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Tesla nearly doubled its revenue in Q1 despite industry wide supply chain woes
Ignoring the whole Twitter thing, Tesla built 305,000 vehicles in the first quarter of this year, delivered 310,000 of them, and opened two new factories in Berlin and Austin.
Tesla's Berlin Gigafactory could produce EVs as soon as November
Elon Musk says the Tesla Gigafactory in Berlin could start producing Model Y cars as soon as November, although it might take a year to get up to speed.
IFA 2021 is canceled after all
After organizers announced a "full-scale return" last month, IFA 2021 in Berlin has been canceled as physical live event due to COVID-19 health concerns.
IFA is planning a 'full-scale return' with an in-person event in September
Health and safety will be a priority, but organizers don't expect this year's edition to set new records.
Tesla’s Berlin factory will support flashy multi-layered paint jobs
Elon Musk has hinted at color and pattern options for the Cybertruck, and it’ll all come down to wrapping.
Tesla ordered to halt early work on its German Gigafactory
Tesla's Berlin area Gigafactory is running into trouble before the EV maker has even laid the foundations. The higher administrative court for Berlin-Brandenburg has ordered Tesla to halt forest clearing for the factory while waiting on a decision for a complaint from the environmental activist group Green League of Brandenburg. Simply put, there wasn't much choice. Tesla was going to complete the clearing in just three more days -- there wouldn't have been a point to hearing the complaint if the trees were already gone.
Elon Musk: Berlin 'gigafactory' will build Teslas starting with the Model Y
After launching manufacturing facilities in the US and China, Tesla's next location is apparently in Europe. Reuters and CNBC report that while speaking at an awards ceremony in Germany, Elon Musk announced the company's 'Gigafactory 4' will be located in the Berlin area. Musk later tweeted out "Giga Berlin," and said that the location "Will build batteries, powertrains & vehicles, starting with Model Y." This follows its current facilities in Nevada, Buffalo and its newest addition in Shanghai, China. Apparently this one will also include an engineering and design center. Tesla bought a German engineering firm in 2016 to help build the Model 3, and it appears those efforts will grow as it launches production of the Model Y, and, presumably, the electric "cybertruck" that's supposed to be revealed next week.
What to expect at IFA 2019
There's just one big technology show before the end of the year, IFA, where we'll see the last goodies revealed before everyone goes into buying mode. As usual, a team of Engadget's finest will descend upon Berlin in the first week of September to uncover all of the best things being shown off. Before we do, however, you can whet your appetite with what we're expecting, or at least hoping, to see when we land.
On the nose
When you are a world-renowned pioneer in smells, it's somewhat inevitable you will end up sticking your face into peculiar places.
Bombardier revives the battery-powered train
Diesel trains are noisy and polluting, but on stretches of non-electrified rail, what else are you going to do? Hydrogen trains are one option, but now there's another: Canadian transportation firm Bombardier has (re-)introduced the battery powered train. In Berlin, it launched the Bombardier Talent 3 electro-hybrid train, the first of its kind in Europe in over 60 years, the company said. The train took its maiden voyage with local luminaries including the federal commissioner for rail transport and the Brandenburg transport minister.
Uber's electric bike-sharing service is launching in Europe
In a continued push to expand beyond traditional taxi rides, Uber has announced plans to roll out its Jump bike rental service to cities in Europe. The company acquired bike-sharing platform Jump just a few months ago and was quick to offer the service in Washington DC and cities throughout California. Now it aims to launch in Berlin before the end of the summer, with other European cities to follow.
The first major 'PUBG' tournament takes place in Berlin this summer
Player Unknown Battlegrounds, aka PUBG, has been pushing its way to the eSports realm for quite some time now. While it has moved beyond the straight-up battle royale genre it popularized with new gameplay like War Mode, it's the behind the scenes tech that will have the most impact on the game's success as an eSport title, including its 3D replay systems and help from chipmakers like AMD. Now, according to a report from Polygon, PUBG's first major eSports tournament take place July 25th through the 29th.
Gogoro and Bosch launch electric scooter-sharing service in Paris
The Gogoro EV Smartscooter is headed to France. A fleet of 600 scooters will be available starting this summer for short-term rentals via Bosch's Coup Mobility service. This is the second city -- Berlin being the first -- that Coup and Gogoro have teamed up in.
Adidas will knit you a $200 sweater while you wait
In the sneaker industry, it normally takes around 12 to 18 months for a new clothing design to make it to store shelves. Adidas wants to shorten that wait to a matter of hours. To that end, the German fitness apparel company has opened a pop-up shop in Berlin that enables customers to design, manufacture and buy a customized merino wool sweater for 200€ ($215).
Ben Heck visits Berlin #MTF Hack Camp
try{document.getElementById("aol-cms-player-1").style.display="none";}catch(e){} Ben and Felix bust out the bad jokes as they visit the Music Tech Fest in Berlin as part of the #MTF Hack Camp sponsored by element14. The event brought together talented musicians, singers and hackers for a 24-hour hackathon, and in this episode you can watch interviews with the makers at the event. Projects ranged from one that lets you slice audio samples in real time, to an artificially intelligent drummer that chimes in by itself. Discuss all that and more with other fans over at the element14 Community.
The artist making physics and a conspiracy theory into music
Peaches is her aunt. Jared Leto's a fan and so is Jean-Michel Jarre, who sent her to live with an indigenous tribe in the Amazon. She's modeled for high-end fashion events and composed for German theater. She's conducted magnetic resonance imaging studies on mutated HIV cells and had paintings featured in galleries in New York. She taught herself the piano at age 10. At 15, she successfully petitioned the Los Angeles courts to be home-schooled; one year later, she enrolled at the University of Maryland. Her upcoming album incorporates the synthesized sounds of actual stars, physics themes and pitch-shifting conspiracies linked to Bob Marley and Hitler. Her list of professional accomplishments puts other so-called pop culture multihyphenates to shame. She is Simonne Jones, and you will know her name.
Berlin bans renting whole apartments through Airbnb
One of the biggest concerns with Airbnb is its effect on housing prices -- when people turn entire apartments into makeshift hotels, it tends to drive up apartment rental rates and punish locals searching for homes. Berlin isn't having any of it, though. After a two-year transition period, the German city has enacted a new law (the oh-so-catchy "Zweckenfremdungsverbot") that bans short-term rentals of whole apartments through Airbnb and similar online services. You're now restricted to renting individual rooms unless you get a special permit.
Stop nuclear devastation at the heart of a never-ending Cold War
One of the most famous works of graffiti on the Berlin Wall is a depiction of former Soviet general secretary Leonid Brezhnev kissing the ex-leader of East Germany, Erich Honecker, full on the mouth. In the painting, called "My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love," Brezhnev's profile commands a majority of the frame, as if he's sucking the life out of Honecker. It's based on a 1979 photo of the two statesmen locked in a fraternal kiss, a common form of greeting among socialist leaders at the time. Fast-forward to 2016, and artist Rafal Fedro of inbetweengames has updated this iconic painting to feature US president Barack Obama and Russian president Vladimir Putin sharing their own fraternal kiss. In the studio's latest project, a spy tactics game called All Walls Must Fall, the new painting represents a wide range of scenarios: heightened tensions between the two countries that were at the heart of the Cold War, fraying international relationships, or the subconscious desire to love our enemies, to name a few interpretations.
Uber shuts down in three German cities amid driver shortage
Surprise: Uber has having trouble in Germany, again. No, the company isn't facing another nationwide ban, but the trouble does seem to stem from a previous court decision -- apparently Uber is just having a hard time finding drivers. "For many prospective Uber drivers, the process of registering an independent rental car enterprise has proved as too costly and time consuming," the company told Reuters, referring to a German court ruling that requires Uber drivers to hold a valid taxi license. The company is pulling out of Hamburg, Frankfurt and Dusseldorf as a result, leaving Berlin and Munich as the country's only cities with Uber service. The company says it plans to "intensify the dialogue" with law makers, and hopes to be able to restore wider service to the country in the near future. [Image credit: Bloomberg via Getty Images]
Teaching a robot to feel, live on the opera stage
Myon is a shiny white humanoid robot and the star of My Square Lady, an opera that opened this month in Berlin's Komische Oper in Germany. The operatic robot is a product of the Neurorobotics Research Laboratory at Berlin's Humboldt University and the European Union's Artificial Language Evolution on Autonomous Robot's project. Myon sings, of course, and it shuffles in stilted, mechanical motions while interacting with the rest of the carbon-based performers. No one controls Myon from backstage -- researchers and the cast worked with the robot for two years, teaching it how to sing with the orchestra, move around the stage, and react to visual and auditory cues. The opera itself is all about Myon, a robot trying to learn what it means to be human and feel emotion.