Daily Archives: April 13, 2021

Lime, Bird, Flask, Vogo, Grin and Yellow, Skip, Spin All are multi-million-dollar (or even billion-dollar) companies whose every move is being pored over by car makers desperately appraising what the future of transport actually means.

All are at the heart of the e-mobility revolution, itself a contradiction as it is underpinned by scooters and the bicycles albeit powered by electricity rather than legs and feet.

The frenzy around these firms has been driven in part by fashion and disruption, because investors love a bit of both. They offer a chance to dismantle the status quo and make fast bucks and anything that drives down emissions and congestion is also a positive.

Urban e-scooter schemes have caught the zeitgeist. This app-accessible mode of transport has been deemed by users to be cheaper than a cab, less effort than a bicycle and more convenient than a bus. Paris set itself up at the vanguard of the movement in 2018, then its legislators watched in awe and horror as 20,000 e-scooters took over its streets in a manner that one government official described as anarchic. Speeding, drink-riding and collisions were rife, plus there was the trip hazard of hastily discarded scooters.

Such was the popularity of the scheme that authorities had to backpedal somewhat, revoking rights of 12 operators and reissuing them to just three, each allowed to provide 5000 scooters as of this year. Best-case predictions suggest mass adoption will reduce traffic by 50% and pollution by 30%, but that remains a target rather than reality.

Momentum among suppliers is building. A market estimated to be worth 15bn today is expected to hit 30bn by 2030, but that feels conservative. In the UK private use remains illegal, but trials of subscription services are under way.

Joining the fray, arguably less controversially, are e-bikes, where human effort is typically supplemented by a battery-powered electric boost. E-bikes are a pandemic success story: 3.7m e-bikes were sold in Europe in 2019, but that figure that rose 23% last year and is set to hit 10m a year by 2024 and 17m by 2030 at that point a higher figure than new cars sold.

No wonder the car makers are watching closely, and its no coincidence that Toyota is remodelling itself as a mobility firm and Volkswagen is pushing itself as a digital one. The price point of e-scooters and bikes may be different but the message is clear: electrification, especially in cities, is set to change far more than how our cars are powered, striking to the heart of transport and therefore society itself.

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Former Land Rover and Nissan bosses launch electric scooter brand in UK

Seat e-Scooter could be sold in UK

Seat to launch electric scooter as urban mobility vehicle

Read more here:

Inside the Industry: How urban e-scooters are riding the zeitgeist - Autocar

UndarkApr 12, 2021 13:05:22 IST

By Rachel Love Nuwer

Todays conservationists are taxed with protecting the living embodiments of tens of millions of years of natures creation, and they face unprecedented challenges for doing so from climate change and habitat destruction to pollution and unsustainable wildlife trade. Given that extinction is the price for failure, theres little forgiveness for error. Success requires balancing not just the complexities of species and habitats, but also of people and politics. With an estimated 1 million species now threatened with extinction, conservationists need all the help they can get.

Yet the past a key repository of lessons hard learned through trial and error is all too often forgotten or overlooked by conservation practitioners today. In Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction, journalist Michelle Nijhuis shows that history can help contextualise and guide modern conservation. Indeed, arguably its only in the last 200 years or so that a few scattered individuals began thinking seriously about the need to save species and its only in the last 50 that conservation biology even emerged as a distinct field.

Beloved Beasts reads as a whos who and greatest-moments survey of these developmental decades. Through the eyes and actions of individuals, it portrays the evolution of the surprisingly young field from a pursuit almost solely of the privileged Western elite to a movement that is shaped by many people, many places, and many species.

Its in the gray area of the personal, though, that the book is most fascinating. Even the most celebrated and successful conservationists had human flaws, and Nijhuis does not shy away from these details. As she writes, The story of modern species conservation is full of people who did the wrong things for the right reasons, and the right things for the wrong reasons.

In one chapter, for example, Nijhuis tells the story of William Temple Hornaday, an American taxidermist who served as the first director of what is now the Bronx Zoo, and who is credited with saving the American bison from extinction. By the late 19th century, evidence clearly pointed to the fact that bison, a species that once numbered tens of million, were set to disappear due to wanton overhunting. Yet at the time, most people assumed that species were static and enduring, Nijhuis writes, and those who did catch wind of the fall of the American buffalo mostly responded with a shrug.

Strangely for his time, Hornaday became obsessed with the animals plight. He decided that the only way to preserve the species from extinction was to establish a captive herd to, as he wrote, atone for the national disgrace that attaches to the heartless and senseless extermination of the species in the wild state. With Theodore Roosevelts backing, Hornaday established a small bison herd in the Bronx in 1905, one whose urban descendants became founders of some of the 500,000 bison that survive today. More than just save a species, Hornadays work helped bring public recognition of extinction as a needless tragedy rather than an inevitable cost of expansion, Nijhuis writes.

Yet despite all the good he did for the natural world, Nijhuis points out that Hornadays successes like many conservation gains of the 19th and 20th centuries were built on a foundation of nationalism, sexism, and racism. For Hornaday and his allies, the rescue of the bison had nothing to do with the people who had depended on the species and a great deal to do with their own illusions about themselves, Nijhuis writes.

Bison were slaughtered en masse in the 1800s, not just for their hides but also as a convenient way to control Native Americans who depended on the animals for food, Nijhuis writes. At the same time, White men like Hornaday and Roosevelt began appropriating bison as a symbol of rugged Caucasian masculinity, both for the animals association with a strenuous life and as the target of choice for of wealthy White male hunters. Despite evidence to the contrary, Hornaday placed partial blame for the bisons demise on Native Americans, and his Bronx-raised bison, Nijhuis points out, were released on land seized from the Apache, Comanche, and Kiowa. Protecting bison, therefore, meant protecting a perniciously exclusive version of natural progress, Nijhuis writes.

With each subsequent generation, though, the conservation field has gradually improved in terms of its scope and ethics. In his older age, Hornaday, for example, supported and encouraged the activism and ecological education of Rosalie Edge. A bird-loving New York socialite, Edge helped to reform the Audubon Society, which, at the time, supported the eradication of raptors and opposed tightening of hunting restrictions.

A year before the term ecosystem was coined in 1934, Edge discussed with Hornaday a groundbreaking realization she had come to: that species should be protected not only because they are of interest to humans as had motivated Hornaday and the men of his time but because each forms a vital link in a living chain. A decade after Edge and Hornadays conversation, the centrality and fragility of ecological connections would become all the more apparent when Rachel Carson pondered the impacts of the pesticide DDT on raptors at the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in Pennsylvania, a protected area Edge founded.

Ideas and connections continued to build. Around the same time Edge was campaigning for birds, Aldo Leopold popularised the idea that ecosystems, not just species, need to be protected, and that game is a public trust that should be managed by science-based law. This zeitgeist shift resulted in the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation. Leopold believed it was possible to love other species and use them wisely, too, Nijhuis writes.

The conservation movement gained momentum in the wake of World War II, Nijhuis writes, when the word global came into wider use, and the interconnectedness of the world both ecological and human became glaringly apparent. Data compiled by the newly established International Union for Conservation of Nature also revealed just how many species faced extinction, and shifted the movements focus to emergency relief. But as conservation spread to other continents, especially Africa, it continued to work through various growing pains, including racist views about independent Africas inability to manage its own natural resources. Many foreign conservationists saw the African landscape as John Muir had seen Yosemite as an extraordinary place meant to be visited, not lived in, Nijhuis writes.

This so-called fortress conservation approach perpetuated in the 1950s and 1960s a top-down enterprise in which global authorities ultimately inform national and local agendas has since come under fire and has been increasingly replaced by a version of conservation that acknowledges that humans are an inextricable part of the landscape. Additionally, time and time again, conservationists have learned (oftentimes the hard way) that protection of wild places can never succeed without buy-in from the people who live there. To protect biodiversity to provide other species with the resources they needed to adapt, survive, and thrive conservationists, including conservation biologists, had to persuade some of their fellow humans to make some sacrifices, at least in the short term, Nijhuis writes.

The problem, Nijhuis continues, isnt inattention to human needs, but inattention to human complexity. Conservationists too often view humanity the same way they would a population of species that fits into a single ecological niche with set relationships and dependencies, Nijhuis argues, rather than as thinking and technologically endowed beings aware of our place among other species and each other. Nor are we passive players. As the future perfect turns into the present perfect, we can apply ourselves to creating a tolerable present and future for ourselves and for the rest of life, Nijhuis writes.

The decisions we make are often unpredictable, though, informed by a vast array of social, cultural, and individual factors. Conservation biology, in other words, cant be left only to the biologists, Nijhuis writes. Its for this reason that the field has begun to draw upon other realms of expertise outside of pure ecology, including economics, politics, social science, and more. This need for diversity not only in nature but also within human endeavors to protect it is something that Leopold and others recognized decades ago, but has only just started to come to fruition in any practical way.

History is an integral part of that complexity, too. Just as we cannot protect something that we do not know exists, past failures and successes likewise cannot be taken advantage of for future gains if history is forgotten. Beloved Beasts is therefore compelling and necessary reading for anyone interested in the field of conservation. As Nijhuis writes, We can move forward by understanding the story of struggle and survival we already have and seeing the possibilities in what remains to be written.

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

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In Beloved Beasts, Michelle Nijhuis shows that history can help contextualise and guide modern conservation - Firstpost

Some will say this is a headline thats been coming, many more will step into the story without knowing what to expect. At Watches And Wonders, the watch fair taking place via the web in Geneva this week, Cartier has reintroduced its silent icon, the Tank Must.

For contemporary style mavens who have been lauding the 1970s, Warhol-era original Tank Must, particularly in its burgundy-dialled livery, this will be a moment of mixed emotions: satisfaction that their appraisal of the dandyish design as a thinking mans classic has been recognised with a reissue, but perhaps a little disappointment that their secret is now, finally, out.

The Tank Must paradox doesnt end there. The Must suffix will be unknown to many modern-day Cartier fans and yet the form will be familiar. Its based on the Tank Louis Cartier of 1922, the icon and current collection mainstay. So that explains that.

Different variants of the new Tank Must. Prices start at 2,310

But theres more. Behind the Tank Musts relative anonymity is a story that is completely essential to the story of Cartier. Without it, its not a wild exaggeration to say Cartier the watchmaker would almost certainly not enjoy the position it does today. That, for the record, is as Switzerlands third largest watchmaker behind Rolex and Omega, according to independent reports.

Background information on the original 1977 Tank Must is sparse. Into the 1970s, Cartier was a very different company to the uber brand we now recognise. It was several businesses rather than one, for starters. As bits of it were bought up and centralised, new management decided they needed a collection with a universal language that would help put the brand on a global footing.

Cartiers archives indicate their solution was a product line that included bags, pens and lighters, but, initially, not a watch. The concept was to be not just universal but also more accessible. Its recorded, for example, that the lighters were available in well-heeled tobacco stores, the sort of pavement stop long since gone from the fashion capitals of the world. The aim was to capture the zeitgeist, to tempt consumers with must-have accessories. In 1973, thus Cartier introduced Les Must De Cartier, an anglicisation that still comes as a surprise now.

The watch didnt follow until 1977. Some reports have it that at the time Cartier was only selling around 3,000 watches a year, chicken feed by our generations standards, even if they were mostly gold or platinum.Robert Hocq and Alain-Dominique Perrin, the two visionaries running the show at the time, decided that what Cartier needed was a lower-priced watch that they could sell in jewellers all over the world and not just through its own boutiques.

They conceived a piece based on the inimitable Tank Louis Cartier and cast it in gold-plated silver, a novel technique for the brand known as vermeil. Inside it, they put a battery-powered quartz movement. The look was fashionable, accessible and yet still very much Cartier.

The new burgundy Cartier Tank Must. 2,490

The Tank Must De Cartier watch was a hit. Some reports have it that by the end of the decade Cartiers annual watch output had shot up to 160,000 units. Into the 1980s and 1990s, Must took on further shapes and forms Cartier used the name for its first perfume in 1981 and attracted legion admirers. Cartier, meanwhile, became a luxury behemoth and the jewel in the crown of what today is known as the Richemont Group, alongside fellow luminaries Montblanc, Vacheron Constantin, IWC and Panerai. Those independent reports have it that Cartier the watchmaker now shifts around half a million watches a year. Not all down to the Tank Must, but its part in that trajectory is significant.

Why then todays esoteric Must story? As these things do, Les Must De Cartier fell from fashion and, at some point, those early Tank Must watches simple, almost H-shaped, sometimes monochromatic and infused with effortless French chic developed a mythical patina. As Cartier grew, so the need for a low-priced line faded and the Must name was retired from the companys watch line-up. Good vintage pieces became hard to find. The gold-plating was usually worn, while the quartz movements had often had it.

The wheels of fashion have turned, though. With 1970s, 1980s and increasingly 1990s trends influential over todays designers, some had said the return of the Tank Must was inevitable. Why would Cartier not capitalise on its latent aura?

Well, now it has.

To the new line, then, which replaces the outgoing Tank Solo and includes pieces in various sizes and guises. The core Tank Must pieces are steel-cased with the usual Cartier signatures (Roman numeral white dial,railway minute track, blued sword-shaped handsand a blue synthetic stone cabochon set into the crown) and come in three sizes, the largest with an in-house automatic and the smaller pairing with quartz movements said to be good for eight years autonomy. Theres a version coming later in the year with an innovative energy system fuelled by light too.

These are all fine-looking, but the headliners are the trio with matching straps and lacquered dials. The monochromatic blue, green and burgundy pieces are all glorious universal and yet somehow unknowable, as all Frenchcrations should be. These too are quartz-powered, but the dial aesthetic is stripped bare, save the Cartier logo and sword-shaped hands. The burgundy model in particular is a dandy for our times, no question.

Alongside these are two delicious new Tank Louis Cartier models, one blue with a pink-gold case, the other red with a yellow-gold case. Both carry Cartiers 1917 MC hand-wound manufacture movements. The form is the same large model size as the monochromatic pieces, the distinction being Louis Cartier models are all gold and the Must models all steel.

The new Tank Louis Cartier models, 12,000

Cartiers present-day motivations are of course very different to those of almost 50 years ago. Since the middle of the past decade, it has been reframing its watch collection under the banner ofmontres de forme, or shape watches, following a period when the focus fell on its wonderfully experimental but apparently not sufficiently profitable Fine Watchmaking Division (remember the vacuum-sealed ID concept watches?). In that time, weve seen Santos and Panthre reborn, alongside a series of special pieces in the Cartier Priv line, such as the Crash, Tank Asymtrique and this year the exquisite, bell-shaped Cloche De Cartier. Tank Must fits the strategy perfectly.

The new Cloche De Cartier, from 25,200

Tank Must is back, then. A Cartier legacy restored for a new style generation.

cartier.com

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Continued here:

Cartier revives its secret icon, the Tank Must - British GQ

Shapes, sizes, and vintage inspiration are the cornerstones of Cartiers 2021 novelties. This year, the Maison revealed a collection of pieces that echoed elements of the past whilst evoking a sense of the future in the form of strong designs.

In its latest range, Cartier once again showcased its ability in haute horlogerie with timepieces that highlight the perfect marriage between tradition and novelty. Like previous years, the brand continues to nurture its watchmaking identity through its heritage and unique shapes.

Cartiers 2021 novelties undoubtedly strengthen the brands watchmaking identity. These exemplary additions to the Maisons extensive body of work in watchmaking are proof of that.

Pasha de Cartier Chrono in Steel

Pasha de Cartier Chrono in Gold

Pasha de Cartier 30mm Paved Pink Gold

Pasha de Cartier Chrono in Steel

Pasha de Cartier Chrono in Gold

Pasha de Cartier 30mm Paved Pink Gold

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With its distinctive codes, chained crown and extraordinary design, the Pasha embodies an aesthetic of strength and power. Ever since it was launched in 1985, the model has remained steadfast to those qualities. This year, the cult watchs repertoire grows with two new key designs.

Joining the Pasha family is a 41mm chronograph version, which further boosts the Pasha watchs power and visibility. The presence of a rotating bezel and two push-pieces accentuates the watchs design.

The new chronograph version, available in steel or gold, is equipped with a 1904-CH MC Cartier Manufacture movement and a sapphire case back. Both versions can be interchanged thanks to an adaptation of the Cartier-developed QuickSwitch system.

Following the launch of the 35mm version in 2020, the Pasha becomes more feminine with a new 30mm size. Available in gold or steel, the watch features a jewellery-watch diameter and a quartz movement, and arrives with all the signature details found on a Pasha watch. This includes personalised engraved initials hidden behind the crown cover, as well as interchangeable straps. Buy here.

Every year, the Cartier Libre collection explores the Maisons repertoire of signature-shaped watches. This offers a candid look from Cartier, providing an opportunity to revisit and shake up codes whilst revealing a wealth of inspiration from its vast repertoire.

As such, it makes perfect sense to see this third opus of the Cartier Libre collection as part of Cartiers 2021 novelties. To help realise these new editions, studio designers sought inspiration from iconic animals from the Maisons menagerie.

The Baignoire/Tortue, Tortue/Serpent are undoubtedly extravagant and highly bejewelled creations. But behind each timepieces excessive shape lies a meticulous design, one with pure lines, precise proportions, and precious details.

The Baignoire watch and its tortoise dcor revisits the aesthetic heritage of the 2019 timepiece, giving it a new identity. It takes inspiration from the animal, utilising materials that evoke a shell such as buff-top stones with the graininess of diamond paving.

To bring the tortoise to life, the dial features random diamond paving, playful anthracite, and black lines along with a geometric composition with a scale motif. Its case is lined with a stripe of buff-top tsavorites along with sapphires inside the dial and on the corners of three central hexagons.

The Tortue on the other hand borrows elements from the snake. Created in 1912, the Tortue watch epitomises pared-down simplicity due to its unique shape and a case constructed around two large curves. The new Cartier Libre edition, further enhances this classic, adorning it with scale motifs and ringed curves.

Black or coral-coloured enamel, mother-of-pearl with water tones brightened by drops of polished gold and closed-set diamonds on the case are used to subtly suggest the presence of the serpent.

The Tank has been a model synonymous with Cartier ever since its debut in 1917. Over the years, the watchs iconic design has endured, ensuring its prominence as a quintessential avant-garde piece.

Timeless, sure of itself and of the purity of its design, the Tank watch captures the zeitgeist in 2021. After more than a century, it has been reinvented with the Tank Must. The Design Studio has reworked the design of these new models with monochrome versions and an original version based on a new photovoltaic movement. Taking direct inspiration from the Tank Louis Cartier, the design of the Tank Must has been developed while staying faithful to the historic model.

Equipped with rounded brancards and revisited dial proportions, finesse is the guiding force behind this new design. A watch that dares to return to great classicism down to the smallest detail, with a precious pearled cabochon winding crown and the return of a traditional ardillon buckle on the leather strap version.

Faithful to the spirit of the 80s, the new Tank Must watch is available in three monochromatic colours that are embedded into Cartiers DNA: Red, blue, and green. Steel watches that favour minimalist dials with no Roman numerals or rail-tracks, and a fully chromatic look with matching straps.

For over a century, the Tank watch spawned several variations. Louis Cartier reworked its design from as early as 1922. With its case stretched, brancards refined and edges softened, the Tank L.C. was born.

With its rail tracks, cabochon sapphire, Roman numerals, Louis Cartier laid the foundations of a signature watchmaking aesthetic, with its very latest version perpetuating this tradition to within a few subtle nuances.

Now, the Louis Carter Tank cultivates its timeless elegance in colour. The choice of blue and red is a must, as these colours are a part of Cartiers DNA. An intense red and a bright blue highlight and enhance the watchs pure lines.

Cartier has added sophisticated details to these new precious versions, including Roman numerals and gold-coloured rail tracks, which help to enhance the dials graphic intensity. The blue version is in pink gold, the red in yellow gold, both coordinated with the straps, and these two watches come with a Manufacture 1917 MC movement with manual winding. Buy here.

Cloche de Cartier

Cloche de Cartier Skeleton

Cloche de Cartier

Cloche de Cartier Skeleton

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Cartier Priv, is widely known to celebrate the Maisons mythical models through numbered, limited edition watches. This year, following models such as the Crash, the Tank Cintre, the Tonneau and the Tank Asymtrique, the Cloche de Cartier becomes the fifth opus of the range.

The Cloche de Cartier is a rare watch, and certainly a standout amongst Cartiers 2021 novelties. It first appeared in 1920 and illustrates Cartiers approach to shapes. Unusual and unique, this collectors piece adopts all the Maisons watchmaking codes. The rail track and hour markings adapt to the dials asymmetrical shape and the crown is set with a cabochon.

Due to its unusual design, it may be read whilst worn on the wrist and can additionally be removed and placed on a table to be transformed into a desk clock. To ensure optimal timekeeping, two new calibres were made to adapt to the aesthetic imperatives imposed by this unique shape.

Two versions of the piece are made available. The Classic Cloche de Cartier available in pink gold, yellow gold, or platinum displays all of Cartiers watchmaking codes such as the signature rail tracks, sword-shaped hands and a closed-set cabochon.

The Cloche de Cartier Skeleton on the other hand adapts an open worked dial to the watchs atypical shape. To see this vision through, the Manufacture 1917 mechanical movement had to be completely reworked into a very fine network of gears, visible through the transparent Roman numerals, now transformed into bridges.

(Images: Cartier)

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Cartier's 2021 Novelties Solidify The Maison's Watchmaking Identity - AUGUSTMAN