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When Cadillac designed its new ultraluxury EV, the handcrafted Celestiq, the design team had to completely rethink its battery pack: a standard EV battery wouldnt fit inside. We had a challenge, because due to the low roof height and the expressive proportions, there wasnt room for a typical battery in this vehicle, says Tony Nausieda, chief engineer of electrical propulsion systems at GM. It would have been probably pretty straightforward to do something like an internal combustion powertrain, but that was not at all what anybody wanted to do. This was conceived to be an electric vehicle. [Photo: GM] They couldnt compromise on the low lines of the car. It also had to be spacious insideincluding in the back seat, because the type of person who owns a bespoke vehicle that starts at $340,000 often uses a driver. And the battery needed to be big enough to give the car at least 300 miles of range. Rear drivers side view of CELESTIQ battery mounted on assembly cart, highlighting the raised tunnel area between driver and passenger seating, and recessed footwell areas for second-row passengers. [Photo: GM] To tackle the challenge, they took a new approach to the layout of the battery cells. In other GM vehicles, the cells are stacked vertically in a tray. (The company calls the arrangement toast since it looks like slices of bread.) But for the Celestiq, the battery cells lie horizontally. And instead of having a uniform height, the battery pack varies from front to back. Its more of a topographical situation, Nausieda says. [Photo: GM] Underneath the passenger seat in the front, the stack of cells is slightly higher; under the second row footwell, the stack is very short to provide as much legroom as possible. Because there was much more room under the second-row seat cushions, the batteries are stacked higher there. Once the engineers had gotten to that point, they were still 25 miles short of what the car needed in range. So, they designed a new console in the interior, from front to back, and added 24 more battery cells in the tunnel theyd created. That put us comfortably above that 300-mile limit, he says. [Photo: GM] The unusual arrangement was possible because GMs Ultium battery system, created in a partnership with LG Energy Solution, was designed for flexibility, with cells, modules, and packs that can be built in different configurations. The Celestiq’s particular battery pack design is unlikely to be repeated in other models, since it’s more difficult to assemble; the luxury car is made by hand and doesn’t need to be made at scale. But it’s one example of the car company’s road map to move from a one-size-fits-all battery to developing the ideal battery for a particular car. In this case, the designers didn’t have a choice. Typically, “your vehicle design and configuration is really somewhat bounded by the propulsion technologies that you have available to you,” says Nausieda. But with the Celestiq, the design came first and the engineers had to make the battery work. “We took a clean sheet of paper approach and made sure that we had the right battery to support this vehicle and not compromise,” he says.
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E-Commerce
Next week’s conclave to elect the successor to Pope Francis as leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics is a solemn affair steeped in centuries-old traditions.But far from the Sistine Chapel where cloistered cardinals will cast votes, people are placing bets on who will be chosen as the next pope. From cash bets on websites to online games modeled after fantasy football leagues and casual wagers among friends and families, the popularity of guessing and gambling on the future of the papacy is increasing worldwide, experts and participants say.It’s even topped the Europa League soccer tournament and Formula One drivers’ championship, said Sam Eaton, U.K. manager for Oddschecker, a leading online platform analyzing odds across sports, events and other betting markets.“There’s a huge level of interest globally,” he said. “I don’t think we’ve had a market like this where we’ve had so many countries interested in seeing odds.” Around the world, thousands of bets on the next pope Hundreds of thousands of people from some 140 countries have visited Oddschecker to review each cardinal’s chances of becoming the next pope, Eaton said. He noted special eagerness in the United Kingdom, Ireland and the United States.In the U.K., about 30,000 pounds (almost $40,000) have been wagered with one leading online betting platform as of this week, Eaton saida far cry from 1.2 million pounds on the singing contest Eurovision but still noteworthy as a trend, with the conclave days away.“Betting on the next pope is definitely a niche market in the grand scheme of things, but it generates global interest,” said Lee Phelps, a spokesman for William Hill, one of the U.K.’s biggest bookmakers.“Since April 21, we’ve taken thousands of bets, and it’s the busiest of all our non-sports betting markets,” said Phelps, who expects a surge in interest once the conclave begins Wednesday.Betting on elections, papal conclaves and all manner of global events is almost a tradition of its own in the U.K., but such betting is not legal in the United States. BetMGM, one of the world’s top sports-betting companies, said it would not have any bets up.But Eaton noted that in the unregulated, illegal space, one of the biggest sites has $10 million wagered so far in pope bets. Fantasy “teams” of cardinals In Italy, betting on the papal electionand all religious eventsis forbidden.Some people in Rome are making friendly, informal wagersthe equivalent of $20 on a favorite cardinal, with the loser pledging to host a dinner or buy a pizza night out.Others are turning to an online game called Fantapapa, or Fantasy Pope, which mimics popular fantasy football and soccer leagues. More than 60,000 people are playing, each choosing 11 cardinalsas if for a soccer teamwhom they believe have the best shot at becoming the next pope.They also draft the top contender, or captain. As with online wagers, the No. 1 choice for fantasy players has been Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin, closely followed by Filipino Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle.“It’s a really fun game to play with friends and have a laugh,” Italian student Federico La Rocca, 23, said. “Initially my dad sent it to me ironically, but now that it’s going to be the conclave, I decided to have a go and try it.”La Rocca said he chose Tagle because “he looks like a nice guy and fun person.”Players’ selections determine the number of points they rake in. But what’s the jackpot?“Eternal glory,” joked Mauro Vanetti, who created the game when Francis was hospitalized earlier this year.Vanetti said he and his co-founder are against gambling, but they wanted to create something fun around the event.“It seems like in Italy there’s a certain inquisitiveness about the mechanisms of the Catholic hierarchy, but it’s a critical curiosity, a sarcastic and playful curiosity, so we were interested in this jesting spirit for such a solemn event,” Vanetti said. “In some ways it deflates the sacredness, in a nonaggressive way.” Some concerns about betting on a solemn event Beyond simply picking who the next pope will be, players and gamblers also can guess how many tries it will take the cardinals to choose the leader, which day of the week he’ll be elected, what new name he will decide on, or where his priorities will land on the progressive-conservative scale.While the game and some of the bets have a novel or fun nature, anti-gambling advocates have raised overall concerns about legal gaming and the growing popularity of wagering on all manner of events.A study published last fall found that 10% of young men in the U.S. show behavior that indicates a gambling problem, which is a rising concern in other parts of the world, too.And for gambling around the papacy in general, some have raised religious concerns. Catholic teaching doesn’t go so far as to call games of chance or wagers sinful, but its Catechism warns that “the passion for gambling risks becoming an enslavement.”It says gambling becomes “morally unacceptable” if it gravely affects a person’s livelihood. Hui reported from London. AP writers Giovanna Dell’Orto in Rome and Mark Anderson in Las Vegas contributed. Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. Maria Grazia Murru and Sylvia Hui, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
The Trump administration’s layoffs across the federal workforce have already left tens of thousands of employees without jobs or on indefinite leave. But many federal agencies have since been instructed to make even deeper cuts to their workforce. In total, at least 12% of the 2.4 million workers employed by the federal government could be impacted, according to the New York Times. For many workers, the sweeping cuts have upended the stability that federal jobs long promised. They also significantly impact women and people of color, effectively making them another attack on diversity, equity, and inclusion effortssomething that has been a priority for the Trump administration. The diversity of federal agencies An analysis by the National Women’s Law Center takes a closer look at how these job cuts are chipping away at the diversity of the federal workforce, which has historically mirrored the demographics of the overall U.S. workforce. As of September 2024, nearly half of federal workers (46%) were women and about 41% were people of color. (Since the administration took down current demographic data on the federal workforce in March, the NWLC analysis draws on data from September 2024.) Among the agencies that have been ordered to further reduce headcount, women accounted for an even higher percentage of their employees relative to the overall federal workforce, according to the NWLC. The administration wants to cut 80,000 employees from the Department of Veterans Affairs, for example, where women comprise 64% of the workforce. The Department of Education’s workforce, of which 63% are women, has already been slashed in halfand President Trump is striving to shutter the agency altogether. Proposed layoffs at a number of other cabinet departments and agencies where women and people make up the majority of the workforce could impact tens of thousands of employees. Black workers, for example, account for 36% of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, as compared to 18% of the overall federal workforce. Latinos and Indigenous workers, too, are employed at higher rates by certain federal agencies that have been marked for layoffs, relative to the overall workforce. How probationary workers are affected The Trump administration has targeted probationary workers, in particular, who are not entitled to the same rights as federal workers with tenure. Probationary workers are typically in their first year of service or have recently been promoted to a new role. They also lack the protections that other federal workers have against being fired without cause. Nearly 25,000 of these workers have reportedly been fired; some were temporarily reinstated in response to court orders, but a new ruling in April granted Trump the ability to fire them yet again. Probationary workers are often younger and earlier in their career, but they’re also more likely to be women: The NWLC reports that half of probationary employees across the federal workforce are women, but in certain departments, well over 60% of them can be women. The same is true among people of color, who make up 46% of probationary workers overall and a far larger percentage of those workers at specific agencies like the Treasury Department and the Social Security Administration. The benefits of a federal job Beyond offering a measure of job stability, federal roles are often a source of solid benefits that are harder to come by in the private sector, like 12 weeks of paid parental leave. Federal jobs also offer greater salary transparency and narrower wage gaps, mitigating the pay inequities that are more likely to impact women and people of color in the workplace: As of September 2024, women in the federal workforce were paid 95 cents for every dollar that men earned, a stark contrast from the 83 cents per dollar earned by women across the U.S. workforce. (The NWLC found that some departments had even narrower gender wage gaps prior to the recent layoffs.)
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