & Wilkins’ digital signal processing tech for higher quality audio that what the Pi5 offers with CD-quality sound and regular aptX. The Pi7 S2 also packs one additional microphone per earbud which should make it the preferred option for calls. And while both feature active noise cancellation (ANC), the Pi7 S2 has an adaptive setup that automatically monitors your surroundings to adjust the audio as needed for “the best possible, uninterrupted listening experience.” 

Both the Pi7 S2 and Pi5 S2 are available starting today, replacing the Pi7 and Pi5. The $399 Pi7 S2 comes in black, white and dark blue color options while the $299 Pi5 S2 offers light grey, dark grey and purple. A green version of the Pi5 S2 is slated to arrive later this spring.

Bowers & Wilkins Pi5 S2
Pi5 S2
Bowers & Wilkins