Good Monday Morning! It’s April 5th and it’s also the day after Easter Sunday. And that means, Just Born, the company that makes Peeps, has now earned 70% of their annual revenue, all thanks to sales of the squishy little chicken marshmallows.
Anyway, here’s the SWIRL:
📱 Tech: An augmented reality for the US Army
📈 Business: Apple powered by Tesla?
🏛 Politics: Infrastructure bill pushes broadband and EVs
If this is your first SWIRL, keep reading this part. If not, carry on to the content. Welcome, new Swirlers! Here’s a brief reader guide for you: the three teasers above will unfurl below to briefly cover a buzzy development in their respective areas. You’ll read a little about each one. At the end, we pull on a common thread among all three and explore what it might mean for us. If you missed last week’s SWIRL, tuck in here.
📱 Tech: An augmented reality for the US Army
Many of America’s military pilots ✈ have benefited from ‘heads-up displays’ or HUDs for years. HUDs allow pilots to keep their eyes trained on the sky, instead of looking down at dashboards 🎛 & dials for information. Critical data is displayed on eye-level transparent screens or cockpit windshields…just like the speedometer that pops up in the windshield of the car 🚘 your uncle bought a few years back. He still talks about it, doesn’t he?
In 2018, Microsoft and the US Army began developing a similar headset-based capability for America’s soldiers. This past Wednesday, the two organizations announced 📢 that their joint effort, called the “Integrated Visual Augmentation System” or IVAS, will officially enter production 🏭 phase. According to Microsoft, "The program delivers enhanced situational awareness, enabling information sharing and decision making in a variety of scenarios."
The contract to build and deliver 120,000 IVAS headsets is worth an eye-popping 👀 $21.88B over ten years. The technology allows augmented reality objects to be layered on top of the soldier’s real-world vision. This might include items like compass ↗ directions, thermal 🔥 imagery overlays (read: illuminating enemy targets hidden behind walls), or visual instructions transmitted onto the display to minimize audio communication. One of the soldiers who might be soon fielding the high-tech headsets 🕶 recently explained his view on IVAS in an Army blog post:
“It’s futuristic technology that we’ve all talked about and seen in movies and video games, but it’s something that we never imaged we would have the chance to fight with. It’s definitely technology that we are really excited to use as soon as they can get it to us.” - US Army SGT John Martin
Now that Microsoft has been given the green light to officially begin production, SGT Martin and his teammates won’t have to wait much longer.
📈 Business: Apple powered by Tesla?
Here’s what Apple said 🐵 on Wednesday: “A new energy storage project marks the next frontier of Apple’s efforts to become carbon neutral for its supply chain and products by 2030.”
Here’s what Apple didn’t say 🙊: The battery packs powering the project will come from Tesla.
Apple’s power ⚡ plans are ambitious. Their March 31st press release confirmed their current corporate operations—basically all of their office buildings—are already carbon neutral. But, they’re after more: “…by 2030, every Apple device sold will have net zero climate impact.”
To achieve that objective, Apple’s massive energy storage project will need to increase 📈 the amount of clean energy it generates. Apple may be leading on sustainable energy, but they’re not leading on batteries 🔋. Enter Tesla.
A solar farm owned by Apple, called California Flats, will be installing 85 of Tesla’s ‘megapack’ batteries to store solar 🌞 and wind 🌬 energy, according to reporting.
The deal between the two silicon valley companies will enable Apple to store up to 240 megawatts-hours of energy at the facility, which is enough juice to power 7000 homes 🏡 for a day. During daylight hours, California Flats provides 130 megawatts of power to Apple’s California facilities, but—and this may be obvious—it cannot supply power during darkness 🌃. So, it needs a way to store excess powered generated throughout the day.
“The challenge with clean energy - solar and wind - is that it’s by definition intermittent,” Apple VP of Environment Lisa Jackson told Reuters. “If we can do it, (referencing power storage) and we can show that it works for us, it takes away the concerns about intermittency and it helps the grid in terms of stabilization. It’s something that can be imitated or built upon by other companies.”
If Apple “can do it,” it would be a big win for their clean energy goals. And that would be a win for Tesla too.
🏛 Politics: Infrastructure bill pushes broadband and EVs
In its two-trillion dollar “American Jobs Plan,” the Biden administration outlined a number of investments 💸 it believes will “reimagine and rebuild a new economy.” Two specifics, which have received lots of buzz since the announcement last week, are line items for transportation 🌉 and internet 💻.
Let’s start with the former.
Electric Vehicles
The president’s plan would devote $620B to transportation spending with the largest chunk geared for electric 🔌 vehicles. Nearly 30% of those transportation dollars, $174B, is slated for investments in the electric vehicle market. The two primary avenues for that spending are (1) tax credits for consumers who buy 💵 EVs and (2) the development 👷🏻♀️ of a national network of 500,000 electric charging stations by 2030.
“The top three reasons consumers give for not buying E.V.s are lack of charging stations, time to charge, and the cost of E.V.s,” said Sam Abuelsamid, an analyst at Guidehouse Insights. “They (the administration) seem to be really emphasizing all three. So, over all, it looks very promising.”
And now, the latter.
Broadband
Another $100B is aimed at expanding high-speed ⏩ internet access for Americans. Any details about this spending seem to be arriving at dial-up internet speeds, but on Friday, internet media site Recode reported…
…the vast majority of that money will go to building out high-speed broadband connections to the millions of Americans who still don’t have them. There are also provisions about promoting competition and lowering prices. — Sara Morrison, for Recode
The goal of increasing broadband access 🔓 has been part of Biden’s message for months. Over 30 million Americans don’t have high-speed internet access at all, and millions more can’t afford it, according to the White House.
Zooming out, the proposed spending bill 📜is just that: a proposal. On the left, critics worry the bill doesn’t do enough. Voices on the right say it is too broad. This week, party leaders on both sides of the aisle will be looking to Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth McDonald, who is likely releasing her ruling 🧑🏻⚖️ on whether Democrats can use the ‘reconciliation’ budget process—allowing them to bypass the GOP—more than once per year. They’ve already used it to once to pass the latest Covid-19 relief budget bill.
So, how do our three stories swirl together? Each of our stories highlights the utility of not reinventing the wheel.
🥽 The US Army is leaning on Microsoft to make high-tech headsets for its soldiers; instead of developing these in-house, Uncle Sam tasked this one out to the professionals at Microsoft who already produce mixed-reality headsets called HoloLens
🔋 Apple is leaning on Tesla’s advancements in battery technology to help achieve its lofty carbon-neutral goals; instead of designing and making their own massive batteries, the iPhone maker phoned in Tesla to provide an energy storage capability that’s already on the market
🚧 Joe Biden’s proposals for hitting new EV and internet access targets would likely rely, almost exclusively, on incentivizing current players in both of their respective markets. Instead of creating “Uncle Sam’s EV and Internet Emporium,” the US government would partner with manufacturers and broadband providers to expand their operations in alignment with the administration’s proposed goals
Big plans are rarely solo plans. In order to do ambitious things, we often need the help of others. In this week’s SWIRL, we see three organizations (1) The Army (2) Apple and (3) The Biden Admin, all stepping outside of their wheelhouses to achieve their objectives. It’s a good reminder to us all: work smarter, not harder.
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