Ford plans 13 new electric vehicles in five years, it announced in a statement to the press on October 3rd.

Among models listed include:

• F-150 Hybrid
• Mustang Hybrid
• Transit Custom plugin-hybrid (Van)
• an automous vehicle hybrid
• Ford Police Responder Hybrid Sedan
• an all electric small SUV opportunities

Only one of the vehicles listed in the press release was an all electric, which is more of a one foot in, one foot out, approach to
“electrification” of the product line. It will be interesting to see how many of the unmentioned vehicles will be electric. Unmentioned
were the other seven of the thirteen planned vehicles, all of which could be intended as all-electric.

Two of the vehicles indicate a new emphasis on hybrid performance. The Mustang and Police Responder Sedan will likely use the electric for high
acceleration. Tesla owners may soon find themselves pursued by an electric cop car!

Source: Ford Press Release

Peripheral manufacturers are introducing new USB-C compatible powerbanks to their line-ups. With new portable devices such as 2017 MacBook Pro and Nintendo Next supporting USB-C charging, manufacturers have developed a new line up of portable charging devices capable of charging these high-draw devices.

As a trend, we have noticed that manufacturers are moving away from Quick Charge and Power IQ chips in favor of in-house chips that support the similar charge configurations. At first thought, this may seem to be a way to avoid certification fees for the official labels. But, at second glance, we see a large degree of marketing and branding around their in-house chips, indicating that there may be true competition in this space. All manufacturers we investigated boasted improvements in their chipsets which allowed them to claim superiority and speed advantages over OEM chargers and their competition.

The three we listed in the table above were selected as recent releases that take advantage of new chipsets, USB-C, and market themselves as compatabile with a wide range of high-draw devices.

Amazon announced the Echo Plus today, a new model of the Echo which adds a range of new features that further push the Echo into the smart home space. Available now for pre-order as an introductory bundle Introducing Echo Plus – Silver + Philips Hue Bulb included with Philips Hue bulb, the Echo Plus adds the ability to act as a smart hub for ZigBee devices, in addition to allowing easy integration for a wide range of devices already supported by the Echo.

Also announced, Alexa has improved smart home features, adding “routines” that will allow multiple smart home actions to be controlled in sequence by the Alexa. This is a much needed feature that advanced users had only been able to achieve through third-party extensions previously. The native “routines” will greatly simplify smart home scripting.

For example, simply saying “Alexa, good night” could be configured to trigger a routine that would dim lights, switch on a sound-machine or fan, list any alarms that are set for the next morning, and set your thermostat to a setting of your preference.

While Alexa already had a slight advantage over Google Home in terms of device support, the inclusion of the hub will greatly simplify set up for new users, and decrease cost associated with purchase of hub-required devices, due to no longer needing a separate hub to communicate.