Benz Goes Tesla, 40 Epic Auto People Recognized, and AI Lawsuits

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Good Monday morning! We are blessed by the voice of Michael Cirillo on the pod this week. Today we are following the continuing story of Tesla’s NACS chargers, celebrating the Automotive News 40 under 40 list, and checking in on an AI lawsuit by some famous authors.

Show Notes with links:

• Another domino has fallen in Tesla’s favor as Mercedes-Benz announced that they will integrate the NACS charging connector in their EVs, beginning in 2024.
  • The 2024 models will include a NACS adapter to the CCS connector. In 2025 and beyond, the vehicles will have a NACS port.
  • Mercedes is also planning a charging network of more than 2500 high-power chargers in North America with some sites opening in late 2023.
  • Volkswagen, BMW, Hyundai, Toyota, Honda, Stellantis and Jaguar Land Rover are the remaining major North American OEMs who haven’t adopted the new standard.
• The 12th 40 Under 40 Retail class has been announced by Automotive News, honoring executives, sales and service managers, a general counsel and more.
  • Editor Dan Shine said he was struck by how much More Than Cars reminded him of the 40 Under 40 awards. “[More Than Cars] reminded me of the special stories behind so many of the people we cover… People who were born into it and those who took circuitous routes to the automotive retail industry.”
  • Some recognizable faces for the ASOTU-verse: Dayna Kleve, Director of diversity, engagement & foundation at Walser Automotive Group, Felicia Rey, Owner loyalty manager at Lynnes Nissan City
  • The list also includes Tristan Topps, a former Ms. United States, Kristina Perez-Cubas who performed at the 2007 Super Bowl Halftime Show, Keri Lanzavecchia who took 3 attempts to pass her written learner’s permit and Ronnie Lowenfield who has a collection of over 2500 bottles of bourbon.
• Sarah Silverman and authors Christopher Golden and Richard Kadrey are suing OpenAI and Meta, alleging copyright infringement as their AI chatbots, trained on illegally obtained datasets, have been summarizing the authors' books without permission.
  • The authors argue that the datasets used by Meta have illicit origins, pointing out that one of the sources for its training datasets, ThePile, was assembled by a company called EleutherAI, which allegedly used content from the Bibliotik private tracker.
  • Lawyers in the case have heard from other writers, authors, and publishers who are concerned about ChatGPT's ability to generate text similar to that found in copyrighted materials.

Hosts: Paul J Daly and Kyle Mountsier

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