Shortly after today’s virtual conference, Apple announced that the next major version of iOS will be ready for prime time very soon: iPhone users will be able to update to iOS 15 on September 20. The company first unveiled iOS 15 earlier this year at its Worldwide Developers Conference.
The TechCrunch crew is hard at work writing up the latest from Apple’s iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch event. They have good notes on the megacorp’s hardware updates. But what are the markets saying about the same array of products?
Apple is set to announce new iPhone models today. The company is holding a (virtual) keynote at 10 AM PT (1 PM in New York, 6 PM in London, 7 PM in Paris). And you’ll be able to watch the event right here as the company is streaming it live.
The Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) said on Tuesday it fined Google $177 million for abusing its market dominance in the Android operating system (OS) market.
Image Credits: Storz & Bickel
Storz & Bickel finally updated the Mighty vaporizer. The original hit the market in October 2014 and quickly became a fan favorite despite its unwieldy form factor and market-topping price. Users point to the quality of the vapor, airflow and its certification as a medical device as primary reasons for buying the vape.
The new version is called the Mighty+ and features a ceramic-coated chamber, USB-C charging, a 60-second startup time and a new mode that will quickly boost the current temperature. And yes, this version has little feet so that it can stand vertically on a table. The Mighty+ carries a $399 MSRP and is available for purchase on September 23.
The company also updated two of its other products. The Volcano is now available in matte black, and the Crafty+ comes with a ceramic filling chamber and USB-C charging that reduces charging time by 25 minutes.
Storz & Bickel managed to get the Mighty+ certified by UL, a U.S.-based global safety certification company. The Mighty+ conforms to UL8139, becoming the first dry herb vaporizer to carry UL logo officially. To S&B, the UL certification is significant. The company has long differentiated itself from its competitors with a certification from TUV certifying two of its vapes, the Mighty and Volcano, as medical devices. The UL nod certifies the Mighty+’s components comply with the testing agency’s safety standards covering the electrical, heating, battery and charging systems.
“The Underwriters Lab (UL) came out with a certification,” said Andy Lytwynec, VP of Global Vape Business at Canopy Growth, “and it created a bullseye target for us. It took a lot of collaboration with them, and we just recently achieved certification.”
Lytwynec explained that S&B sees consumers increasingly scrutinizing vaporizer options and feels the UL certification gives owners additional peace of mind that the device will not implode in their pocket. “For S&B, we think it’s the beginning of a trend within the vaporizer market for consumers to be a bit more diligent and thoughtful, saying ‘Well, hold on a second, like, has a third party actually gone through the rigors of testing this.’ ”
The Mighty+’s new features are incremental updates developed from customer feedback. The device charges over USB-C, which can deliver an 80% charge in 40 minutes. It also heats up in 60 seconds, and hitting the temperature button three times activates an even quicker so-called Superbooster mode that quickly bumps the temp by 59 degrees. The filling chamber is now coated in ceramic, which, if nothing else, should make maintaining a clean oven a bit easier.
Mighty loyalists will be disappointed to hear the bright LED remains from the original. Some users find the screen too bright in a dark room and susceptible to UV light that dims the screens when outside. The battery system appears to be a carry-over from the original too.
The form factor is the same, except for the addition of tiny feet. The original cannot stand on its own, making filling the top-mounted bowl challenging without a third-party stand. Now there are little fins to help the Mighty+ stand on its own.
How do the changes impact performance? Unfortunately, I can’t tell you until I get the device next week.
I asked Lytwynec about the Mighty’s use of plastic in the top-mounted cooling chamber. Competitors are moving to glass or ceramic for improved taste, I pointed out. Lytwynec notes the Mighty+ is made of a new plastic polymer, and S&B is focused on using materials that allow its devices to be certified as medical devices. The company is aware of third-party accessories, but feels the current cooling chamber offers the right benefits to the consumer.
The company also unveiled a new version of the Crafty+, its smaller dry herb vape. The new model features many of the improvements found in the new Mighty+. There’s also a new version of the company’s original vape, the desktop Volcano. This new version is finished in a scratch-free matte black finish and will retail for $699 starting September 9.
Jürgen Bickel and Markus Storz founded Storz & Bickel in 2002, and in 2018, sold the company to Canadian cannabis giant Canopy Growth Corporation. Jürgen Bickel remains with S&B and continues to run the day-to-day operations and drive product development.
Storz & Bickel sits atop Canopy Growth Corporation’s device segment. According to Canopy’s latest financial release, S&B recorded $24.1 million in the first fiscal quarter of 2022. This marks a 41% ($7 million) year-over-year increase. This growth is attributed to an expansion of its distribution network.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article had the Mighty+ launching on September 16. That is incorrect and the article is now updated with the proper date of September 23.
Sila Nanotechnologies’ next-generation battery technology made its commercial product debut Wednesday in the new Whoop fitness tracker, a milestone that caps a decade of research and development by the Silicon Valley startup, all aimed at cracking the code to packing more energy into a cell at a lower cost.
Billions have been spent over the past few years on improving battery chemistry, with different startups aiming to either replace the anode or the cathode with a conversion material, like silicon or even lithium in the case of solid state companies.
Sila Nano’s battery chemistry recipe replaces graphite in a battery cell’s anode with silicon to create a more energy-dense and cheaper battery pack. Other companies, like BASF, are focusing on creating a high energy dense cathode.
While numerous companies are working on a variety of different battery chemistries, they have yet to take over the traditional cell technology found in today’s lithium-ion cells. The Sila battery used in the upcoming Whoop 4.0, the company’s latest health and performance tracker, could be the first time in the last few decades the world has seen a next-generation battery chemistry ship to market.
“Launching a small fitness tracker doesn’t seem like a big thing, but this is really the first device in the market that proves our breakthrough, and, over time, this will scale and lead to the electrification of everything,” Gene Berdichevsky, founder and CEO of Sila Nano, told TechCrunch.
Electric vehicles, and Sila Nano’s role in powering them, is at the top of Berdichevsky’s “electrification of everything” list. And the company has already made headway.
Sila Nano hasjoint battery ventures with BMW and Daimler to produce batteries containing the company’s silicon-anode technology, with the goal of going to market in the automotive industry by 2025.
“You can translate this success with Whoop to cars in many ways,” said Berdichevksy. “Today, if you want a really long-range vehicle, it better be a pretty big car. The smaller the EV, the shorter the range because there’s nowhere to put the battery. But as our technology advances into the automotive market, you’ll be able to have a city car that has 400 miles of range on it. This is enabling more segments of the auto industry to electrify.”
Whoop, which earlier this month announced a 0 million raise at a .6 billion valuation, is introducing the Whoop 4.0 as a wearable that’s 33% smaller, in large part as a result of Sila’s battery, which has about 17% higher energy density, according to Berdichevsky. Not only does a denser, better battery lead to a smaller wearable, but Whoop was able to add additional features — like a sleep coach with haptic alerts, a pulse oximeter, a skin temperature sensor and a health monitor — without compromising its five-day battery life.
“One of the key outcomes of enabling a chemistry like ours is it allows you to build things that couldn’t otherwise be built,” said Berdichevsky.
In Whoop’s case, that’s referring to its new Any-Wear tech that allows the wearable to be integrated into a new line of garments like bands that can collect sensor data from areas including the torso, waist and calf.
It’s not just Sila’s chemistry that’s allowing for a successful product to go to market. It’s the scalability of the product that’s really important. Scalability has been built into Sila’s roadmap from the beginning.
“One of the things we did very early on is we told our scientists and engineers they could only use global commodity inputs so that we know we can make enough for millions of cars,” said Berdichevsky. “Next we said you had to use only what we call ‘bulk manufacturing’ techniques, and that means you use volumetric reactors rather than planar reactors.”
An easy way to think about the difference in reactor types is through the analogy of making enough food to feed a crowd: A big pot of chili (the volumetric reactor) will go a lot further than individual pizza pies (planar reactors).
Berdichevsky also told his team that anything they created had to be able to seamlessly drop into any battery factory process, whether that factory is supplying batteries for smartphones, cars or drones.
Sila Nano has already proven scalability twice, Berdichevsky said. The first time it scaled 100x from lab to pilot, starting with volumetric reactors that were about the size of a liter. Wednesday’s partnership with Whoop marks the second time the company has scaled up 100x, and this time to 5,000 liter reactors. To put that in relative terms, a couple of humans could probably climb into one of those reactors. The next stage of scaling will involve reactors large enough that you could drive a car through, says Berdichevsky, which is fitting, given Sila Nano’s goal of scaling up to automotive quantities over the next three years.
“The reason we’re not in cars today is we have to go scale up 100x to have enough to really deploy in cars, but the material is the same,” said Berdichevsky. “The particles, the powder we make, it’s the same in every one of the scales we’ve made so far.”
Just like the automotive industry, aerospace has its sights set on going electric — but flying with battery-powered engines is a tougher proposition than rolling. Wright is among the startups looking to change the math and make electrified flight possible at scales beyond small aircraft — and its 2-megawatt engine could power the first generation of large-scale electric passenger planes.
Electric cars have proven to be a huge success, but they have an advantage over planes in that they don’t need to produce enough lift to keep their own mass in the air. Electric planes have been held back by this fundamental conundrum, that the weight of the batteries needed to fly any distance with passengers aboard means the plane is too heavy to fly in the first place.
In order to escape this conundrum, the main thing to improve is efficiency: how much thrust can be produced per watt of power. Since reducing the mass of batteries is a long, slow process, it’s better to innovate in other ways: materials, airframe and of course the engine, which in traditional jets is a huge, immensely heavy and complex internal combustion one.
Electric engines are generally lighter, simpler and more reliable than fuel-powered ones, but in order to achieve flight you need to reach a certain level of efficiency. After all, if a jet burned a thousand gallons of fuel per second, the plane couldn’t hold the amount needed to take off. So it falls to companies like Wright and H3x to build electric engines that can produce more thrust from the same amount of stored energy.
While H3x is focused on small aircraft that will probably be taking flight sooner, Wright founder Jeff Engler explained that if you want to take on aerospace’s carbon footprint, you really have to start looking at commercial passenger jets — and Wright is planning to make one. Fortunately, despite the company’s name, they don’t need to build it entirely from scratch.
“We’re not reinventing the concept of the wing, or the fuselage, or anything like that. What changes is what propels the aircraft forward,” said Engler. He likened it to electric vehicles in that much of the car doesn’t change when you go electric, mainly the parts that have operated the same way in principle for a century. All the same, integrating a new propulsion system into a plane isn’t trivial.
Wright’s engine is a 2-megawatt motor that produces the equivalent of 2,700 horsepower, at an efficiency of around 10 kilowatts per kilogram. “It’s the most powerful motor designed for the electric aerospace industry by a factor of 2, and it’s substantially lighter than anything out there,” said Engler.
The lightness comes from a ground-up redesign using a permanent magnet approach with “an aggressive thermal strategy,” he explained. A higher voltage than is normally employed for aerospace purposes and an insulation system to match enable an engine that hits the power and efficiency levels required to put a large plane in flight.
Wright is making sure its engines can be used by retrofitted aircraft, but it’s also working on a plane of its own with established airframe makers. This first craft would be a hybrid electric, combining the lightweight, efficient propulsion stack with the range of a liquid fuel engine. Relying on hydrogen complicates things but it makes for a much faster transition to electric flight and a huge reduction in emissions and fuel use.
Several of Wright’s motors would be attached to each wing of the proposed aircraft, providing at least two benefits. First, redundancy. Planes with two huge engines are designed to be capable of flying even if one fails. If you have six or eight engines, one failing isn’t nearly so catastrophic, and as a consequence the plane doesn’t need to carry twice as much engine as you need. Second is the stability and noise reduction that comes from having multiple engines that can be adjusted individually or in concert to reduce vibration and counteract turbulence.
Right now the motor is in lab testing at sea level, and once it passes those tests (some time next year is the plan) it will be run in an altitude simulation chamber and then up at 40,000 feet for real. This is a long-term project, but an entire industry doesn’t change overnight.
Engler was emphatic about the enthusiasm and support the company has received from the likes of NASA and the military, both of which have provided considerable cash, material and expertise. When I brought up the idea that the company’s engine might end up in a new bombing drone, he said he was sensitive to that possibility, but that what he’s seen (and is aiming for) is much more in line with the defense department’s endless cargo and personnel flights. The military is a huge polluter, it turns out, and they want to change that — and cut down on how much money they spend on fuel every year as well.
“Think of how things changed when we went from propellers to jets,” said Engler. “It redefined how an airplane operates. This new propulsion tech allows for reshaping the entire industry.”
Elvie, the women’s health tech pioneer behind a connected breast pump and smart pelvic floor exerciser, has topped up a Series C which it announced earlier this summer (July) — adding a further £12.7 million to bring the total raised to £70 million ( million).
The 2013-founded, U.K.-based startup previously raised a million Series B in 2019, and a million Series A in 2017 — when femtech startups were a lot rarer than they are now. Products designed for (and often by) women have gained a lot of momentum over this period as female-led startups have blazed a trail and shown there’s a sizeable market for femtech — leading investors to slow clock on to the opportunity too.
Analysts now project the femtech industry will become a $50 billion market by 2025.
Elvie says the Series C extension includes funds sponsored by the co-founders of Blume Equity — a PE firm that focuses on the food and health sectors — plus further capital from existing investors IPGL, Hiro Capital and Westerly Winds.
In July, when it announced the earlier ($80 million) tranche of the raise, Elvie said the Series C was led by BGF and BlackRock alongside existing investors including Octopus Ventures.
The Series C will be used to drive more growth through geographical expansion (including entering new markets) and diversifying its product portfolio to target other “key stages” in women’s lives, it said.
That means it’ll be splashing out on R&D to support product development — connected hardware that blends physical gadgetry with software still looks to be a strong focus — and also on strengthening its ops and infrastructure to prep for further scale.
Elvie sells four products at this stage: Its connected Kegel trainer, and a wearable breast pump (plus two non-electric pumps).
Where the company goes next in terms of product will be an interesting one to watch.
Commenting in a statement, Tania Boler, CEO and founder, said: “Elvie is ready for the next phase of our growth. We have already revolutionized the categories we operate in, but we know that there is vast untapped potential to create better technology products and services for women in new areas.”
She added that Elvie’s goal is to create “the go-to destination for women’s health at all life stages” — selling “sophisticated, accurate and personalised solutions” to its target female consumer.
Elvie doesn’t break out product sales but it told us its pump business has doubled in the U.S. over the last 12 months — adding that they are the highest single breast pump SKU revenue driver on Amazon in the U.S.
The company also touts “strong” growth for its European business — at 139% YoY. While, in the U.K. market, it says it’s seen a further +31% growth YoY over the last 12 months.
Last release we introduced Home Energy management, and we are so happy with all the reactions and response we have received ❤️!
In this version we have added some much requested features to make it even more useful, also a lot more integrations now have support for it ⚡️.
Personally I also really like the new long term statistics and statistics card introduced last release, and I’m really happy that in this release we will be able to use it for a lot more sensors.
Enjoy another great release! Be sure to tune into the 2021.9 Release Party on YouTube later today (9:00 PM CET) to learn more about this release!
Last release, we introduced the new Home Energy management features
into Home Assistant and we are happy to see you like it!
We have seen quite a few people sharing their Energy dashboards on socials like
Facebook and Twitter, which is really awesome.
Share a screenshot of your dashboard and your story too!
In this release, the story continues! Here is what we have in store for you:
The first iteration of the Energy Dashboard showed a single day at the time.
Great! But what if you want to see how you did this week? Or month? Heck, a
year even?!
Well, now you can! In the top right of the dashboard, you can now select the
grouping period you want to see: Day, Week, Month or Year.
Screenshot of the new Energy Dashboard period selection.
The arrow buttons allow you to browse through those periods. For example, when
selecting a period of a month to display, the arrow buttons will take
you a whole month back/forward in the view.
In some countries, homes are connected to gas. The gas is being used to heat
water, cook and for heating the house. If you have a home that is connected to
gas, we have some great news for you!
Maybe you noticed it already in the previous screenshot, as of this release,
we have added support for monitoring your gas usage.
Screenshot of the new Energy Dashboard monitoring gas usage.
In certain countries, the gas meters have a standardized way of reading
out the gas usage locally or provide this information via the electricity
meter. For example, in the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg you could
use the SlimmeLezer
to obtain your gas usage.
Having solar panels is a great way to generate electricity to power your home.
However, where do you store energy generated by your solar panels that you
don’t need right now?
Well, for many, the solution resides in a, high capacity, home battery to store
electricity for use when the sun can’t provide it (e.g., during the night).
Numerous have requested this feature, and therefore we now have added support
for home batteries to the Home Assistant energy management.
Animation of a home battery as part of the energy distribution.
When releasing a feature such as the Home Energy management, we understand you
want to use and play with it right away. And while we had prepared and updated
a lot of integrations to be ready when we first launched, there were still
many in need of an update.
As a result, we have been flooded by requests to add support to virtually all
integrations that didn’t had it yet… 🙂 Many of those requests have been
fulfilled in this release.
For example, the Kostal Plenticore Solar Inverter,
PVOutput, Fronius,
SolaX Power, Growatt,
Solar-Log, YouLess,
Emoncms, Modbus,
and many more have added support for all the energy goodness.
If you are a custom integration developer who wants to add support, be sure to
check out our developer blog
to catch up with the latest changes.
In the previous release, we introduced long term statistics
for sensors, including a beautiful Lovelace card that goes with it. However,
in the previous release we had limited this feature to temperature,
humidity, power and energy related sensors.
As of this release, we unleashed the long term statistics for all sensors!
Screenshot of a statistics graph showing the luminosity in the garden versus the front of my house.
Long term statistics applies to all integrations that indicate their sensors
support those. Luckily a lot have already done so.
Thanks to @bdraco, Home Assistant can now discover USB devices and the
integrations that work with that device. This makes setting up
things like Z-Wave or Zigbee with Home Assistant an actual breeze now!
For example, if you plug in your new Nortek HubZ USB stick into the
machine running Home Assistant, it will discover and notify you about it.
Screenshot of a discovered USB device compatible with Z-Wave JS.
Now it is just a single click on the “Configure” button to set up the Z-Wave JS
integration and done! Super nice!
Support for USB discovery has currently been added to the
Z-Wave JS and ZHA integrations.
If you are a Z-Wave siren/doorbell owner, you probably know how frustrating it
was to wait for Home Assistant to add entity support for the Sound Switch CC
(Command Class). This is caused by the blazing fast speed the upstream Z-Wave JS
project is moving forward at; Often much faster than Home Assistant is able
to keep up with.
It also might be that Home Assistant cannot (or is likely not to) support the
specific command class you care about; Nevertheless, that shouldn’t stop you
from being able to create automations for those devices!
In this release, we have introduced the new zwave_js.value_updated automation
trigger type which will allow you to trigger an automation off of any
Command Class value that Z-Wave JS supports!
In order to leverage this trigger type in the UI, you will have to
use device automations,
but if you are writing your automations in YAML, you can
use the trigger directly.
That’s not all for Z-Wave JS integration, we have more to share!
select entity for the Protection Command Class to disable local access.number entity and theselect entity.zwave_js.* services more flexible: They now support area IDsgroup entities as inputs!sensor entities to become number entities instead.Yes! We have new platforms you can utilize using the template integration!
Thanks to @raman325 you can now template your own select and number
entities! This unlocks quite the potential for creating some advanced
user interfaces 🙂
As an example says more than a thousand words, here are two examples that both
are based on a WLED LED strip. It can be used to extract features from
the WLED strip into their own entities.
# Example number entity that represents the effect speed on a WLED LED strip
# between 0 and 100%, translating it from an 0 to 255 scale.
template:
number:
- name: "Example number: WLED effect speed"
state: "{{ (( state_attr('light.wled', 'Speed') / 255) * 100) | round }}"
min: 0
max: 100
step: "{{ 1 }}"
set_value:
service: wled.effect
target:
entity_id: light.wled
data:
speed: "{{ (255 / 100) * value }}"
# Example select entity that extracts effects from a light.
# When you change the selected option, the effect of the light changes.
template:
select:
- name: "Example select: WLED effect"
state: "{{ state_attr('light.wled', 'effect') }}"
options: "{{ state_attr('light.wled', 'effect_list') }}"
select_option:
service: light.turn_on
target:
entity_id: light.wled
data:
effect: "{{ option }}"
Oh! And they can also be used with the new trigger templates! Check out
the documentation for all options available.
Two new template functions have been added, making working with areas
in YAML (when using templating) a little bit easier.
area_id("value") returns the area ID for a given value. The value can be
a device ID, entity ID, or area name. This function can also be used as a filter.
example: "{{ area_id('light.living_room_tv') }}"
example: "{{ area_id('Garden Shed') }}"
example: "{{ trigger.entity_id | area_id }}"
area_name("value") returns the area name for a given value. The value can
be a device ID, entity ID, or area ID. This function can also be used as a filter.
service: notify.frenck
data:
title: "Motion detected!"
message: >-
Motion has been detected in the {{ area_name(trigger.entity_id) }} area.
Thanks @raman325!
There is much more juice in this release; here are some of the other
noteworthy changes this release:
We welcome the following new integrations this release:
The following integrations are now available via the Home Assistant UI:
inf or nan sensor states in statistics (@emontnemery – #55943) (sensor docs)…don’t hesitate to use our very active forums or join us for a little chat.
Experiencing issues introduced by this release? Please report them in our issue tracker. Make sure to fill in all fields of the issue template.
Amsterdam-based startup VanMoof has raised a $128 million Series C funding round. The company designs and sells electric bikes that are quite popular in some markets. It now wants to become the world’s leading e-bike brand by iterating at a faster pace.
Asia-based private equity firm Hillhouse Investment is leading the round, with Gillian Tans, the former CEO of Booking.com, also participating. Some existing investors also put some more money on the table, such as Norwest Venture Partners, Felix Capital, Balderton Capital and TriplePoint Capital.
Today’s Series C represents a big jump compared to the company’s Series B. Last year, VanMoof raised a million Series B. Overall, if you add it all up, the startup has raised $182 million in total.
If you’re not familiar with VanMoof’s e-bikes, TechCrunch reviewed both the most recent S3 and X3 models. On paper, they are identical. The VanMoof X3 features a smaller frame and smaller wheels.
What makes VanMoof different from your average e-bike manufacturer is that the company tries to control everything from the supply chain to the customer experience. VanMoof e-bikes are premium e-bikes that are primarily designed for city rides. The most recent models currently cost $2,298 or €2,198.
They feature an electric motor paired with an electronic gear shifting system. It has four gears and you don’t have to change gears yourself. All you have to do is jump on the bike and start pedaling.
Recognizable by their iconic triangular-shaped futuristic-looking frames, the S3 and X3 also come with hydraulic brakes, integrated lights and some smart features. There’s an integrated motion detector combined with an alarm, a GPS chip and cellular connectivity.
If you declare your bike stolen, the GPS and cellular chips go live and you can track your bike in the VanMoof app. The company’s bikes are now also compatible with Apple’s Find My app.
Instead of relying exclusively on off-the-shelf parts, the company works with a small set of suppliers to manufacture custom components. This way, it can cut out as many intermediaries as possible to bring costs down. It’s also a good competitive advantage.
Growing a company like VanMoof is a capital-intensive business. The company has opened retail stores and service hubs in 50 different cities around the world. While the company started in Europe, the U.S. is now the fastest growth market for VanMoof.
With today’s funding round, the startup plans to double down on its current strategy. You can expect updated bikes with refined designs and more custom parts. You can expect more stores and service hubs around the world. And you can probably expect more online sales as well.
“It will help us get 10 million people on our bikes in the next five years,” co-founder and CEO Taco Carlier said in a statement. So far, there are 150,000 people using VanMoof bikes.
Today’s investment shouldn’t come as a surprise. The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated plans to transform European cities — and prioritize bikes over cars. Last year, TechCrunch’s Natasha Lomas and I wrote a comprehensive overview of key policy developments in four major cities — Paris, Barcelona, London and Milan. VanMoof is now benefiting from these policy shifts.