Category Archives: Futurism

"You know, it doesnt really feel like youre getting a $65,000 car when you are taking delivery of it."Quality Control

It's no secret that Tesla can be lacking in the quality assurance department and there are no signs of that changing any time soon.

For Dylan Hong, who recently ordered a brand new 2022 Tesla Model Y, the state of the vehicle just wasn't even close to being acceptable.

Hong shared a YouTube video about the new $65,000 car, which he received after trading in his previous 2021 version of the same vehicle.

The Model Y wasn't clean, he complained, and covered in smudges that couldn't be washed off. Components inside the cabin were loose, trim pieces were in the wrong place and even the glovebox wouldn't close properly.

The Tesla enthusiast also noticed a "high-pitched whine noise coming from the rear" of the car, which Tesla later informed him was within spec.

In short, "you know, it doesnt really feel like youre getting a $65,000 car when you are taking delivery of it," Hong said in the video.

Worst of all, Hong has had "continued issues getting Tesla to properly address the things that are wrong with this car. This is not the customer experience that I was expecting or hoping for."

It's far from the first time we've heard about similar quality issues with vehicles that were delivered straight from the factory. From awful paint finish to scratches and gouges, Tesla customers have had to deal with a range of issues that are arguably unacceptable given the considerably high price point and brand prestige of the carmaker.

Tesla has been facing these issues for years, too. Last year, Tesla CEO Elon Musk himself acknowledged that criticisms about fit and finish issues were "accurate."

Meanwhile, the car company is still going through major growing pains, hiring hundreds of employees at its brand new factory in Germany and struggling to ramp production back up at its Shanghai plant after COVDID-19 lockdowns forced it to close.

The company is also facing considerable financial headwinds, with Musk warning of a "super bad feeling" about the economy and cutting Tesla's workforce as a result.

All that is clearly leaving little time to ensure that paying customers are receiving the kind of fit and finish one would expect from a $65,000 vehicle issues that have yet to meaningfully be addressed, given this latest example.

READ MORE: Tesla Enthusiast Buys a Brand-New 2022 Model Y, Says the Car Is "Unacceptable" [Autoevolution]

More on Tesla: Tesla Accused of Shutting Off Autopilot Moments Before Impact

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Tesla Fan Appalled at Wretched Condition of Tesla He Just Bought - Futurism

NOOOOOOOOOO!!Nightmare (Jet) Fuel

Close quarters. Armrest battles. That one passengerwho chooses evil by eating eggs in a flying metal can. For most, flying coach is not exactly a great time.

But just you wait! Economy travel may just get worse. Meet the Chaise Lounge Airplane Seats, a proposal for a bunk-like jetliner layout wherein one passenger sits in a fairly comfortable-looking seat a few steps up, while an unlucky joe suffers the flight in a L-shaped space below, their face just a foot or so away from Top Bunk's derriere.

It also appears as if working on a laptop or even reading a book would be uncomfortable or even impossible, due to the lack of arm room.

The double-decker hellscape was presented this week by its creator, 22 year-old Alejandro Nez Vicente, at the 2022 Aircraft Interiors Expo in Hamburg, Germany, CNN Travel reports. Honestly, we're not sure this is a humane future of air travel.

The Chaise Lounge monstrosities which debuted for the first time last year and, unfortunately, was received extremely well by airline execs were originally designed to suit the cutting-edge Flying-V jetliner, an innovation still many years away from mass use.

Alas, according to CNN, the double-deck designer says that these seats need not await the experimental aircraft they could be outfitted for the Boeing 747, Airbus A330, and other wide-bodied planes. Cheers.

Despite the criticisms leveraged against the model of which the young innovator is well-aware, CNN reports Nez Vicente is intent on making his claustrophobic cocoons a reality. He's actually refreshingly candid about why the negative judgement doesn't really phase him and likely won't phase any airlines looking to buy in.

"One of the phrases I get a lot, is 'if it's not broken, why change it?'" Nez Vicente told CNN. "If passengers still fly in the worst economy class seats, why are we going to give them a better option? It makes money. That's the goal of the airline at the end of the day, not to make your flight better."

Hard hitting! Given our experience of money-saving travel, this checks out. We gotta say, though while we appreciate an honest take, pushing people to the limits of discomfort because they can't afford more, especially as plane ticket prices continue to rise, maybe isn't the best line to live by.

READ MORE: A Horrifying Proposal for Airplane Seating Confirms the Future of Coach Is Being Knocked Unconscious [Slate]

More on flying travel that's better than this:Inventor Unveils Flying Engine Powered by Eight Jet Engines

Read more here:
The Future of Air Travel Is Apparently the Final Circle of Hell - Futurism

Image by Getty / Futurism

A group of researchers from Stanford, Baylor and other universities say they've found the specific molecules in blood that reduce both appetite and obesity in mice that became obese because of their diet.

The Baylor College of Medicine team published their research in the journal Nature, and expanded in the context behind the research in a press release.

"Regular exercise has been proven to help weight loss, regulate appetite and improve the metabolic profile, especially for people who are overweight and obese," co-author Dr. Yong Xu, professor of pediatrics- nutrition and molecular and cellular biology at Baylor, said in the release. "If we can understand the mechanism by which exercise triggers these benefits, then we are closer to helping many people improve their health."

Another author on the study said in the release that the point is to help people who aren't able to stay mobile as often, such as older individuals or those who may be more frail.

"People who cannot exercise enough may one day benefit from taking a medication that can help slow down osteoporosis, heart disease or other conditions," Jonathan Long, assistant professor of pathology at Stanford Medicine, told the outlet.

Although medicinal trials on mice can often fail to translate to humans, it's an exciting prospect. People who can't exercise might really benefit from the treatment,and maybe though it's far fetched eventually we'll all be able to skip the gym in favor of a pill.

We'll be on the lookout for any updates.

More on bizarre health news: Doctors Puzzled by Two-Year-Old Boy Who Already Hit Puberty

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Scientists Say They're Honing in on a Pill You Can Take Instead of Exercising - Futurism

With a digital media platform that focuses on World Shapers, Afro-Futurism, Cultural Bridge Builders, and much more for 2022.

Can you imagine the modern world without the influences of Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Aretha Franklin, Michael Jackson, Beyonc, Idris Elba, Naomi Campbell, Lewis Hamilton, or Sade?

When we look at science and inventions, the contributions by people of color go wide and far from developing mathematics to architecture and much more especially from the continent of Africa.

This is why celebratingJuneteenth (US) and Windrush Day (UK) worldwide is important, as they allow us to see the vision and strength through a contemporary lens of the past and present and help guide us to create a brighter future.Says IBHM creator Bruce Reynolds

International black heritage Month 2022 and accompanying digital platformfocuses on 1)World Shapers,2) Afro-Futurism, and 3) Cultural Bridge Builders, providingengaging curated content and calendar for people to learn aboutJuneteenth (US June 19), Windrush Day (UK June 22) and much more in one place.

Black history is different in different parts of the world. Black Heritage is universal.

Black heritage and the diversity of cultures within it have significantly contributed to the world we live in, buildings, inventions, music, fashion, art, media, sports, trends, and around the globe.

With so many people from the Afro Diaspora spread worldwide, its essential they are acknowledged, feel included, seen, and heard, enabling true inclusivity and diversity to be honored and celebrated and connect cultural bridges such as Juneteenth in the US and Windrush Day in the UK.

Notes*

Juneteenth (June 19) will be celebrated for the first time as an annual federal holiday across the United States this year (although Monday will be the day bank holiday this year as the 19thfalls on a Sunday).President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act in 2021, establishing June 19 as a federal holiday to commemoratethe 1865 date when enslaved African-Americans in Galveston, Texas, were told they were free, months after those in the northern US states.

Windrush Day is celebrated in the UK on June 22 to mark the arrival of an estimated half a million Afro-Caribbean people who went to the UK at the request of the British Government to help rebuild the country after the Second World War. The first Windrush Day was held on June 22, 2018,

The Worlds First International Black Heritage Month launched in June 2021 to educate, celebrate and bring unity across all shades. Created byBruce Reynolds of Be the Change Associates: Productions, a former BBC producer and Director of Social Impact for Marketing Conglomerate Dentsu. Created to provide a new and fresh approach to Social Impact communications, engagement, and storytelling. With a platform that reinvents how Social Impact causes are observed and celebrated, virtually and in-person when possible.

Visit the platform to learn more:https://www.internationalblackheritagemonth.com

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The World's First International Black Heritage Month Connects The African Diaspora To Celebrate Juneteenth (USA) And Windrush Day (UK) Around The...

A SpaceX Falcon 9 lifting off. | Malcolm Denemark/Florida Today via AP / Malcolm Denemark/Florida Today via AP

Last week I wrote about a particularly prescient bit of future-casting from 1997 a list of potential global crises (pandemic, terror, political retrenchment) that a quarter-century on feels eerily similar to todays headlines.

When that list was originally published in Wired magazine, it was wrapped in a larger and more optimistic package called The Long Boom that was prescient in its own way: it made a strong case that the tech industrys growth would lead it to dominate the American economy over the past 25 years.

The whole package was accurate enough that I thought DFD readers might want to know: What does the author think now?

So I called Peter Leyden, the former Wired managing editor who co-authored the piece and a follow-on book, to talk about what he foresaw in 1997, and how he sees futurism in general. Governments and corporations put a lot of stock in highly contingent projections of our global future. What do they need to know? What are they missing?

Leyden himself left journalism to become an all-purpose futurist advising various companies on how to prepare for tomorrows crises and challenges. An edited excerpt of our conversation follows:

How did you approach writing this The Long Boom, and why do you think it was so successfully prescient?

I was coupled with Peter Schwartz to write a positive narrative about what would happen from the mid 1990s if you played out the digital revolution, as we were starting to see the contours of it evolving, entwined with globalization.

It's hard to remember this, but people didn't understand at the time how would a digital economy work? How would these startups grow, and why would anyone want to do half the stuff these companies wanted to do, like selling books online?

The narrative we came up with has largely played out. We went from 25 million people on the internet to 60 percent of the planet, and these little startups now run the world, and China went from a GDP of about a trillion dollars to what it is now.

But we said a totally positive scenario is not going to happen. We werent saying one or two of these could stop the long boom, but that quite a few of them probably would happen, and the drivers of the digital revolution and global integration would keep going.

This reminds me of Fukuyamas The End of History the thesis is not quite as simple as its perceived by the general public.

We completely fell into the same cultural trap that Fukuyama did.

The economy will always be fraught with ups and downs and stock market crashes and reboots and overvaluation; that's how the world works. Its the same thing Fukuyama ran into. He wasnt saying history was going to stop, but Hey, we just finished a century-long battle with communism, and liberal democracy has emerged victorious, and how much better are we going to get?

Like our thesis about the economy, thats a reasonable thing to say that isnt invalidated every time Russia does something stupid.

How has the world of professional futurism evolved since 1997?

GBN [consulting firm Global Business Network] was pioneering this space at the time. There weren't a lot of people who could say much about the future, most companies were just going blind, short term stuff, one to three year planning, but they werent understanding the long term.

The heyday of GBN was essentially the beginning of globalization. That world of strategic foresight is now an industry: GBN was absorbed into Deloitte, and you can now go get master's degrees, or PhDs, in futures thinking or strategic foresight. And today about 25 to 50 percent of major companies are involved in those fields, because there are 190 countries youre dealing with, and youre a $60 billion market cap company, and you dont know what's going to happen in the next 10 years.

Its the combination of the U.S. government and its defense agencies, and global companies that expanded after the Cold War that created the demand for this stuff. But it's still under the radar for most people, so I do a lot of public speaking about it because it's valuable now even more than ever, because the world is moving too fast, especially with the pandemic.

Whats your prediction for the next 25 years?

I wrote five stories about a long boom from 2020 to 2050, called The Transformation. Its about how the world could solve climate change, among various other challenges. There are so many new technologies and trends that we're actually going to look back on this era and see how much were about to solve over the next 30 years, without being Pollyanna-ish about it.

A message from Connected Commerce Council:

Small businesses face big consequences from overregulating tech. By breaking up integrated services, it gets harder and more expensive for smaller shops to reach customers. Thats why 87% of small businesses are concerned that antitrust legislation is going to make digital tools more expensive and less useful. Say yes to supporting small business success. Vote NO on the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (S.2992).

The latest example of the federal government getting its arms around crypto: A two-page report from the Government Accountability Office about NFTs.

The report is short and to the point, a remarkably succinct and effective description of what NFTs are and how they function if youre still fuzzy on the concept beyond expensive pictures of ugly cartoon apes, you could do a lot worse than to read it. But more notable than that is the warning, common for the GAO, that the report offers to the federal government: Get wise about this technology before it gets past you.

Another concern is the federal governments long-standing difficulty with hiring and retaining a highly qualified science and technology workforce, the authors write, adding that the status quo could make it harder to identify and address statutory and regulatory challenges.

That follows a study the GAO published in March 2021, highlighting the need for the federal government to beef up federal science employee pay and improve working conditions. They might soon get their wish, at least in part: The forthcoming America COMPETES Act contains major funding boosts to NIST, the NSF, and the Department of Energys Office of Science.

"Jurassic Park" actor Jeff Goldblum. | Getty Images

Happy dinosaur week: Jurassic World: Dominion romped to a nearly $150 million box office opening last weekend, sparking both nostalgia for the original films and the expected bout of scientific introspection about whether or not the original storys Frankenstein-like lesson about mans technological hubris has been fully learned.

But what if thats not the point what if todays institutions are so preoccupied with whether or not they should, they didnt stop to think if they could? Thats the thesis Matt Yglesias laid out in a Substack post this morning that argues: We should build Jurassic Park.

The idea that our thinking should be dominated by downside risk and wholesale abandonment of promising ideas if something goes wrong strikes me as deeply misguided, Yglesias writes, noting that the Jurassic Park ethos is similar to that in real life that led the world to abandon nuclear power. Id love to see a Jurassic Park reboot in which the point of the story is, yes, they face sabotage and their lives end up at risk but ultimately they defeat their adversaries and get the park up and running. Because a park full of real, live dinosaurs would be amazing.

Hes not wrong! But it must be noted In the original Jurassic Park the parks creator carries out his doomed experiment on a remote Central American island, free from the watchful eye of government, supported only by private investors hoping to make a fortune on his renegade technological experiment not an altogether unfamiliar set of circumstances.

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Stay in touch with the whole team: Ben Schreckinger ([emailprotected]); Derek Robertson ([emailprotected]); Konstantin Kakaes ([emailprotected]); and Heidi Vogt ([emailprotected]). Follow us on Twitter @DigitalFuture.

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A message from Connected Commerce Council:

Small businesses run on tech. Integrated digital tools help Frank DiCarlantonio at Scaffidis Restaurant reach customers, scale up, and compete. In fact, 75% of small business leaders say digital tools are important to their operations. But Congress is aiming to break up the digital tools and services that small businesses rely onmaking them more expensive and harder to access. It could be the difference between success and closing their doors for good. Dont forget about small businesses. Vote NO on the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (S.2992).

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A short talk with a long-term thinker - POLITICO

Area co-founder Piotrek Panszczyk has dressed Beyonc before, but creating a custom look for her for British Vogues July 2022 cover shoot, lensed by Rafael Pavarotti, was undeniably a special moment.

British Vogues editor-in-chief Edward Enninful styled the multi-hyphenate in a series of killer looks for her return to the pages of Vogue. In the months leading up to the shoot, Beyonc and Edward exchanged texts about mirror balls, light boxes, headdresses and yes, even a horse on the dance floor. The fantastical set they concocted demanded fashion to match. B wanted to play with fashion like never before, says Enninful in his July editors letter. Area fit perfectly into the glittering retro-futurism theme of the shoot.

I feel like [Beyonc and I] grew up together, because her music was always very present in my life, says Piotrek. Its surreal to think that many years later, we [the designer and his co-founder, Beckett Fogg] are creating these special moments for her.

Area previously provided the superstar with crystal-choked jewellery a brand signature and a similarly spangled rainbow look for her 2020 film, Black is King, a career high for both Bey and team Area. For the July 2022 issue, they scaled back the embellishments but still delivered high drama with the exaggerated silhouette of the singers sculptural strapless gown an altered version of look 22 from Areas most recent spring couture collection.

This dress was a big triumph for us we are known for lavish embroideries, but this dress truly was an ode to dress-making, asserts Piotrek, who wanted to showcase team Areas atelier skills. Its truly grand in construction with a sense of elegance. Piotr couldnt help but add a touch of gilded glamour, via a winged feather and crystal hairpiece and gold butterfly belt.

The classic couture grandeur [is] translated through a sculptural and graphic lens, Piotrek said ahead of the big reveal. The curves were created using a lightweight internal bustle structure, which was padded out and smoothened before the outer duchesse-silk shell was added. This globular silhouette a conception between [fashion designer] Charles James and [sculptor] Jean Arps abstract body sculptures is seen throughout the couture collection, but Beyonc truly brings it to life.

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The Dramatic Area Gown Beyonc Wears In Vogue Is An Ode To Dress-Making - British Vogue

Surely nothing will go wrong with this plan. Why Not?

Amid an industry collapse and a class-action lawsuit, the crypto exchange Binance is looking to bring on 2,000 new employees.

In a braggadocious Wednesday tweet announcing the new hires, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao made tongue-in-cheek references to his company's poorly-faring competitors,many of which are currently laying off workers en masse.

"It was not easy saying no to Super bowl ads, stadium naming rights, [and] large sponsor deals a few months ago, but we did,"Zhao tweeted, in a clear dig at competitor's Crypto.com and Coinbase.

"Today," he added, "we are hiring for 2000 open positions."

This could be good news for former and soon-to-be-former employees of Crypto.com and Coinbase, the two companies Zhao not-so-subtly subtweeted in his announcement. Over the past week, they've laid off roughly 1,360 people total as crypto plummets for the second time in a month.

But given that these Binance hires are dropping not only during the beginning of what experts say is a likely global recession and, perhaps more saliently, an investor fraud lawsuit in California, it seems like a particularly bad time to hire a bunch of people.

That's not the end of Binance's problems, either. Just this week, the company embarrassingly had to halt transactions for multiple hours amid a huge Bitcoin selloff when the coin's value started shrinking.

At the end of the day, it really looks like crypto hubris and solid strategical investment seem to be flip sides of the same (bit)coin.

More on the latest crypto crash: Financial Planner Desperately Explains to Clients Why the Bitcoin Crash Is Good, Actually

Read more here:
Many Crypto Startups Are Firing People Right Now, But This One Is Hiring 2,000 New Employees - Futurism

Cryptocurrencies were supposed to teach traditional financiers a thing or two about how to avoid collapses and crises. Yet, it feels like were simply repeating history. Specifically, the messy hedge-fund humiliation captured in Roger Lowensteins 2000-published book, When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management.

After Terra and Lunas $60 billion stablecoin collapse and the freeze of withdrawals at crypto-lending platform Celsius, trading firm Three Arrows Capital now appears to be in trouble. The fund is liquidating its holdings amid fast plummeting prices, and an ominous tweet from co-founder Zhu Su about communicating with relevant parties" is stirring fears of something potentially more fatal.

A glance at Three Arrowss past crypto betson the likes of Luna and Axie Infinity, as well as Bitcoin and Etherleaves very little doubt that the communicating" is probably not of the fun kind. The fund, estimated to be managing $10 billion in assets in March, combined Zhus derivatives expertise with a kind of beatific conviction in a broad crypto supercycle", which he recently admitted was wrong.

That waves of forced selling still seem to be rippling through crypto markets shows how complex and lending-driven this market has become. Traditional finances margin calls take on a more brutal form in the cryptosphere when smart contracts automatically liquidate positions in quick succession. The current focus is on Three Arrowss exposure to staked Ether, a token designed to earn interest while Ethereum upgrades its network, which has been buckling under heavy selling pressure.

But it also suggests lessons from history have been ignored. This is hardly the first boom-and-bust cycle in Bitcoin or the broader crypto market; this years 65% drop in the Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index is similar to the crash seen back in early 2018. Yet, hedge funds set up to deliver market-beating returns from crypto assets look blindsided. Average estimated returns for those providing daily data were -24% in April, -32% in May and -28% in June, according to industry database NilssonHedge. A large number of managers have simply stopped trading", it says, with the total tracked falling to 325 from 510 in January.

The risk of a generalized crypto slump, the kind that humbled token-picking strategies in 2018, doesnt seem to have been high on their radar. The kind of strategies designed to exploit inefficiencies between exchanges that might bring in 6%-10% returns have been juiced by funds using DeFi lending platforms offering lucrative rateswhich are proving unsustainable. As one hedge funder tells me, its like picking up BMWs rather than pennies in front of a steam-roller. The end result still involves getting squished.

With more than 40% of crypto funds using borrowing and lending strategies, according to PwC, the current turmoil feels like a rug-pull rather than vindication of trading smarts. The winners are probably those that simply got their money out in good time. Two-thirds of crypto funds are likely to fail, reckons Mike Novogratz. Short-sellers seem to be in short supply.

Three Arrowss Zhu perhaps spoke for many investors earlier this year when he said the lesson of 2018s slide was to stay bullish and not give in to despair." Hence his praise for all sorts of clearly speculative shenanigans like Axie Infinity, a crypto game that pays people who spend their days breeding virtual pets thats been battered by deflating hype and a $620 million hack. His justifications seemed wrapped in futurism rather than risk management: His bible" James Dale Davidsons 1997 book The Sovereign Individual, foresaw some of the social upheaval of the internet age.

Maybe Zhu should have been reading When Genius Failed. As Novogratz has observed, whats happening in crypto echoes the 1998 blowup of Long-Term Capital Management, a hedge fund stuffed with very smart people, including a pair of Nobel laureates,dealing in sophisticated arbitrage strategies juiced by derivatives. When the unthinkable happened and losses piled up, banks called in their loans and eventually took over the firm.

The silver lining is that there seems to have been little bank involvement in the crypto slump. This is probably just as well, given the risks of contagion spreading to a real US economy already battered by rising inflation and weak economic growth.

But that doesnt change the fact that real losses are being racked up by funds and punters who are least able to afford it. Whatever happens to Three Arrows, the lesson of 2022that crypto prices can go down and can keep going down for months on endshouldnt be forgotten the way 2018 was. bloomberg

Lionel Laurent is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering digital currencies, the European Union and France.

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American hedge fund geniuses of the cryptosphere have failed | Mint - Mint

New Blood Interactive CEO Dave Oshry threatened to kill a puppy (opens in new tab) if he got bumped from the PC Gaming Show (opens in new tab) this past weekend, so we made sure he got his time and then he used it to say that the studio isn't actually ready to talk about any of the new stuff that it's working on (except Gloomwood (opens in new tab), which we already know about). He did offer the briefest of glimpses at three games, though, including a top-down shooter, a car combat game, and a "Fallout-style RPG" that Oshry described as his "dream game."

What a difference three days makes, apparently, because yesterday New Blood revealed a little more about its "retro futurist isometric CRPG," and while there's no detail yet, even at this early stage it sounds very promising.

The studio described the game on Twitter as a "passion project" among Oshry, game developer Adam Lacko, and artist Alexander Berezin. The latter two are major figures on the retro Fallout scene: Lacko is the mastermind of Project Van Buren (opens in new tab), an effort to resurrect Black Isle Studios' original Fallout 3, which was cancelled in 2003, while Berezin, known as Red888guns (opens in new tab) on DeviantArt, is an artist who has previously worked on the Fallout Sonora and Olympus 2207 mods.

Mark Morgan (opens in new tab), another name that will be familiar to post-apocalyptic RPG fans (and one of my favorite game composers), is also involved in the project. Morgan's previous work includes the soundtracks for the first two Fallout games, Planescape: Torment, and inXile's Wasteland sequels.

There's no indication as to when this RPG will be formally announced, much less released, and Oshry warned that despite the tease, it's still a long way off.

"Everyone knows this is my dream game," he told PC Gamer. "And now I've got my dream artist and dream composer working on it as well as all the talented devs at New Blood. Should we be showing it this early? Probably not. But it's encouraging to see how many people want this game as much as I've always wanted to create it."

"Bwahahahaha," he added.

New Blood also revealed a bit more about the other games it teased at the PC Gaming Show: The top-down shooter has already been in development "for a VERY long time" and will include a level editor, co-op support, and appearances from most New Blood Universe characters, while the car combat game is coming along "slowly but surely."

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The Fallout-style RPG teased by New Blood last week features big names in the classic Fallout scene - PC Gamer

Enlarge / The taillight of the Celestiq show car is one of the few images Cadillac has released of its next flagship.

Cadillac

Cadillac's transformation into an all-electric vehicle brand is about to get underway. The first new Cadillac EV will be the Lyriq, which has just entered production; Ars is driving it next week, and we'll be able to tell you about it on June 28.

With a starting price of $59,990, the Lyriq looks reasonably priced to enter the competitive luxury EV SUV space. But the Cadillac EV that follows will be a much more exclusive machine. It's called the Celestiq, and so far, details are scarce ahead of a formal reveal of the show car in late July. Cadillac has said that "from first approach, the striking silhouette of the Celestiq show car leaves a lasting impression, challenging the ultra-luxury space with the spirit of futurism and the avant-garde."

On Wednesday afternoon, Cadillac revealed that it will hand-build the Celestiq and will spend $81 million to set up production at General Motors' Global Technical Center in Warren, Michigan.

"As Cadillac's future flagship sedan, Celestiq signifies a new, resurgent era for the brand," said General Motors President Mark Reuss. "Each one will be hand-built by an amazing team of craftspeople on our historic Technical Center campus, and today's investment announcement emphasizes our commitment to delivering a world-class Cadillac with nothing but the best in craftsmanship, design, engineering, and technology."

As with the other EVs in GM's pipeline, from next year's sub-$30,000 Chevrolet Equinox to the four-ton Hummer EV, the Celestiq will make use of GM's Ultium battery platform and Ultium drive motors.

But GM says it is embracing innovation across its supplier community with the hand-built EV, which will use a large number of 3D-printed components, both in polymer and metal.

For larger-volume vehicles, additive manufacturing is more useful in the prototyping stage, as the low per-unit cost of mass-producing injection-molded plastics makes that approach hard to beat. But for low-volume cars like the Celestiq, the situation is reversed, and the high cost of tooling means that 3D printing becomes a highly attractive alternative.

These components will be used cosmetically and structurallysomething we saw to a small degree in the Cadillac CT4-V and CT5-V Blackwing sedans, which used 3D-printed badges on their shifters and additively manufactured components in their transmissions and HVAC ducts.

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Cadillacs electric flagship will be hand-built, use extensive 3D printing - Ars Technica