Living and working from an all-electric VW ID Buzz

Living and working from an all-electric VW ID Buzz

Two humans and a beagle named Hank spent two weeks and 2,000 miles in Europe with a Ququq camping box to preview the future of #vanlife.

Like most people, I’m intrigued by the idea of electric cars but not yet convinced it’s time to make the leap. I can name every Tesla model, a few pickups from Ford and Rivian, and that’s about it. But when Volkswagen announced the production model of the all-electric ID Buzz, which began hitting European roads late last year… well, suddenly, I was very interested.

See, I’m the guy who spent a week living in a VW Transporter T5 “Ventje” last year and once rented a vintage Type 2 VW Microbus named “Fergus” for a summer just to wild camp around Scotland with my family. Generally, I abhor blatant attempts to convert nostalgia into product or ticket sales, but VW had me hooked ever since the ID Buzz was introduced as a far-out concept. That is until I learned the unthinkable: the ID Buzz would launch in passenger and cargo variants only — no “California” campervan. For that, I’d have to wait until 2025 or longer. Ugh!

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Then a few months ago, I discovered the aftermarket Ququq BusBox-4 camping box. It converts either the ID Buzz passenger or cargo vans into a two-person camper — and back — in just minutes. It’s available right now, and at €2,790 (about $3,000) costs a fraction of the premium the VW ID California will likely demand.

So, I decided to put the ID Buzz and Ququq to the test to answer two main questions: can today’s ID Buzz already function as an electric campervan, and can it support remote work for an extended period of time?

With that in mind, I packed up my wife and dog and began a nearly 2,000-mile round trip trek across Europe from Amsterdam in the north to Milan in the south, on a loosely planned road trip that still required us to clock in at work each morning. We slept, worked, and ate (minus a few lunches) exclusively from the ID Buzz for a period of two weeks.

The experience was an epiphany for me, a first-time EV driver and aspiring digital nomad, with many lessons learned along the way. The age of e-vanlife is dawning, and our experience with the ID Buzz is a preview of what’s to come.

To be clear, this isn’t a review of the VW ID Buzz electric van — there are lots of places you can get that from people with much more car experience than I have. This is a review of the ID Buzz as an adaptable do-it-all campervan — one vehicle that serves a variety of needs. For that reason, my single favorite feature is an optional (€331) DC-to-AC inverter that places a European standard 230V power socket beneath the front passenger seat (more on that later).

Say hi to Fergus, our trusty Type 2 Microbus in Scotland.

The ID Buzz is built upon the same MEB platform as VW’s first electric car, the ID.3, just like the original Type 2 Microbus derived from the Type 1 Beetle. So, in reality, the ID Buzz is more than just a cheap nostalgia ploy — it’s following the same evolutionary path as its incredibly iconic and successful predecessors. Knowing that makes me feel less like a hapless victim of the sentimentality machine — or so I tell myself.

My review vehicle is a fully loaded ID Buzz 1st Max Edition passenger van with every option possible. It’s priced at almost €80,000 (about $88,000), which includes roughly €14,000 of taxes here in the Netherlands. For comparison, it’s still much cheaper than a €113,990 base Tesla Model X SUV in the Dutch market at the time of publication.

I will say this in summary of the ID Buzz itself: everyone who drove it or saw it loved it. People were so charmed by it that they would engage me with questions when parked at charging stations or pull up alongside while driving to flash thumbs-up and hang-loose gestures. It was smiles all around, very similar to the joy we spread when driving that delightful old Type 2 around Scotland. Hell, if you look at the front end of the ID Buzz just right, even it seems to be smiling.

The ID Buzz’s low center of gravity, optional 21-inch wheels, and rear-wheel drive combine for a surprisingly fun drive. It also offers excellent visibility for a large car that actually feels small, thanks to a windshield that drops down to clearly mark the front of the car and a bevy of sensors and cameras that alert you to nearby objects. It also has a surprisingly tight turning radius which was very useful when navigating narrow Italian streets.

But I agree with reviewers who say the infotainment system is underpowered and convoluted with a mix of interfaces that leave you wondering if a push, pull, or touch is the expected input (things you’ll eventually develop muscle memory for). The button for the hazard lights, for example, is touch sensitive for some reason resulting in three accidental triggers.

(Not so free) Range

I’m not a car guy, but I do love a big rolling battery that can power all my gadgets. So when I look at the ID Buzz, I see a giant power plant. But as large as the VW ID Buzz is, the battery maxes out at just 82kWh, of which only 77kWh is usable. That’s not a lot for its size, especially when you consider that it’s the same battery capacity found inside the smaller VW ID.4 and ID.5.

The battery capacity was a concern for me — a first-time EV driver — given the conditions I planned to drive in. See, EVs perform optimally in warmer temps around 21C (70F) and at city speeds where regenerative braking can do its thing. My planned route was likely to be cold and fast along great swaths of alpine highway to cover as much of the European charging network as possible. I also planned to regularly tap into the VW’s high-voltage battery while working in order to keep the van heated and all my gear powered on. It wasn’t long until I understood what range anxiety felt like, and I hadn’t even left the house!

Temperatures on my route ranged from -3C to about 17C (27F to 63F) during my two weeks of testing, but mostly they hovered between 3C and 12C (37F to 53F) on average. That meant that the car needed to be continuously heated, which lowered my overall range since the ID Buzz lacks a heat pump found on more efficient EVs. And yes, I can confirm that the ID Buzz has a top speed of 150km/h (93mph), which I verified a few times on the German autobahn.

Based upon my usage — which included siphoning about 5kWh per day to support living and working from the ID Buzz — I was burning through an average of 23.9kWh every 100km (60 miles), or nearly a third of my battery capacity, as reported by the ID Buzz’s infotainment system. That equates to 239Wh consumed per kilometer traveled or 2.6 miles per kWh, putting it much closer to a Ford F-150 Lightning in terms of efficiency than a Tesla Model 3. My driving yielded a range of around 322km (200 miles) per charge — well short of the heavily asterisked 423km (263 miles) WLTP range that VW quotes in its European marketing but in line with the 330km real-range data reported by EV Database.

But here’s the thing: despite these rather underwhelming figures and being a total EV novice, after just one or two days of travel, I never again felt anxious about my range. Mostly because we’re spoiled with choice of fast chargers here in Europe, something I quickly discovered as I meandered my way through the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Switzerland, and Italy.

Charging at an ultra-fast Ionity station just steps from a McDonalds. Gross, but convenient.

I found Europe’s network of ultra-fast DC chargers (300kW and greater) offered by companies like FastNed, Shell, Ionity, GoFast, and yes — Tesla — to be surprisingly robust. They were plentiful, located conveniently next to food, shops, and space to run our high-energy dog. And not once did I have to wait for a stall at any DC charging stations we pulled into, even when traveling during the long Easter weekend. In fact, I usually arrived to find the majority of stalls unoccupied and available for immediate ultra-fast charging. And unlike what many have experienced in the US, I can only recall seeing a single broken charger on my entire 3,000km journey.

The ID Buzz supports a stated maximum of 170kW DC fast charging from its CCS port, with a relatively flat charging curve that allows it to go from 5 to 80 percent in about 30 minutes. My stops often lasted longer though, about 45 minutes to an hour, because we wanted to charge to 100 percent and because the stops were a welcome and enjoyable break after two to three hours of driving, especially when you can just open the tailgate and cook up a quick meal.

Cookoo for Ququq

VW says a camper version of the ID Buzz is coming — someday — but it hasn’t committed to a firm timeline yet. That’s where Ququq (pronounced kookook) comes in. It’s a small German company that’s been making all-in-one camping boxes for a variety of vehicles for more than a decade. As an official VW accessory supplier, its party trick is the ability to convert the ID Buzz — cargo or passenger van — into a functional camper complete with a kitchen and bed in less than 10 minutes.

Ququq ready to prepare some penne arrabbiata with a local wine purchased at a vineyard we stayed at outside Milan.

I tested the Ququq BusBox-4 camping box designed specifically to turn the ID Buzz into a tiny mobile home. It really is a marvel of ingenuity — value, too, if you force your brain to squint a little.

See, when VW does finally deliver a true ID California campervan based on the Buzz, it could easily add tens of thousands to the already steep price, same as VW’s current California camper series can more than double the price of a base Transporter today. The Ququq BusBox-4, however, costs just a fraction of that at €2,790 (about $3,000) while making it easy to convert that five-seater into a weekend campervan for mom and dad and their dog while the kids sleep outside in a tent.

The Ququq weighs 62kg (137 pounds) and requires two people to lift the camping box into the back of the ID Buzz. It fits just behind the passenger bench, where it’s secured to the van’s lashing points with included ratchet straps. It’s a little inelegant, but it gets the job done, and it’s easy enough for a couple of sturdy humans to swap in and out of the van whenever the desire strikes.

The 10cm-thick mattress sleeps two comfortably, measuring 125 x 195cm when unfolded over the collapsed passenger bench. That makes for a rather snug arrangement that my wife and I nevertheless found to be sufficiently roomy. Unfolding the three-part bed requires the perfect combination of strength and finesse, which we could each do solo (and safely — watch your fingers!) after a few days of practice.

Paid a dairy farmer to camp on their property about 30 minutes outside of Lucerne, Switzerland.

Inside the BusBox-4, you’ll find a compact but efficient kitchen. Open it up, and the door folds down to create a convenient table. On the left, you can slide out a two-burner gas stove with space beneath for things like spices, coffee and tea supplies, cutlery, and cooking utensils. Fold up the windscreen and lock the small butane cartridges into place, and you’re ready to start cooking with fire.

In the middle of the opened Ququq is a slide-out drawer holding a small 12V fridge that can be controlled with a Bluetooth app (it’s not needed). It’s powered by a cable that snakes through the vents of the Ququq box and back to the 12V socket near the Buzz’s lift gate. The fridge can also be a freezer, but it’s either or — not both at the same time. It’s nothing special, and not very big at 15 liters, but still proved suitable to our needs. If you need more space, then a 20-liter fridge is also available.

Lastly, on the right of the open BusBox-4, you have a pair of 10-liter (2.6-gallon) freshwater tanks with a simple screw-on valve attachment. This section also includes two useful stainless steel trays for help with washing up and two reasonably comfortable chairs that tuck away neatly into a recess when not in use.

There’s nothing fancy here, and it does look slightly incongruous to the clean, modern lines of ID Buzz. Still, it’s a smart design that’s executed with durable and easy-to-clean materials like treated plywood and aluminum. VW’s so high on the Ququq x ID Buzz pairing that the two have been featured in official press materials.

Power to the people

I had hoped that VW would give the ID Buzz a Tesla-like Camp Mode, whereby you can stay inside the van for hours while still enjoying powered jacks, lights, music, and heating. Sadly, that was not the case, and there’s no indication if VW will ever offer this, at least not until the ID California campervan arrives.

VW doesn’t offer a Camp Mode so I needed to bring this BioLite solution to keep the Starlink RV operating for hours at a time.

And while the fully maxed out ID Buzz I was driving was fitted with a single 230V jack under the front passenger seat, it’s only active for about 30 minutes when the ignition is on and then for another 15 or 20 minutes after the ignition automatically shuts off due to inactivity. That presents a real problem when trying to charge a laptop or keep Starlink internet operating without interruption.

Nevertheless, living and working from an ID Buzz fitted with a Ququq is not only possible, but it also requires fewer compromises than you might think, just as long as you’re packing the right gear.

On the power side, I brought along a small BaseCharge 1500 battery and solar panel from Biolite, a company best known for making fire pits in the past. I had planned to bring a larger and more capable AC200Max solar generator from Bluetti, but when I plugged it into the Buzz’s 230V socket, it tripped the VW’s breaker. Unfortunately, the AC200Max draws a steady 500W, and the Buzz’s inverter can only produce 300W with a 450W surge. The BaseCharge 1500 pulled just 112W, and its smaller physical size turned out to be just right for our needs.

Without a camp mode, I also hoped that the ID Buzz’s bidirectional charging — a vehicle-to-home charging feature that appeared on my infotainment system but requires a future firmware update to activate — would be ready for my journey. That would give me another way to keep the solar generator charged or power my Starlink’s router and dish via an adapter. Alas, the update never arrived, and the firmware release is still TBD.

The Ququq opens to form a convenient desktop.

So my strategy was to charge the Biolite BaseCharge 1500 off the ID Buzz’s 230V jack whenever I could and tap into the Biolite’s 1,521Wh capacity battery and its numerous AC (1200W with 2400W surge) and DC outputs (USB-C, USB-A, wireless charging pad, and 12V) to provide on-demand power to all the gear we carried for work and play. I always charged it when driving and soon got into the habit of repeatedly hitting the ignition button throughout the workday to keep the juice flowing. When away from the van, I’d supplement charging with a 100W Biolite solar panel that I’d place on the roof with the cable snaked back through a cracked window to the BaseCharge battery.

I even bought a €120 Type 2 adapter cable that let me charge the BaseCharge battery from public EV chargers. I never had to use it, though, except once as an early proof-of-concept test.

The strategy worked well. I was able to keep the Biolite battery charged at over 80 percent most of the time while also keeping all my office gear running. I only allowed the BaseCharge 1500 to drop as low as 30 percent once, but that’s only because I had a 12-hour drive coming up which was plenty of time for the VW’s 230V port to easily return the Biolite’s charge to 100 percent.

The Biolite BaseCharge 1500 did have some quirks, though. The fan would come on every 10 minutes or so and then run for 30 seconds at too high a pitch despite the AC load only pulling around 50W — that’s a pretty low threshold for an inverter fan. Once, I had a USB overload error that required me to reset the device, and multiple times the display showed low input power readings that could be corrected by reinserting the AC or solar power charging cables.

Hit the road, jacks

The ID Buzz’s USB-C ports (no USB-A anywhere) offered a mixed bag of capabilities that I never did fully figure out. The two USB-C ports located on the dashboard offered charging and data (for CarPlay and Android Auto) but failed to keep my Apple and Android phones charged despite claiming to support up to 15W of charge. That’s bad because I needed at least one phone to supplement VW’s stuttery satnav.

Fortunately, the USB-C ports in the front passenger door and each sliding door provide up to 45W of USB-C PD power. That meant snaking a 10-foot-long USB-C cable from my phone mounted to the left of the steering wheel all the way to the front passenger door on the right.

The USB-C ports, like the 230V AC jack, only had power when the ignition was on and for a few minutes after it was turned off. The 12V / 120W cigarette lighter jack in the back powering the Ququq’s fridge had continuous power, however, as it pulled straight off the Buzz’s small 12V starter battery. VW says its intelligent onboard supply management system automatically takes various actions to prevent the 12-volt vehicle battery from discharging when subjected to a heavy load.

Staying connected while disconnecting

On the data side, I reactivated my Starlink RV subscription that I put on hold at the end of last summer. My wife and I also brought three phones with big data plans from three different providers. These would act as backup to my Starlink internet or for whenever we didn’t feel like taking the 10 minutes required to reconfigure the van for Elon Musk’s space internet.

Starlink RV kept us connected with fast downloads, even on this remote Swiss farm.

Starlink was bulletproof the entire journey, with downloads averaging over 150Mbps and uploads averaging 20Mbps no matter where my wife and I decided to set up an office, though I was careful to avoid tree coverage. Nevertheless, it seemed to handle overhead branches and other obstructions even better than last summer’s Starlink RV review. From the perspective of our work colleagues, we appeared to function no differently than when we were working from home, at least until the Matterhorn — the real one in Switzerland — showed up in a Zoom call.

Otherwise, 5G data was often available and provided faster uploads in situations where I needed to upload video, for example. I only tried to use the Buzz’s 4G hotspot a few times: once, it failed to connect with my iPhone and another, it was just too slow to bother using from my MacBook. Still, I guess it was good to have a fifth connectivity option. I ignored public Wi-Fi at places like campsites as it was generally much slower than anything I had in tow.

Drive, sleep, work, repeat

As a rule of thumb, the smaller a vehicle, the more often it needs to be reconfigured throughout the day. And compared to vanlifer platforms like the Ford Transit and Mercedes Benz Sprinter, the VW ID Buzz is definitely on the small side.

On any given day, my wife and I would reconfigure the van through a progression of three modes: driving, sleeping, and working. Fortunately, the Ququq’s kitchen was always available whenever parked.

The passenger bench goes flat for the Ququq’s bed to be unfolded.

In driving mode, the Ququq and bedding materials were folded up and secured, the rear passenger seats flattened for Hank to roam around and for the Biolite battery plugged into the 230V socket and placed behind the front passenger seat where its ports could still be accessed.

Sleeping mode meant moving the Biolite battery (and some other bulky items) to the driver’s seat where it could power the Starlink (cable running through a slightly cracked window) and recharge our phones and laptops overnight. I usually unplugged the Starlink’s AC cable before falling asleep to prevent the Biolite’s irritating inverter fan from turning on. After flattening the bench seat, we could unfold and make the bed. Hank slept in a large portable crate, resting mainly on the front passenger seat. And since I couldn’t rely upon the Buzz’s lighting, we used a rechargeable Biolite lantern to keep the interior illuminated with light that varied from a warm candle glow to tripping balls.

Work mode meant removing Hank’s crate and folding the bed back up to lift the right-side rear passenger seat to create a second interior workstation. The ID Buzz is fitted with two rather flimsy folding tables on the backs of the front seats that still proved useful throughout the workday. When the weather was good, we could work outside in the folding Ququq chairs using the kitchen’s door as a makeshift desktop. The ID Buzz was far more comfortable and flexible than it might appear, usually with much better views than any office cubicle.

It was all a little messy at first, but soon all our gear found a home with help from the ID Buzz’s numerous door and seat pockets. After about three days, we had each reconfiguration mode down to a reasonably fast routine.

Having a moment in the glow of a Biolite lantern and string lighting.

The biggest annoyance was covering the windows at night while parked at crowded campsites. Since VW isn’t yet offering a camper version of the ID Buzz, I had to invent my own privacy solution: a yoga mat for the front window and aluminum foil everywhere else — items we were carrying anyway.

At night I’d unfurl the yoga mat inside the front windshield where it could be gingerly held in place by the visors. I then squirted a little all-purpose cleaner on the inside of the other windows, which allowed the foil to “stick.” It worked surprisingly well at first, installing in about five to 10 minutes. But in our attempt to keep waste to a minimum, we reused the foil each day, causing it to become less sticky the more it was crumpled and torn. Soon we were tasked with trying to piece together a giant vertical jigsaw puzzle each night. If I did it all again, I’d find a third-party solution with magnets or suction cups before heading out.

Conditioning the air

Without the kind of Camp Mode found on Teslas, heat — which VW lumps under the confusing catchall of “air conditioning” — was always going to be an issue when trying to work and sleep in temperatures that often hovered around freezing. And just like with the 230V outlet and USB-C ports, I had to keep hitting the ignition button throughout the workday to keep the heat flowing from the ID Buzz’s vents. In this way, I could heat the van for about 45 minutes at a time before needing to hit the ignition button again.

At night, I discovered I could repurpose the Buzz’s preheat feature — designed to warm the van to a preset temperature for the daily commute — to keep the cabin hospitable while we slept even when temps dropped to -2C (28F) on the Swiss mountain farms where we parked. Using VW’s WeConnect ID app while lying in bed, I set the heater to come on at 3:30AM and then again at 6AM. You can also configure the preheat function directly from the VW’s infotainment system.

I did bring along a small space heater but never had to use it.

Off the grid

Keeping the heater running and Biolite battery changed also had an impact on driving range. The ID Buzz’s battery drained from 92 percent to 79 percent over the course of two days while parked at one particularly cold and wet campsite in lovely Kaysersberg, France. During that time, I was trying to keep the Biolite’s battery charged under the strain of all our office gear and toys while also heating the front passenger seat for my wife and maintaining the air temperature at 21C (70F) for several hours each day.

Now, if VW’s estimate is correct, then 13 percent of the Buzz’s 77kWh (usable) battery capacity equates to 10kWh consumed. That means we were using about 5kWh per day to live and work from an ID Buzz at the onset of spring. Put another way, the ID Buzz can support a couple for almost two weeks of off-grid boondocking, assuming you’ve got enough food and water and can quickly get to a charging station once you decide to rejoin society.

Incidentally, we never ran out of water** on this trip and only depleted two of the six butane cooking gas canisters we carried.

**Some water, usually extracted from inexpensive Negronis and local wines, was acquired along the way. Hank, who is known to eat his own poo, also drank from puddles.

The ID Buzz parked next to some of its gasoline-powered VW California cousins.

The Ququq BusBox-4 turns the full-time ID Buzz five-passenger van into a capable two-person (plus dog) camper whenever you feel like it while also likely saving you a bundle over the expected price of VW’s dedicated ID California campervan… whenever that might launch.

Yes, there are compromises to make, especially since the ID Buzz will only power your electronics for about 45 minutes at a time. That means bringing along a modestly-sized solar generator like the Biolite BaseCharge 1500 for uninterrupted power to AC devices like Starlink internet for the duration of a workday. Things should get easier once VW releases the long-promised software update (and adapter) to enable bi-directional charging. But given VW’s Microbus heritage, the lack of a Tesla-like Camp Mode to keep the ID Buzz’s AC inverter, USB jacks, lights, music, and heating operational while parked is a real oversight, in my opinion.

Spending a few weeks living and working from the ID Buzz in seven countries around Europe has me excited for the electric future of vanlife, especially now that Mercedes Benz has announced its new modular VAN.EA electric platform that should enable e-campers of all sizes starting in 2026. We’ve also got Winnebago and EcoFlow teaming up for a July announcement of what could be a production version of the all-electric eRV built atop an extended-range Ford E-Transit.

A bigger ID Buzz for the US is coming

But for VW fans, a long-wheelbase version of the ID Buzz specced for the US is being announced on June 2nd ahead of sales in 2024. It’s expected to feature even more internal space, a bigger battery, and — fingers crossed — better performance from the infotainment system, which has reportedly been vastly improved on VW’s new ID.7. Notably, it’s the LWB ID Buzz that VW says will one day underpin the future ID California campervan.

But there’s no need to wait if you live in Europe, where e-vanlife in a Voltswagen Microbuzz — if I may be so bold — is already a reality.

All photography by Thomas Ricker / The Verge

Google’s Magic Compose beta is here — but it sends your messages to Google

Google’s Magic Compose beta is here — but it sends your messages to Google

Image: Google

Google has finally started to roll out the beta of Magic Compose, its new Messages feature that uses AI to help you write text messages. However, as pointed out by Android Police, the feature comes with a pretty big caveat: it will send up to “20 previous messages” to Google’s servers to generate suggestions — even if you’re using RCS with end-to-end encryption (E2EE).

Google outlines these conditions on its Magic Compose support page, noting that it will send these messages, along with any included emoji, reactions, and URLs, to its servers to help its AI craft an appropriate response. The company adds that it won’t send any messages with attachments, voice messages, and images but notes “image captions and voice transcriptions may be sent.”

Google first rolled out E2EE on the app in 2020 and made it available for group chats late last year. Toggling on the feature means third parties — not even Google — will see your messages. While using Magic Compose with E2EE will send your messages to Google’s servers, the company maintains that it still can’t actually read them.

Google spokesperson Justin Rende further clarified to The Verge that “conversation data used by Magic Compose is not retained” and that “suggested response outputs are not retained once they’ve been provided to the user.” Once you turn Magic Compose off, Google won’t send your messages to its servers.

Magic Compose is just one of the many AI-powered features Google showed off at its I/O event earlier this month. According to Google, you can use the feature to reply to text messages using “stylized, suggested responses with the context of your messages.” The feature is currently rolling out to users in the Google Messages beta program.

If you have access to the feature, you’ll see a chat bubble next to the app’s message composer. From there, you can pick a suggested response and then continue to rewrite the text using various preset styles, like “chill,” “excited,” or “Shakespeare.” The feature only seems to be available with RCS messages for now, and there’s no word on when it might support SMS / MMS.

Microsoft also rolled out a similar feature in its keyboard app, SwiftKey. This allows you to select the Bing icon within the app’s toolbar to compose text messages and emails, as well as change the tone, format, and length of the suggested messages.

Netflix might ruin password sharing for everyone

Netflix might ruin password sharing for everyone

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

Netflix is betting that a password-sharing crackdown will reverse its dwindling revenue and wavering subscriber count. The company has historically never enforced its policy of one account per household. Now, by making members pay to share their subscriptions with people who live in other homes, Netflix will cash in on all those users they’ve been missing out on for all these years, right?

Well, it might not be that simple.

Netflix — where co-founder and now-former CEO Reed Hastings once said “password sharing is something you have to learn to live with” — told investors last year that password sharing contributed to the streamer’s first loss in subscribers in over a decade. After months of testing throughout Latin and Central America, Netflix finally brought paid sharing to Canada, New Zealand, Portugal, Spain, and now, the US. Under its new rules, Netflix wants users to pay an extra $7.99 per month to let just one person outside their household access their subscription.

Many questions remain about how Netflix will actually implement this — and whether it will actually help increase the company’s bottom line. Netflix has warned its investors of a “cancel reaction” several times in the past when talking about paid sharing, meaning that some people will cancel their subscriptions in response to the rollout in their locations. It has already seen that kind of reaction in Spain, where data from the analytics group Kantar found that the streamer lost 1 million users following the crackdown.

But to Netflix execs, the “improved overall revenue” will ultimately outweigh those lost subscriptions. In its last earnings report in April, Netflix said it was “pleased with the results” of its password-sharing crackdown in Canada, New Zealand, Portugal, and Spain while adding that its subscriber base in Canada is “now growing faster than in the US.” While Netflix assures investors that its results in Canada are a “reliable indicator” of what will happen here, Dan Rayburn, a streaming media expert and industry analyst, tells The Verge “that’s not a fair comparison,” as the number of subscribers and households in both countries are just “so different.”

Netflix also doesn’t take into account the number of subscribers who will choose to lower their plans instead of cancel them altogether, something Rayburn says also poses a big problem for the company. Without password sharing, Netflix’s more expensive plans lose some of their value, as some users might only subscribe to these plans just because of the perk that lets multiple people watch Netflix at once from different devices — and across different households.

While Netflix’s $15.49 per month Standard plan lets you watch Netflix on two devices at a time, the $19.99 per month Premium plan allows up to four simultaneous viewers. The shift toward password sharing could mean that some users will opt to go for the $9.99 per month Basic plan instead of canceling their subscription, which allows users to watch Netflix on just one device at a time. This potential trend could deal a blow to Netflix’s average revenue per user (ARPU), which sat at $16.18 in its last earnings report. “The cancellations will hurt, but the downgrades will hurt as well because Netflix can’t make that up in advertising,” Rayburn explains.

“All streamers face the same quandary of how to deal with password sharing”

Whether or not paid sharing ends up hurting Netflix’s balance sheet, it could have huge implications for the entire streaming industry. Other companies, like Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Paramount, are likely looking to see how consumers respond to Netflix’s password-sharing crackdown. If all goes well, other services might want to follow suit, similar to the way we saw several streamers hop on the price hike bandwagon last year.

“All streamers face the same quandary of how to deal with password sharing,” Paul Erickson, the principal at Erickson Strategy and Insights, tells The Verge. “Everybody is going to take a look at this or take their cues from how Netflix handles this, how the American consumer reacts, or how they react and push ahead themselves.” With a streamer as big as Netflix getting into paid sharing, there’s always a chance that it will become an industry norm. Erickson says that he sees paid sharing as “part of the maturation” of the streaming industry, noting that “it had to be sorted out at some point, and it’s taking place now.”

Aside from Netflix’s investors, I don’t think anyone is happy about this change — especially since Netflix is the only service that’s making users pay extra. It’s still far too early to tell how many subscribers the streamer will lose over the change, how many will pick a cheaper plan, or how many will actually purchase add-on accounts. But Netflix has to be careful how it implements the change. After all, it doesn’t want to alienate all the paying customers who helped put the service in front of more eyeballs by sharing their passwords.

Iconic yellow school bus maker opens new electric bus factory

Iconic yellow school bus maker opens new electric bus factory

Image: Blue Bird

Blue Bird, a century-old manufacturer of America’s iconic yellow school buses, has opened a new production facility to meet the rising demand for electric school buses. Announced via a press release (and an adorable promotional video) on Thursday, a new 40,000 square foot “Electric Vehicle Build-Up Center” has been opened at Blue Bird’s main manufacturing plant in Fort Valley, Georgia, designed to increase the company’s production of electric school buses from 100 per year to 5,000.

Electric versions of Blue Bird’s “Vision” (a classic “Type C” bus with capacity for 77 passengers) and “All American” (a flat-fronted “Type D” bus for 84 passengers) buses will be assembled at the new facility, each equipped with a 155kWh battery that provides around 120 miles of range and takes between three to eight hours to recharge. There are nearly 1,000 Blue Bird electric buses currently in operation, making up six percent of the company’s total volume. The company currently builds four electric school buses each day, but hopes that its new EV facility will increase production to 20 buses a day.

Image: Blue Bird

Electric versions of the Blue Bird Vision (pictured left) and All American (right) will be produced at the new facility in Georgia.

Blue Bird is anticipating a significant increase in demand for electric school buses. School districts across the US and Canada have already begun replacing their traditionally powered bus fleets with all-electric models in a bid to reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions, save on fuel costs, and improve the health of students. In the US especially, sales of electric school buses are expected to increase due to the billions of dollars in incentives available under President Biden’s infrastructure plan.

“Based on the historic Bipartisan Infrastructure Law alone we anticipate thousands of additional electric school bus orders valued at an estimated $1 billion over five years,” said Phil Horlock, president and CEO of Blue Bird Corporation. “Our new EV Build-up Center reflects Blue Bird’s steadfast commitment to school districts across the U.S. and Canada to meet increasing demand and deliver clean, safe, and reliable student transportation when they need it.”

Billions of dollars in incentives under Biden’s infrastructure plan are increasing the demand for all-electric school buses

School buses are an ideal candidate to transition away from traditional fuels like diesel (which now makes up less than half of Blue Bird’s volume). Besides preventing school children from being exposed to harmful emissions, the short, fixed route of school buses are well suited for range-limited EVs. They also have long periods outside of the twice-daily school runs where they’re not in operation, giving them plenty of time to recharge.

In the face of overwhelming demand, the Biden-Harris administration almost doubled the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) cash pool for its Clean School Bus Program rebate last year from $500 million to $965 million. According to the EPA’s newly proposed greenhouse gas emissions standards for heavy-duty vehicles, the agency anticipates that 45 percent of all school buses produced by 2032 will be EVs.

The Surgeon General’s Social Media Warning and A.I.’s Existential Risks

The Surgeon General’s Social Media Warning and A.I.’s Existential Risks Plus, Kevin and Casey react to this week’s tech headlines.

The FDA will apparently let Elon Musk put a computer in a human’s brain

The FDA will apparently let Elon Musk put a computer in a human’s brain

Screenshot by Sean Hollister / The Verge

Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface company Neuralink says it has received Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval to launch its first in-human clinical study. If this is true, it means that actual humans could be getting a device from Neuralink implanted in their heads.

The news follows Elon Musk’s November claim that Neuralink was about six months away from its first human trial — which suggests it’s the rare Musk promise that’s actually coming true on time. The announcement of a future human trial isn’t nearly as much of a milestone as the results of that trial. But this isn’t just any trial. This represents Elon Musk, of all people, getting to attach a device to a human brain.

We are excited to share that we have received the FDA’s approval to launch our first-in-human clinical study!

This is the result of incredible work by the Neuralink team in close collaboration with the FDA and represents an important first step that will one day allow our…

— Neuralink (@neuralink) May 25, 2023

And it makes us wonder: who would sign up for such a thing, and why? Will it be someone who might have an important medical reason or someone who wants to draw the world’s attention at Musk’s side, and is there any chance it’s Elon Musk himself? Musk has claimed he will get the device implanted in his own head at some unspecified time in the future.

Meanwhile, Neuralink has been accused of abusing its monkey test subjects, a claim the company denies, and is under investigation for allegedly transporting contaminated devices removed from monkeys. The FDA rejected an early 2022 Neuralink application for human trials, as reported by Reuters, apparently outlining “dozens of issues” the company needed to address.

Musk’s Neuralink would not be the first to implant a brain-computer interface in a human: Synchron was approved by the FDA to begin US trials in 2021 and announced the first US brain-computer implant last July. This January, it published the results of an earlier study of four human patients in Australia.

If you’re thinking that you, yourself, would like to be part of the Neuralink trial, there’s nothing for you to do for now. Neuralink says that recruitment isn’t open yet and that it will announce more information “soon.”

YouTube will let you watch unlimited NFL Sunday Ticket streams, but only at home

YouTube will let you watch unlimited NFL Sunday Ticket streams, but only at home

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

YouTube on Thursday announced a big upgrade to its NFL Sunday Ticket offering: if you’re at home, you’ll now be able to watch unlimited simultaneous streams of NFL Sunday Ticket content across both YouTube and YouTube TV, according to a tweet.

Previously, YouTube was going to limit NFL Sunday Ticket content to two screens maximum, as detailed in a support article. This change could mean that some houses will be watching a lot more football when the regular season rolls around in September — especially if they take advantage of YouTube TV’s new multiview feature, which is set to be available with NFL Sunday Ticket. If you’re not at home, the two-stream limit will still be in place, YouTube wrote in a follow-up tweet.

This just in! We’ve heard your feedback about @NFL Sunday Ticket streaming limits and we’re excited to share that we’re including unlimited simultaneous streams at home for @NFL Sunday Ticket content, on both YouTube TV and @YouTube.

— YouTube TV (@YouTubeTV) May 25, 2023

YouTube landed NFL Sunday Ticket in December, ending a monthslong process to determine where the broadcasting package would end up after DirecTV. Apple had long been rumored to be the new home for the package, but YouTube ended up getting it instead. YouTube’s NFL Sunday Ticket plans currently start at $249, but that’s a promotional price; the plans will get more expensive once the promotional pricing goes away after June 6th.

If you’re a business, DirecTV will still be selling NFL Sunday Ticket, which might come as a relief to sports bar owners who didn’t want to sign up for YouTube TV.

Tesla leak reportedly shows thousands of Full Self-Driving safety complaints

Tesla leak reportedly shows thousands of Full Self-Driving safety complaints

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

A Tesla whistleblower has leaked 100GB of data to the German outlet Handelsblatt containing thousands of customer complaints that raise serious concerns about the safety of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) features.

The complaints, which were reported across the US, Europe, and Asia, span from 2015 to March 2022. During this period, Handelsblatt says Tesla customers reported over 2,400 self-acceleration issues and 1,500 braking problems, including 139 reports of “unintentional emergency braking” and 383 reports of “phantom stops” from false collision warnings.

Some of the incidents mentioned by Handelsblatt include descriptions of how cars “suddenly brake or accelerate abruptly.” While some drivers safely gained control of their vehicle, Handelsblatt says others “ended up in a ditch, hit walls or crashed into oncoming vehicles.”

The documents obtained by the outlet also outline Tesla’s policies when responding to the issues customers experience and suggest that Tesla likes to keep its vehicles’ data under wraps. Here are some of the policies described by Handelsblatt (translated with Google Translate):

For each incident there are bullet points for the “technical review”. The employees who enter this review into the system regularly make it clear that the report is “for internal use only”. Each entry also contains the note in bold print that information, if at all, may only be passed on “VERBALLY to the customer”.

“Do not copy and paste the report below into an email, text message, or leave it in a voicemail to the customer,” it said. Vehicle data should also not be released without permission. If, despite the advice, “an involvement of a lawyer cannot be prevented”, this must be recorded.

According to a note from Handelsblatt editor-in-chief Sebastian Matthes, the outlet’s editorial team sent Tesla several questions about the data it received. Instead of answering them, Matthes says Tesla “demanded that the data be deleted and spoke of data theft.” We still don’t know who provided Handelsblatt with the leaked information, but Matthes notes that the outlet received it from “several informants.”

This is far from the first time concerns about Tesla’s FSD have been raised. Tesla’s FSD capability enables all the features that come with Tesla’s Autopilot and Enhanced Autopilot features, including automatic lane changes, autosteering, auto parking, and more. Despite these concerns, Tesla made its FSD beta available to everyone in November of last year.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration started looking into Tesla’s FSD software in January after Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted that the company would give users the option to turn off “steering wheel nag.” Around one month later, the agency deemed the capability a crash risk, leading Tesla to recall 362,758 cars equipped with FSD and pause FSD installations.

Here’s 44 seconds of the Moto Razr Ultra because an entire ad has leaked

Here’s 44 seconds of the Moto Razr Ultra because an entire ad has leaked

Three images from the Motorola Razr Ultra leaked video. | Images: Motorola via Evan Blass (@evleaks)

The Moto Razr Ultra foldable still isn’t official — but thanks to reliable gadget leaker Evan Blass, who’s been on top of this phone for months, we now have what appears to be an official 44-second commercial for the phone.

This is what you came for:

Leaked Motorola video via Evan Blass (@evleaks)

It’s well past my bedtime, so I won’t revisit all the other leaks — mostly, suffice it to say that Blass (whose Twitter account remains private) has been instrumental in revealing almost every aspect of this phone.

He gave us a bevy of leaked images, bite-size marketing videos, codenames for two alleged foldables (Juno and Venus), and a prospective launch date of June 1st, 2023 — meaning the phone will likely appear just before Google’s Pixel Fold ships to customers and more than a month ahead of the rumored arrival of Samsung’s next Z Fold and Z Flip.

We don’t know price or most specs — except that a Motorola executive revealed the outer screen will measure 3.5 inches. Blass previously tweeted that one of these phones will be branded as the Razr 40 Ultra globally, but called the Razr+ in the US. There will not be a “Razr Lite,” but rather a “Razr 40,” Blass says.

Alan Wake 2 won’t be available on disc

Alan Wake 2 won’t be available on disc

Image: Remedy Entertainment

Alan Wake 2 just got an official release date — October 17th — but you won’t be able to buy a physical copy of the game, developer Remedy Entertainment revealed in an FAQ on Wednesday. Remedy has three arguments as to why: it says that many players have shifted to only buying games digitally, not releasing the game on disc keeps the price down, and the studio didn’t want to require a separate download even if it released a disc product.

Here’s the company’s full explanation, from the FAQ:

Why is Alan Wake 2 a digital-only release?

There are many reasons for this. For one, a large number of have shifted to digital only. You can buy a Sony PlayStation 5 without a disc drive and Microsoft’s Xbox Series S is a digital only console. It is not uncommon to release modern games as digital-only.

Secondly, not releasing a disc helps keep the price of the game at $59.99 / €59.99 and the PC version at $49.99 / €49.99.

Finally, we did not want to ship a disc product and have it require a download for the game — we do not think this would make for a great experience either.

I’m sympathetic to Remedy’s arguments here. I haven’t bought a physical game in years, and I’m happy to see that Alan Wake II won’t be the next $70 game in part because of this decision. But I strongly believe that games should be offered both in digital and physical editions, especially because physical editions may be a better option for those with poor internet connections or who want to collect games for archival purposes.

Typically, I’d conclude an article like this by saying that I hope Remedy rethinks its digital-only decision for Alan Wake 2. But based on the next question in its FAQ, I’m not hopeful that’s going to happen:

Is there a disc-based version of Alan Wake 2 in the works?

There are currently no plans to release Alan Wake 2 on disc.

Alan Wake 2 will be released on PS5, Xbox Series X / S, and PC via the Epic Games Store on October 17th.

An Android app started secretly recording users almost a year after it was listed on Google Play

An Android app started secretly recording users almost a year after it was listed on Google Play

Innocent-seeming apps can be trojan horses for your information. | Image: Amar Toor / The Verge

An Android recording app called iRecorder Screen Recorder began as an innocent screen recording app but turned evil nearly a year after it was first released, as detailed by Ars Technica. The app first came out in September 2021, but after an update the following August, it began recording a minute of audio every 15 minutes and forwarding those recordings, through an encrypted link, to the developer’s server. The whole thing is documented in a blog post from Essential Security against Evolving Threats (ESET) researcher Lukas Stefanko.

In the post, Stefanko said the app was updated in August 2022 to include malicious code “based on the open-source AhMyth Android RAT (remote access trojan).” The app had 50,000 downloads by the time it was reported and removed from the Play store. Stefanko added that apps with AhMyth embedded in them had made it past Google’s filters before.

Scam apps aren’t new on either Apple’s or Google’s app stores. Recorder apps can be especially bad, sometimes having predatory subscription pricing and fake reviews to inflate their visibility on those platforms. And Stefanko’s blog post highlights a particularly sticky problem: apps turning to the dark side after you’ve had them for a while, using the permissions you granted them at the outset to gather sensitive information from your device and shuttle it off to the developer for nefarious activities.

This particular app is gone, but what’s to keep another sleeper agent from activating on your phone? Google is at least working on updates that will tell you via monthly notification which, and when, apps have changed their data-sharing practices — if it finds out, that is.

It’s Metal Gear Solid Delta, not Metal Gear Solid Triangle

It’s Metal Gear Solid Delta, not Metal Gear Solid Triangle

It’s confusing, so I had to ask. | Image: Konami

Sony and Konami just revealed a Metal Gear Solid 3 remake, but it has a curious logo that reads Metal Gear Solid Δ: Snake Eater. While preparing our article about the announcement, I assumed that triangle symbol translated to Metal Gear Solid Delta, but when I read Kotaku’s very good piece about the news, my stomach dropped: Kotaku called the new game Metal Gear Solid Triangle: Snake Eater, and I wondered if we had made an error.

To clear this up this very important issue, I had to ask Konami’s public relations team how we should pronounce the game’s name. The answer? Delta.

“Delta (“Δ”) was chosen because the meaning that the symbol has fits the concept of the remake project,” Tommy Williams, Konami’s head of communications for the Americas, said in a statement to The Verge. Case closed — though I’m wondering how the symbol fits the concept of the project.

Image: Konami

It’s Delta.

I’m glad I got this cleared up. This is the most important issue of our time since the debate about how to pronounce the word “tears” in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. In that case, it’s tears like crying, as Nintendo confirmed to Eurogamer.

Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater is now in development for PS5, Xbox Series X / S, and PC.

Elon Musk fails to launch Ron DeSantis in disastrous Twitter Space

Elon Musk fails to launch Ron DeSantis in disastrous Twitter Space

Photo by Paul Hennessy/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced his 2024 presidential campaign to screeching audio feedback and technical difficulties in a Twitter Space with Elon Musk on Wednesday.

DeSantis eventually did launch his campaign, but the event was mired with problems from the very beginning — and DeSantis didn’t manage to use the initial Space hosted by Musk. When moderator David Sacks, a venture capitalist and former PayPal product lead, first unmuted himself to start the talk, the Space was filled with loud, echoing feedback sounds before quickly going silent. The accounts of DeSantis and Sacks popped in and out of the initial room, muting and unmuting themselves before leaving entirely.

As of publication, it’s not entirely clear what went wrong, but Musk (one of the only people to actually speak in the first Space) chalked the problems up to overloaded servers. More than 600,000 users were tuned in a few minutes before the Musk-hosted room ended.

“Man, I think we melted the internet there,” Sacks said in a separate Space he created with his account after the first one shuttered. “I think it crashed because when you multiply a half million people in a room by an account with over 100 million followers, which is Elon’s account, I think that creates just a scalability level that was unprecedented. But with my meager followership it seems to be working much better.”

DeSantis read his speech launching his campaign in the Sacks-hosted room around 25 minutes after the event was originally scheduled to begin. “I had to switch over to David hosting it because my account was breaking the system,” Musk said.

The DeSantis campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Since taking over Twitter last year, Musk has amassed tremendous support and admiration from Republicans who have long accused social media platforms of unjustly censoring conservative speech. Musk has repeatedly played into this grief by rallying behind various right-wing talking points and offering up troves of internal Twitter documents as evidence that the company’s previous leaders were bias against conservatives. Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and The Daily Wire have chosen to move their shows over to Twitter in recent weeks, after Carlson was fired from Fox News.

Asked about censorship Wednesday, DeSantis said he would soon be signing a “digital bill of rights” that would ban state and government officials from “colluding” with social media companies.

Musk’s popularity with the GOP could serve as a boon to DeSantis whose poll numbers amongst Republican primary voters have fallen over the last few weeks. A recent Morning Consult survey showed Trump overtaking DeSantis amongst GOP primary voters by 38 percent.

Both DeSantis and Musk have painted people with progressive positions on issues like LGBTQ+ rights as members of an existential “woke mob” intent on corrupting conservative tradition. Despite suggesting that he would back DeSantis if he were to run for president late last year, Musk said that he was not “at this time planning to endorse any particular candidate” during an interview at a Wall Street Journal conference on Tuesday.

“I think it’s quite groundbreaking that there be a major announcement of this type on social media,” Musk said Tuesday.

The DeSantis campaign formally filed for the 2024 presidential race Wednesday afternoon, teeing up an increasingly crowded GOP primary election currently led by former President Donald Trump.

“Elon Musk has already turned Twitter into a hellscape of hate and conspiracy. But his full-throated embrace of Ron DeSantis – only weeks after Tucker Carlson announced he would revive his Fox News show on Twitter – is a new low for what was once one of the world’s most important communication platforms,” said Nicole Gill, co-founder and executive director for Accountable Tech, in a statement Wednesday.

Elon Musk’s Event With Ron DeSantis Exposes Twitter’s Weaknesses

Elon Musk’s Event With Ron DeSantis Exposes Twitter’s Weaknesses What was supposed to be a crowning moment for Mr. Musk’s Twitter turned into a series of technical glitches.

Propellers are louder over ground, researchers find

Propellers are louder over ground, researchers find The effects of the ground on propeller noise have been measured experimentally for the very first time by researchers in the Aeroacoustics research team at the University of Bristol.

These AMD Chromebook processors promise big battery life

These AMD Chromebook processors promise big battery life

Image: AMD

AMD has announced four new (well, kind of) processors marketed for Chromebooks: the Ryzen and Athlon 7020C series.

The release includes two Ryzen processors (a Ryzen 5 7520C and a Ryzen 3 7320C) with four cores, eight threads, and 15W TDP, with AMD Radeon 610M graphics. The Ryzen 3 has a 2.4 GHz base with up to 4.1 GHz boost frequency, while the Ryzen 5 has a slightly higher 2.8GHz and 4.3 GHz respectively.

The Athlon Silver 7120C and Athlon Gold 7220C both have two cores, and two and four threads respectively. Both have a base frequency of 2.4GHz; the Silver boosts up to 3.5GHz, the Gold up to 3.7.

As is often the case with these Chromebook-specific CPU releases from AMD, “new” is a bit of a misleading term. The 7020C series is built on the company’s Zen 2 architecture, which has been kicking around since the good old days of 2019. (We are now on Zen 4, for those who haven’t been obsessively following along at home.)

If you compare specs, these are basically the same chips that AMD released last September to target budget Windows laptops. In the past, the justification that AMD has given for doing these sorts of rebrands is that Chromebook-branded processors better help people find Chromebooks that will suit their computing needs. Regardless, prospective buyers should note that there’s nothing particularly new about these chips.

Nevertheless, AMD is making big promises for the C-series. For example, the company claims that the 7320C “delivers 1.6 times higher average performance across tested workloads” than previous generations of Ryzen-powered Chromebooks, as well as “up to 3.5 hours longer battery life” than competing MediaTek (Kompanio 1380) and Intel (Core i3-N305) systems. Users, per AMD, can expect up to 19.5 hours of battery life on the Athlon Silver and up to 17 hours on the Ryzen 3. AMD appears to have tested these using the CrXPRT synthetic benchmark, which may or may not mirror your own real-world use. (It’s safe to say that 19 hours would be an unbelievably long real-world lifespan.)

“We’ve been impressed with the combination of raw power and efficiency AMD has brought to a variety of Chromebooks,” said John Solomon, vice president and general manager of ChromeOS, in a statement. “We’re excited for AMD’s 7020 C-Series processors to continue that excellent track record.”

Systems powered by these chips, including an upcoming Chromebook CM34 Flip from Asus, are expected to roll out in Q2 of this year. A Dell is also coming, likely the Dell Latitude Chromebook 3445 that leaked out on Dell’s website and is mentioned in the footnotes of AMD’s press release.

Mountain of FTX Evidence: Emails, Chat Logs, Code and a Notebook

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Social Media is a ‘Profound Risk’ to Youth, Surgeon General Warns

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This palm-sized PC might contain the future of gadget cooling

This palm-sized PC might contain the future of gadget cooling

A visual sample of the Zotac Zbox Pico with AirJet — full disclosure that the flex cables aren’t actually connected. | Image by Sean Hollister / The Verge

There are largely two kinds of PCs — ones cooled by spinning fans, and ones cooled passively. A San Jose, California startup has raised $116 million in hopes of introducing a third way: a micro-electromechanical system that shoots air out of a solid-state chip, cooling with a device thinner and quieter than most fans could manage.

The company’s called Frore Systems, the device is called AirJet, and today it’s no longer just a cool demo at CES. At Computex 2023, Zotac has just announced it will sell an AirJet-cooled mini-PC for $499 by the end of this year.

I went to Frore’s headquarters to check it out — and to speak to CEO Seshu Madhavapeddy about what’s next.

GIF by Sean Hollister / The Verge

The AirJet Mini was continually spinning this rotor during my entire visit to Frore’s HQ.

First, temper your expectations: the “Zotac Zbox PI430AJ Pico with AirJet” isn’t exactly the kind of PC that sets most gadget lovers’ hearts aflame. It’s a barebone bring-your-own-SSD box designed primarily for edge computing, Internet of Things, and digital signage — the company’s biggest customers power displays in shopping malls, restaurants, medical clinics and the like, Zotac global marketing director Ernest Siu tells me.

Image by Sean Hollister / The Verge

The AirJet Mini, solo. Not pictured: required control circuitry and thermal interface materials.

Image by Sean Hollister / The Verge

Image by Sean Hollister / The Verge

It’s got a 7W Intel Core i3-N300 processor that nominally runs at 800MHz, with onboard graphics, 8GB of LPDDR5 memory, HDMI 2.0, DisplayPort 1.4, Gigabit Ethernet, and three 10Gbps USB 3.2 jacks, including another DisplayPort 1.4 over USB-C. The final units won’t have the fancy clear case you see above: they’ll be opaque black.

Image: Zotac

Not pictured: it comes with a VESA mount, too.

But when it comes to Frore’s technology, the specifics of this PC are a little beside the point. What matters is that Zotac couldn’t quite build it without Frore’s technology.

Zotac has sold previous fanless Picos with even slower Intel Celeron processors, but not an Intel Core i3 — and this computer’s immediate predecessor, the PI336, was dinged for being unable to maintain peak performance even though Zotac turned its entire case into a finned heatsink.

When I walked into Frore’s headquarters, the company showed me two of the new Picos with and without AirJets, both running the same endless loop of the Furmark graphics stress test. The one without an AirJet was a stuttering slideshow at barely a single frame per second, while the other was cracking 9, 10, even 11fps.

As you can see in a couple comparison shots with a FLIR thermal camera, it’s because the AirJet model was actually ejecting the heat.

Frore won’t let anyone see inside an AirJet device yet, so you’ll have to take the company’s word on how it works for now. Here’s Frore’s founder and CEO Seshu Madhavapeddy:

You have vibrating membranes inside the chip. When they vibrate they create a suction force that pulls air from the top through the dust guard into the inlet vents, and then pushes it down at very high velocities, and that high velocity air impinges on the copper heat spreader at the bottom of the chip. It get saturated with heat by extracting heat from the copper heat spreader and then it exits sideways.

Image: Frore

A rough idea of how an AirJet works, according to the company.

Madhavapeddy says the suction force is so powerful — 1750 pascals of backpressure, ten times that of a fan — that you can make a completely dustproof PC with integrated filters over its only openings. It’s so powerful it can apparently cool other components in a PC by sucking air past them, with a single AirJet Pro supposedly enough to cool a 15W Steam Deck handheld gaming PC despite offering a net heat dissipation of just 8.75W — the rest of the cooling comes passively because the skin of the device is just that much cooler with the AirJet’s breeze jetting past.

(You might notice the Zotac Pico doesn’t actually have top vents, because the twin AirJet Minis are pulling air through the vents on its sides instead.)

I’ll admit it’s a little hard to grasp how vibrating membranes can provide that much air pressure, particularly if they’re only consuming 1W of power as they do in the AirJet Mini, and Zotac’s Siu admitted to me that the company hasn’t completely finished failure testing Frore’s tech. But I definitely saw multiple AirJets spitting out air, felt it with my finger, measured it with a thermal camera, saw it with a Schlieren flow visualization, and heard it with my ear up close. It’s actually not completely silent, but incredibly quiet compared to most any fan I’ve dealt with before.

Madhavapeddy admits the AirJet Mini isn’t for every kind of PC. It’s not a simple matter of replacing a fan with an AirJet — they also require dedicated control circuitry that has to be integrated into a system’s motherboard, and an internal layout that’s conducive (or easily adapted) to the airflow that makes sense. One of the biggest challenges is simply getting enough surface contact to make optimal use of the AirJet’s cooling, says Madhavapeddy though that’s not unique to Frore’s solution.

Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge

The back of an AirJet Mini.

But on the flip side, PCs with AirJet might not just be quieter — they could be built thinner as well, and/or with more room for battery, if they had a simple stack of copper heatspreader and an AirJet instead of an array of heatpipes connected to fans. Adding more AirJets doesn’t increase the thickness of a device, he points out.

For now, the most important limitation is likely that an AirJet simply doesn’t provide as much cooling as competing solutions do, with a single AirJet Mini good for about 4.25W of cooling, with two required for the Zotac and three for a laptop. The Mini is the only AirJet in production so far, but the company’s also working on an AirJet Pro that’s roughly equivalent to the fan in a 13-inch MacBook Pro, and says the tech can easily scale up to larger future AirJets as well. In a Samsung Galaxy Book demo, he showed me a laptop managing higher sustained performance with several AirJets than it does with the stock fan.

Madhavapeddy says some of the lowest-hanging fruit is gaming smartphones, where a single AirJet Mini could make quite a difference. The company’s also prototyped 4K webcams, stick PCs, SSD enclosures, doorbell cameras, and LED light bulbs with the tech inside. While the Zotac PC is the first with an AirJet, he says Frore already has customers planning to announce other products later this year.

Montana’s TikTok ban: why has it happened and will it work?

Montana’s TikTok ban: why has it happened and will it work?

All you need to know about the US state becoming the first to prohibit the social video app for consumer users

TikTok has been banned in Montana. The first US state-level ban of the increasingly embattled social video app is already proving controversial, although it will not take effect until 2024.

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