(NEW YORK) — Charging an electric vehicle is simple and painless — if you have a charger installed at home.
Automakers are producing EVs at a feverish pace with government backing. Yet the number of public charging stations, critical for mass EV adoption, is lacking.
There are fewer than 46,000 EV public charging sites currently in the U.S., according to Department of Energy data. In comparison, the number of gasoline fueling stations in the country totals more than 150,000.
There are several EV-charging network providers currently in the market: EVgo, Blink, ChargePoint, Volta, Wallbox and Electrify America, which is owned by Volkswagen. These companies maintain, build, operate or lease their equipment to businesses, individuals and governments and offer subscription services to members.
The Biden administration has targeted half of all new car sales in the U.S. to be electric in less than 10 years. To reach this goal, at least 1 million fast-charging stations will be required, according to Cathy Zoi, the CEO of EVgo. There are currently 5,627 fast-charging sites in the nation.
At-home EV charging allows drivers to plug in their vehicles at night and wake up in the morning to a full battery charge. Many apartment and condo dwellers though are dependent on public charging stations to juice their emissions-free vehicles, a scenario that can mean long wait and charging times.
“Thirty percent of Americans do not have access to home chargers,” Zoi told ABC News. “We need the infrastructure to get the consumer confidence.”
EVgo has been partnering with major retailers like Safeway, Albertsons, Whole Foods and Kroger to install charging stations in their shopping parking lots. The company also teamed up with General Motors in 2020 to build 2,700 new fast stations over the next five years.
“We’ve identified 40 metro areas in America’s heartland that are part of this program,” Zoi explained. “The Biden infrastructure money can get us into places even farther afield in rural America.”
President Joe Biden’s $1 trillion infrastructure package, which was recently passed by Congress, includes $7.5 billion toward a nationwide network of 500,000 EV charging stations by 2030.
Michael Farkas, CEO of EV charging operator and provider Blink, said the $7.5 billion — half of Biden’s $15 billion proposal as presidential candidate — will not be enough to accomplish the electrification goals cited by automakers and government officials.
“It will push things along but it will take substantially more [money] than that,” he told ABC News. “Every state is lacking in infrastructure — even California. We have a massive need for chargers both in the U.S. and globally.”
Construction of an EV station can take four to eight weeks, according to Zoi, and the cost depends on the type of charger. A Level 2 charger, commonly found in residential and commercial/workplace settings, costs between $3,000 and $5,000 to install. DC fast chargers, which allow drivers to recharge 80% of a vehicle’s battery in 30 minutes, start at $125,000 but can top out at $300,000.
The bigger challenge to installing charging networks may not be the cost. Getting approvals from local officials and municipalities can often be a complicated process that lasts weeks or even months, said Zoi. Plus, connecting to the grid presents its own hiccups.
“We’re working with the electric utilities to make sure the local power infrastructure can support fast charging,” Zoi said.
Even in California, which has the highest share of EVs of any U.S. state, public charging stations are far from ubiquitous, said Karl Brauer, executive analyst of iSeeCars.com and a longtime California resident.
“EVs still take a whole lot of planning. You have to know how long your trip is and carefully plan your charging schedule and locations,” he told ABC News. “The infrastructure is terrible. The good news is that there are not many EVs on the roads.”
The ability to charge on the go and travel long distances will move the needle on EV adoption and sales, Brauer said. Yet installing and deploying chargers is a risky business right now.
“There doesn’t seem to be any money being made in EV charging stations,” he said. “What’s the incentive to buy an EV station when there isn’t a profit motive?”
Not enough public EV chargers could dissuade some Americans from swapping their gas-powered conveyances for green vehicles, according to Mark Wakefield, managing director of consulting firm AlixPartners.
“The charging infrastructure is tricky. There are a lot of stakeholders involved and an awful lot of players to coordinate, government included,” he told ABC News. “Range is the No. 1 reason [among Americans] not to buy an EV. The No. 2 reason? Not enough places to charge.”
He added, “Consumers want automakers to curate their charging experience. They want it to be seamless.”
Only 93 U.S. airport locations have charging infrastructure in place, with as few as two stations, according to AlixPartners. EV public infrastructure coverage continues to grow steadily though “most of the growth has been driven by Level 2 chargers,” the firm said in a recent report. DC fast chargers, however, are largely seen as the solution to revolutionizing EV ownership.
Federal tax incentives and subsides from states and and local ordinances can help offset the costs of these networks, said Wakefield. But the U.S. needs to invest $50 billion to accommodate EV growth, he noted.
John Voelcker, contributing editor to Car and Driver magazine who has covered EVs extensively, said part of Tesla’s sweeping success was its ability to create a supercharging network exclusive to its vehicles from the very beginning.
“I don’t think Tesla would have sold so many expensive EVs as it did without the ability to drive cross country. The company publicized the existence of this Tesla-branded network,” he told ABC News. “I am not seeing carmakers except for Tesla putting in big efforts to build these stations.”
He went on, “It says a lot about carmakers’ reliance on the free market to solve everything and their lack of understanding in EVs beyond the vehicle itself.”
EV stations in city streets and parking garages will also multiply to placate urban drivers, said Voelcker, noting that public charging stations in London have become part of the city landscape, with EV owners hooking up their vehicles to stations built curbside.
EVgo has big plans to expand its charging network from 1,600 DC fast chargers to 10,000 by 2025. Zoi’s team of site developers are actively scouring the country, looking for opportunities to service new EV owners.
“Chargers will become commonplace,” Zoi said reassuringly. “The arrival of EVs can create more car enthusiasts.”
(DETROIT) — The parents of Ethan Crumbley, the 15-year-old who authorities said killed four classmates at his Michigan high school, are still in jail after a judge assigned them each a $500,000 bond on manslaughter charges related to the shooting.
James and Jennifer Crumbley were taken into custody early Saturday after they failed to turn themselves in Friday afternoon for a scheduled arraignment, prompting an hourslong search for the couple. They remained in the Oakland County jail on Sunday and have not posted bail, online jail records show.
The couple was captured in Detroit after a business owner called 911 after spotting the suspects’ car in their parking lot and Jennifer Crumbley standing next to it, according to the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office. She fled the area on foot, but the couple was located in a commercial building in an art studio after an extensive search of the area.
They were “aided in getting into the building,” Detroit Police Chief James White told reporters at a 3 a.m. press conference Saturday, adding that it was “very likely” they were trying to flee to Canada. Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said his office would be presenting potential charges to the prosecutor’s office against the person who allegedly helped them gain access to the building.
The 65-year-old Detroit artist whose studio Jennifer and James Crumbley used to hide as they allegedly fled authorities on Friday is maintaining his innocence in their movements that day, his attorney, Clarence Dass, told ABC News.
The lawyer for Andzrej Sikora told ABC News on Sunday that the Crumbleys came to Sikora on Friday morning, the day the county leveled charges of involuntary manslaughter against the couple in the Oxford school shooting. The Crumbleys knew Sikora through a ski club, Dass said.
Dass declined to describe the interaction Friday morning and would not say whether Sikora gave the couple keys to the Detroit building that houses his studio. Sikora was not aware the couple was facing charges in the shooting, saying that he “knew what was going on” but wasn’t following the news closely, Dass said.
When Sikora woke up on Saturday and saw the news of the Crumbleys’ overnight arrest, he went to the Detroit Police Department and told them he was the owner of the studio, Dass said. Authorities then directed him to the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office, where he provided information about what he knew, before hiring Dass as counsel.
Sikora has not been arrested and no charges have been filed against his client, Dass said, but he did not rule out the possibility that authorities could charge the artist this week.
Each parent is facing four counts of involuntary manslaughter for what authorities are saying was a failure to properly secure the firearm that was used in the shooting. They have both pleaded not guilty to the charges.
On Tuesday, the morning of the shooting, a teacher at Oxford High School saw a note on Ethan Crumbley’s desk with a drawing of a semi-automatic handgun pointing at the words, “The thoughts won’t stop, help me,” prosecutors said. Another drawing depicted a bullet with the words “Blood everywhere” above it and a drawing of a bleeding person who appeared to have been shot twice, according to prosecutors.
Ethan Crumbley was then removed from class, and his parents, who school officials said were “difficult to reach,” were called to the school.
Ethan Crumbley told school guidance counselors that the drawings were for a video game he was designing, Oxford Community Schools Superintendent Tim Throne said in a statement Saturday. His parents did not indicate that they had recently purchased a firearm for him and led the counselors to believe there was no threat of violence, to himself or to others, Throne said.
It is not clear whether the gun was in Ethan Crumbley’s backpack at the time, Throne added. Due to his lack of disciplinary record, they sent him back to class instead of home, Throne said. His parents were then told that they were required to get their son into counseling within 48 hours.
Hours later, Ethan Crumbley was armed with a 9 mm Sig Sauer pistol his father bought on Nov. 26 as he walked down the hallway, aiming into classrooms, Oakland County Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Marc Keast said during Wednesday’s arraignment. There were 18 live rounds left in the firearm when he was apprehended in the hallway, Bouchard told reporters Wednesday.
Ethan Crumbley has been charged as an adult with four counts of first-degree murder and seven counts of assault with intent to murder — actions that prosecutors allege were premeditated.
Throne has requested a third-party probe to investigate how the school handled the events leading up to the shooting.
“I have personally asked for a third-party review of all the events of the past week because our community and our families deserve a full, transparent accounting of what occurred,” Throne said.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has also reached out to the Oxford Community Schools to offer help in investiating the shooting and events leading up to it.
“Our attorneys and special agents are uniquely qualified to perform an investigation of this magnitude,” Nessel tweeted.
ABC News’ Meredith Deliso, Ahmad Hemingway, Will McDuffie and Emily Shapiro contributed to this report.
(MINNEAPOLIS) — A man was arrested for allegedly harassing the judge overseeing the trial of Kim Potter, the former Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, officer who shot Daunte Wright during a traffic stop in April.
A group protested Judge Regina Chu last month for her decision to ban cameras inside the courtroom during the trial and rallied outside an apartment building in Minneapolis, where they believed the judge lived, according to court documents.
Cortez Rice, 32, was among the protesters and went inside the building while others remained outside, investigators said. Rice allegedly made his way to the 12th floor, live streaming his actions on YouTube, according to the complaint.
“I think this is her crib right here,” Rice was allegedly filmed saying outside a door, according to the complaint.
The defendant walked down to the lobby where other protesters asked him if the building was the right location, the complaint said.
“That’s her window on the 12th floor,” Rice said, according to the complaint.
Rice was also heard yelling to Chu, “We demand transparency. We’d hate you to get kicked out of your apartment,” the complaint said.
Judge Chu spoke with investigators and said she “believed she was the target of Rice and the other protestors,” and “it was her belief the intention was to intimidate her and to interfere with the judicial process.”
Rice was arrested last week and charged with felony harassment with aggravated violations — tampering with a juror or retaliating against a judicial officer, the complaint said. The defendant is currently being held at the Waukesha County Jail in Wisconsin and is awaiting extradition, court papers show.
Rice’s attorney didn’t immediately respond to messages from ABC News for comment.
Opening arguments in Potter’s criminal trial are slated to begin on Wednesday.
Potter has been charged with first- and second-degree manslaughter in the death of Wright, a 20-year-old Black man. In April, Potter stopped Wright’s car over for an expired registration tag.
She then determined he had an outstanding warrant for a gross misdemeanor weapons charge and tried to detain him, according to former Brooklyn Center Police Chief Tim Gannon, who resigned after the incident.
As officers tried to arrest him, Wright freed himself and tried to get back in his vehicle. That’s when, according to Potter’s attorneys, she accidentally grabbed her firearm instead of her stun gun and shot him.
The incident, which was captured on body worn cameras, set off more protests against police violence and racial profiling in Minnesota.
(NEW YORK) — Former U.S. Sen. Bob Dole, who will be remembered for the tenacity that defined his career and his work on behalf of fellow military veterans, died in his sleep Sunday morning. He was 98.
“Thank you for the outpouring of love over the last year, it continues to sustain us as we grieve the loss of the precious man we knew as husband and father,” the Dole family said in a statement Sunday. “Bob Dole was never only ours – we shared him with Americans from every walk of life and every political persuasion. He dedicated his life to serving you, and so it is heartwarming that so many honor him at his passing.
In his memoir, One Soldier’s Story, Dole wrote that his experiences in World War II defined his life.
“Adversity can be a harsh teacher,” he wrote. “But its lessons often define our lives. As much as we may wish that we could go back and relive them, do things differently, make better, wiser decisions, we can’t change history. War is like that. You can rewrite it, attempt to infuse it with your own personal opinions, twist or spin it to make it more palatable, but eventually the truth will come out.”
As an Army officer in World War II, he was wounded and there were doubts he’d survive. His right arm was permanently disabled, but he adapted.
“If unable to reach voters with my right hand, I could always reach out with my left,” he wrote in The Doles: Unlimited Partners, a book he co-authored with his wife, Elizabeth, and Richard Norton Smith.
He went on to graduate from college, and, while still in law school, won a seat in the Kansas state legislature. He won a seat in Congress in 1960 and went on to serve in the House until he was elected to the Senate in 1968.
Dole ran three times for president. He lost in primaries in 1980 to Ronald Reagan and in 1988 to George H.W. Bush. He won the Republican party nomination in 1996, but lost the general election to Bill Clinton.
“Those pivotal moments remain indelibly impressed in your heart and mind,” he wrote in One Soldier’s Story. “For me, the defining period in my life was not running for the highest office in the land. It started years earlier, in a foreign country, where hardly anyone knew my name.”
‘An All American Boy,’ wartime service and wounds
Robert Dole was born in the small town of Russell, Kansas, on July 22, 1923.
His father, Doran, ran a local creamery, and his mother, Bina, occasionally sold Singer sewing machines door-to-door to make ends meet. He grew up with three siblings and, according to a timeline on the Dole Institute website, the four children shared a room, a bike and a pair of roller skates.
His neighbors recalled him growing up as “an all-American boy,” according to his 1996 presidential campaign website. In school, he was an honor student, sports editor of his school newspaper and he lettered in football, basketball and track.
In 1941, he graduated from Russell High School and enrolled at the University of Kansas, becoming the first in his family to go to college — thanks to a $300 loan from a Russell banker.
A year into college, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Dole left the university in 1943 to enroll in the Army. He had hoped to become a doctor and trained in the medical corps at Camp Barkley in Texas, according to a Dole Institute timeline. He later attended Army Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning in Georgia and, by the end of 1944, graduated as a second lieutenant in the Army infantry.
In 1945, Dole was assigned to the 85th Regime, 10th Mountain Division. It was originally intended to be a group of “skiing soldiers” to fight the Germans in the snow and mountains. But Dole was wounded during “Operation Craftsmen,” a spring offensive in Italy that was meant to overtake German troops scattered in the hills and valleys of the Apennine Mountains and gain control of northern Italy.
Dole’s platoon was to take Hill 913. His fellow soldiers later described it as a “suicide mission.”
It was April, and a stone wall and a field of landmines trapped the Americans in an exposed area. A Nazi sniper, perched in a farmhouse, began firing at the battalion, according to Dole’s 1996 campaign website. The platoon leader was ordered to take out the sniper and gunners. But as Dole climbed a rocky field, his radio man was hit.
Dole crawled across the battlefield on his stomach and then pulled the wounded soldier into a foxhole. Seconds later, an exploding shell ripped into Dole’s right shoulder and back. His collarbone was shattered, part of his spine was smashed and his right arm was dangling from his side.
Lying facedown in the dirt, Dole recalled being unable to see or move his arms.
“I thought they were missing,” he said on his campaign website. He called for help, and two medics who tried to rescue him were gunned down. A sergeant eventually dragged him to safety.
Dole earned two Purple Hearts and was awarded the Bronze Star, but doctors weren’t sure he’d survive. He was hospitalized for three years. He suffered infections, grueling therapy, several operations and in one instance developed a blood clot that nearly killed him.
Good Samaritans helped him. A surgeon performed several of Dole’s surgeries at no charge. Back home in Russell, the community collected money in a cigar box at the local drug store to help pay for his medical bills. Dole kept that cigar box, decades later, in his Senate office desk drawer.
He recovered sensation in most of his body and was able to walk, but his right arm was permanently disabled. He would often carry a pen in his right hand to prevent his fingers from splaying. He usually avoided shaking hands with his right hand.
“Coming back from a war is a longer journey than any plane flight home,” Dole wrote in a 2006 forward to Courage After Fire: Coping Strategies for Troops Returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and Their Families. “I sustained my own injuries in World War II; some of my wounds were obvious, some were not. Some wounds were healed more quickly than others. And though I was lucky to be surrounded by great doctors, wonderful family, and a more supportive community than anyone could reasonably ask for, that mental readjustment was no small task.”
In 1948, while still recovering, he married Phyllis Holden, an occupational therapist from New Hampshire. They met during his last months of treatment at a hospital dance and married three months later.
His hopes of becoming a physician dashed, he set his sights on becoming a lawyer.
“Maybe I couldn’t use my hand, I told myself, but I could develop my mind,” he wrote in The Doles: Unlimited Partners.
He first enrolled at the University of Arizona in Tucson on the GI Bill, and a year later transferred to Washburn University in his home state of Kansas. He graduated in 1952.
Senate leadership, presidential aspirations, a political power couple
Still in law school, Dole won his first election, claiming a seat in the Kansas House of Representatives. He served from 1951 to 1953, until he was elected Russell County Attorney.
His daughter, Robin, was born in 1954.
He served as county attorney until 1961, when he was first elected as a Republican to the 87th Congress.
His campaign events featured singers playing the ukulele and women referred to as “Dolls for Dole,” who handed out cups of Dole pineapple juice, according to the Dole Institute. He served on the House Agriculture Committee after having pledged to support farmers’ interests, such as promoting rural electricity and soil conservation.
In 1964, he voted in favor of the Civil Rights Act, and in 1965 voted in favor of the Voting Rights Act. He considered them to be the most important votes of his career.
He was elected to the U.S. Senate, defeating former Kansas Gov. Bill Avery, and served for 28 years, garnering national attention.
In the early 1970s, he served as the chairman of the Republican National Committee, including during the 1972 election and Watergate break-in. He lived at the Watergate at the time, and a hometown reporter asked whether he had hidden the break-in tools in his one-bedroom apartment, according to The New York Times. He said he did not.
Dole and Phyllis divorced in 1972. In 1976, she told an interviewer that much of what her former husband had achieved since the war was an effort to prove that he could do it in spite of his handicap, according to a 1982 profile in The New York Times.
He married Elizabeth Hanford in December 1975 in a ceremony at the Washington National Cathedral.
In 1976, then-President Gerald Ford selected Dole as his running mate at the Republican National Convention. And at the end of the decade, Dole made a brief run for president in the Republican primary, but withdrew after a lackluster showing in New Hampshire.
Dole went on to serve as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee from 1981 to 1985. He served as the Republican leader from 1985 to 1996. In the midst of his leadership role, he ran for president again. This time, he scored an upset over then-Vice President George H.W. Bush in Iowa, but fell short again in New Hampshire in 1988, withdrawing from the race.
Elizabeth Dole became labor secretary under Bush. In 1991, she left her Cabinet position to become the president of the American Red Cross. From 1983 to 1987, Elizabeth Dole, under President Ronald Reagan, had become the first woman to serve as secretary for the Department of Transportation and the first woman to lead a branch of the armed services, the Coast Guard.
In 1996, Dole retired from the Senate to fully pursue the presidency. This time, he secured the Republican nomination and, with former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and U.S. Rep. Jack Kemp, challenged President Bill Clinton.
“When I delivered my concession speech that evening, I meant it when I said, ‘Tomorrow is the first day of my life when I have nothing to do,'” Dole wrote in Great Political Wit: Laughing (Almost) All the Way to the White House.
He was wrong. He went to his Washington campaign office to personally thank his staff and volunteers. While there, he got a call from the producers of The Late Show with David Letterman asking if he’d be a guest on their show while they broadcasted from Washington.
Two nights later, he recalled trading quips with Letterman when he asked Dole about Clinton’s weight.
“‘I don’t know,’ was my comeback. ‘I never tried to lift him. I just tried to beat him,'” Dole wrote, then describing the audience’s laughter. “Pundits, ever quick to grasp the obvious, claimed to have discovered a New Dole.”
He was no longer the “glowering, Social Security-devouring sourpuss they’d come to know,” he wrote. He made appearances on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Saturday Night Live and filmed a Visa commercial that premiered during the 1997 Super Bowl. In it, he returned to his hometown to be asked by the diner’s waitress for identification before he could cash a check.
“I just can’t win,” he said in the advertisement.
In his book, he wrote, “Over the years I’ve grown ever more convinced that my hero, Dwight Eisenhower, was absolutely right when he said, ‘A sense of humor is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people, of getting things done.'”
As Dole settled into a post-political life, Elizabeth Dole returned to politics.
She sought the Republican nomination for president before exiting the race in October 1999. Then in 2002, when longtime Sen. Jesse Helms announced his retirement, she decided to run for his seat and became the state’s first female senator. She served one term before being defeated in her reelection bid in 2008.
Post-political life, continued service to veterans
In 1997, months after losing the presidential election, Clinton presented Dole with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
“Through it, we honor not just his individual achievement but his clear embodiment in the common values and beliefs that join us as a people,” Clinton said ahead of placing the medal around his neck. “Values and beliefs that he has spent his life advancing. Sen. Dole, a grateful nation presents this award, with respect for the example you have set for Americans today and for Americans and generations yet to come.”
After accepting the medal, Dole said, “No one can claim to be equal to this honor, but I will cherish it as long as I live because this occasion allows me to honor others who are more entitled.”
Dole went on to lead the World War II Memorial Commission. As national chairman, he helped to raise more than $197 million to construct a national memorial to honor the 16 million Americans who served in the armed forces during the war. Construction began in September 2001 and was completed in April 2004.
At the dedication ceremony, Dole spoke about the importance of remembering the sacrifices made to uphold democracy.
“It is only fitting when this memorial was opened to the public about a month ago the very first visitors were school children,” Dole said. “For them, our war is ancient history and those who fought it are slightly ancient themselves. Yet, in the end, they are the ones for whom we built this shrine and to whom we now hand the baton in the unending relay of human possibility.”
In addition to his Visa commercial, Dole went on to pitch for Dunkin’ Donuts, Pepsi and Viagra. His good humor also won him a place on Comedy Central, where he supplied commentary on The Daily Show during the 2000 election. And ground was broken for the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas in Lawrence in 1997 and dedicated in 2003.
But his work with and for veterans is something he notably continued into his later years. Elizabeth Dole began to work in support of military caregivers.
He served as honorary adviser of the Honor Flight Network, which works to provide veterans the opportunity to visit the World War II Memorial in Washington for free. Dole would often spend Saturdays at the memorial, greeting veterans, swapping stories and posting for photos.
In 2007, President George W. Bush appointed Dole to help lead a bipartisan commission to investigate a neglect scandal at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Elizabeth Dole, in 2012, established the Elizabeth Dole Foundation, which was designed to empower, support and honor the nation’s 5.5 million military caregivers.
Dole embarked on a reunion tour of his home state, visiting all 105 counties, in his early 1990s. And in 2017, at the age of 94, he returned to Fort Benning, from which he’d graduated from Army Officer Candidate School in 1944.
On his Twitter account, he posted that he hadn’t been there since he graduated. “Jiminy!” he wrote, posting a photo of him sitting on a plane.
On Dec. 4, 2018, Dole made headlines celebrating a fellow veteran. He visited the U.S. Capitol Rotunda and was helped out of his wheelchair so that he could stand and salute the casket of George H.W. Bush.
Two days later, the Doles celebrated their 43rd wedding anniversary.
In April 2019, President Donald Trump signed into law a bill authorizing Dole’s honorary promotion to colonel.
“He turned adversity into action as he healed from the grave wounds sustained while risking his life for a fellow soldier, and decided to come to Congress and to serve the people of Kansas,” Rep. Nancy Pelosi said in January 2018 at a ceremony granting Dole the Congressional Gold Medal. “Sen. Bob Dole, for a lifetime spent defending, advancing and exemplifying our proudest American ideals, we thank you.”
Dole announced in February 2021 that he was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer.
“While I certainly have some hurdles ahead, I also know that I join millions of Americans who face significant health challenges of their own,” Dole said.
(LOS ANGELES) — When passengers board an Alaska Airlines flight, most don’t know it but that plane is lighter than other Boeing 737s or Airbus A320s, according to the airline.
That’s because during the COVID-19 pandemic, the airline used the slowdown in travel to develop, test and introduce new products to replace plastics on board.
Gone are plastic water bottles and plastic cups. Lighter alternatives are being used. Food containers have been redesigned. It not only allows the airline to cut the use of plastics, which can take over 400 years to decompose in the environment, but the airline says less weight onboard means it is burning less fuel, saving money and reducing carbon output.
Airlines and plane manufacturers have a fairly new and very honed focus on going green. United Airlines is promising to go carbon neutral by 2050. Alaska Airlines says it will go carbon neutral by 2040. Other airlines promise to pay to offset their carbon output.
Last week, United flew the first commercial airliner with passengers onboard using 100% sustainable fuels made of sugar water and corn. The fuels output far less carbon but cost much more than traditional fuels. United’s Boeing 737-Max 8 demonstration flight flew from Chicago to Washington D.C.
Onboard efforts like those at the airlines combined with attempts from plane maker Boeing are leading to a seismic shift in the airline industry. It wasn’t that long ago that the smell of jet fuel was just a normal part of the airport experience. Between utilizing sustainable fuels, electric and hydrogen airplanes that are in development and reducing overall fuel use, the industry vows it is trying to cut the exhaust that comes out of a plane’s engines and goes into the environment.
Boeing’s flying laboratory
ABC News recently got access to a flying laboratory that Boeing calls the ecoDemonstrator. Boeing borrows brand new airliners before they are delivered to a carrier. It strips each plane of its normal interior and sets up a flying testbed with racks of computers, cables and wires running all over, and sensors all around the plane. For at least a few more weeks, the current ecoDemonstrator is on board a new Boeing 737-Max that will soon have the regular interior installed and will be delivered to the airline that ordered it. But for now, engineers and scientists are able to test all kinds of technology that could soon make flying greener.
“The ecoDemonstrator program has been around for about a decade,” program manager Rae Lutters explained to ABC News while on board the aircraft. “We take innovative technologies out of the lab, put them on an airplane and fly them around to really help explore our learning and understanding of sustainable technologies.”
The special wingtips now seen on Boeing aircraft, called split scimitar winglets — those V-shaped ends of wings on newer planes — are a direct result of an idea that was tested on a previous ecoDemonstrator and showed to save fuel and improve performance. The winglets are now part of planes flying all over the world.
On the current ecoDemonstrator, Boeing’s teams are testing items like wall panels made out of excess carbon fiber from the Boeing 777, which they hope will be lighter and quieter. They are also testing new lower profile warning lights that will cause less drag on the plane and, in return, burn less fuel. And they are working on new touchscreens in the cockpit and air sensor equipment to test the air quality at airports globally when a plane lands.
The current ecoDemonstrator has been flying all over the world with sensors and computers analyzing all of the experiments on board to determine if they will help make the aircraft greener.
“We’re trying to get the airplane to operate as efficiently as possible,” said Lutters.
Getting rid of plastics onboard
Down the road from Boeing Field in its new high-tech headquarters overlooking Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Alaska Airlines is also trying new ideas to cut down on weight and fuel burn. By ditching plastic water bottles and cups in November, the airline said it will save 18 Boeing 737 worth of weight every year. It’s a feat no other large airline in the U.S. has accomplished. Alaska is the first airline to team up with premium brand Boxed Water to serve water from milk carton-like containers rather than plastic bottles.
“The biggest issue we were having was single-use plastic,” Alaska Airlines manager of guest products Todd Traynor-Corey said. “Even if you have the best recycling program possible, a percentage of that plastic is going to end up in the landfills and even into the ocean. Being based on the West Coast, ocean life and sustainability are really important to us.”
During the pandemic, the airline carried out a long process of recruiting alternatives to plastic bottles. They did taste tests and asked for feedback from staff and passengers. Eventually, they settled on Boxed Water.
“This is a very visible change. It’s not a free change. There’s a cost that comes with it. We are a premium water that’s out in the industry and Alaska saw that we are doing better. Our lifecycle analysis shows that. Super big kudos to Alaska for stepping up and making the change away from plastic and to cartons,” said Boxed Water founder and CEO Daryn Kuipers.
The iconic plastic cup that used to sit on passengers’ tray tables is now gone from Alaska Airlines. It has been quite a ride trying to find a simple paper cup that fits the needs of the airline as its planes fly around North America.
“We partnered to really find a more sustainable cup and we just sourced a simple paper cup that is meant cold and hot liquids,” Traynor-Corey said, showing the cup.
For months, different paper cups were tested with different liquids. Most passengers would have no idea so much work went into changing to a paper cup. The work is still underway. They have yet to find a biodegradable plastic cup that can hold hard alcohol.
Many alcohols eat through paper, which they found was an issue aboard their planes.
Using artificial intelligence to guide planes
Alaska Airlines’ efforts are not stopping with what flight attendants are serving on board. The airline is now employing an artificial intelligence (A.I.) program called Flyways to suggest routes that can get passengers to their destinations faster, smoother and while burning less fuel.
“Flyways is probably the most exciting thing that I’ve come across in airline technology since I can remember,” said Pasha Saleh, who is head of corporate development at Alaska Airlines.
Saleh is also a pilot for Alaska.
Alaska Airlines has uniquely teamed up with a Silicon Valley startup to develop Flyways using A.I. to better suggest the best way to route aircraft. Airline dispatchers are given suggestions on how and where to fly planes. They can accept or reject what the A.I. is suggesting. As the weeks and months go on using Flyways the platform is getting better at its suggestions due to machine learning in the A.I.
“We found this company called Airspace Intelligence and at the time that we met them it was only two guys. Two guys backed by Google,” explained Saleh. At that time, Airspace Intelligence was developing software to better route vehicles on the ground. There was a realization that technology could work in the air.
By analyzing numerous sources, the platform can predict what the weather, air traffic, and other aspects impacting the flight will be when a plane reaches any area of the country. It might, for instance, choose to delay a flight by two or three minutes knowing that will help avoid a thunderstorm over Oklahoma in three hours or help the flight avoid gridlock in the landing pattern in New York, which would waste time and fuel.
“Flyways will, in many cases, reduce the length of a flight therefore reducing the fuel burn, and reducing the emissions,” said Diana Birkett Rakow, senior vice president of sustainability at Alaska Airlines.
During a six-month pilot program at Alaska Airlines, Flyways shaved off, on average, five minutes from flights and saved 480-thousand gallons of jet fuel.
“If you went a teeny bit slower, you were on time, you had a gate, and because you went a teeny bit slower the airplane actually burned less fuel, that might be a win/win combination for both the guest and the operation and sustainability impact,” said Rakow.
The airline said Flyways is also quite good at helping flights avoid turbulence by analyzing lots of weather data and providing smoother flights.
“This is what machines are really good at, taking huge data sets and putting them together,” according to Saleh.
The team at Alaska Airlines says the benefits are enormous and they would like other airlines to get onboard with Flyways because it would help make the aviation system safer, faster and more environmentally friendly.
Mixed reaction from environmental groups
Yet environmental groups are mixed on the efforts.
The Environmental Defense Fund has teamed up with the Rocky Mountain Institute to create the Sustainable Fuels Aviation Buyers Alliance. Some of the world’s largest companies have agreed to join the EDF’s initiative to help make sustainable fuels more available and cost effective for airlines to buy.
“Airlines are definitely going in the right direction,” Kim Carnahan, secretariat lead of the Sustainable Fuels Aviation Buyers Alliance told ABC News.
Carnahan, who is former U.S. chief negotiator for climate change, said airlines are in a tough position with the cost of sustainable products being so much higher than traditional fuels.
“They compete fiercely with one another and have very slim margins. Sustainable aviation fuel which is really the only option they have to fully decarbonize is anywhere between two and four times the cost of fossil jet fuel,” according to Carnahan.
But at Greenpeace, the organization believes much of what the industry is doing is so-called “greenwashing.” It doesn’t believe such solutions are viable long term and that the changes being made are minor cosmetic measures distracting from a bigger problem of rising emissions in the air travel sector. The group says the aviation industry is a major polluter that needs to be completely revamped by reducing the number of flights to truly become carbon-neutral.
“That’s why Greenpeace is calling for a phase-out of short-haul flights in Europe, when a train or ferry alternative under six hours exists,” said Herwig Schuster, Greenpeace in Europe’s transport campaigner.
The group is calling on governments globally to invest in better rail service.
“Airlines have introduced a number of alleged ‘green’ measures based on excessive optimism on so-called ‘sustainable aviation fuels,’ carbon offsetting and future aircraft designs,” said Schuster. “But these technologies are not the answer to tackling the rising emissions in this sector and will largely not be marketable solutions.”
But the airlines and plane makers say they are investing huge amounts of money to make a true change and that they have to work within the confines of current technology while they plan for the decades ahead.
(VISALIA, Calif.) — All four people on board a small plane that crashed in California Saturday are dead, according to the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office.
The identities of the victims have not been confirmed. It is unknown what led to the crash.
Around 6:35 p.m. Saturday, deputies were called to the area of Road 68 and Avenue 288 near the Visalia Airport in Visalia, California, for a possible downed plane, authorities said.
When deputies arrived, they found a single-engine Beechcraft Bonanza had crashed, killing all on board.
The National Transportation Safety Board said Sunday it is investigating the crash.
ABC News California affiliate KFSN reported the plane crashed just a few seconds after taking off.
(FLORIDA) — A Florida Institute of Technology student who was reportedly wielding a knife at students on campus was fatally shot by officers Friday night, authorities said.
Police officers and school security responded shortly before 11 p.m. to reports of a man on the Melbourne campus “armed with a knife and assaulting students,” the Melbourne Police Department said.
The incident began at Roberts Hall, a freshman residence hall, according to school officials.
No one else was seriously injured, with no further threat to campus. As the incident is under active investigation by law enforcement, no additional information is available at this time. (2 of 2)
Officers confronted the man, identified by police as 18-year-old Alhaji Sow, in a campus building “armed with an edged weapon,” the department said.
Sow “lunged” at a police officer with his weapon during the confrontation, and the officer and a school security officer both fired their weapons, striking him, according to Melbourne police.
Officers attempted lifesaving measures but the student died at the scene, police said.
The Melbourne police officer who fired his weapon was injured during the incident, police said. No other injuries were reported.
Shortly after midnight, the school issued a shelter-in-place alert and advised people to avoid the area due to police activity on campus. The order was lifted around 3 a.m., though students were advised to avoid Roberts Hall and Campbell Hall, another residence hall, due to the investigation.
The shooting was an “isolated incident” and there is no further threat to the campus, police and school officials said.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is investigating the shooting. The officer is a five-year veteran of the force, police said.
Sow, of Riverdale, Georgia, was a sophomore at the university studying aeronautical science, school officials said.
In a statement Saturday morning, Florida Tech said it “continues to collaborate with law enforcement’s ongoing investigation.”
The school said it is arranging support services Saturday for students and others in the community.
(LOUISIANA) — Bryant Purvis was just 17 when he became a part of the “Jena Six.”
He and five other Black teens were accused and later convicted of attacking a white student at a high school in Jena, Louisiana, a town with a large majority of white residents, after a series of racially charged incidents there.
The case against the teens became for many a symbol of racial discrimination in the justice system — attempted murder charges for what supporters called a schoolyard fight. The charges were later dramatically reduced.
Purvis, now 32, maintains he was not involved in the fight. He has since dedicated his time talking to students about racial injustice as a motivational speaker. He also authored the book, “My Story as a Jena 6,” in 2015, but is now focused on his future beyond the “Jena Six” label.
“At the time, it was just so much emotion,” Purvis, who now lives in Dallas and has a 9-year-old son, told ABC News.
“It was more extreme because I knew I didn’t commit the crime. So, once I found out the charges, knowing where I was in Jena, I just didn’t see it coming out good.”
15 years later
Dec. 4 marks the 15th anniversary of the arrest of the Jena Six: Purvis, Carwin Jones, Jesse Ray Beard, Robert Bailey Jr., Theo Shaw and Mychal Bell.
At the beginning of the 2006 school year, several Black students were sitting under a tree at Jena High School where white students usually congregated, according to the ACLU, which advocated on behalf of the Jena Six. A day later, three nooses were left hanging from a branch on the tree, and three white students were temporarily suspended, the ACLU reported, despite the principal’s recommendation to expel them.
Later that year, a white adult at a gas station pulled a shotgun on three Black teens, including Bailey, but the teens were the ones charged in the case — for taking the gun and bringing it to police, according to a 2009 Good Morning America report.
On Dec. 4, 2006, six Black teenagers, now known as the Jena Six were accused of beating up a fellow white student Justin Barker, who was hospitalized and suffered a swollen eye and a concussion, according to Barker’s family.
He said in interviews years later with The Associated Press that he didn’t know why he was attacked.
The Black teens were arrested and charged with second-degree battery, which was later upgraded to second-degree attempted murder and conspiracy to commit attempted murder, despite Barker returning to a school function hours later, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which represented one of the teens and helped arrange the defense for another.
Supporters argued the charges were far too serious for the severity of Barker’s injury, sparking a massive protest and litigation efforts to have the charges reduced, SPLC said.
Bell, then 16, was charged as an adult and pleaded guilty to second-degree battery and conspiracy to commit second-degree battery. However, his conviction was later overturned after a judge ruled he should have been tried as a juvenile. Bell still received an 18-month detention sentence.
The other five pleaded no contest in an agreement that reduced their charges to a misdemeanor simple battery and did not admit guilt or involvement. Each one of them was fined $500 and served a week of unsupervised probation.
“We recognize that the events of the past two and a half years have also caused Justin and his parents tremendous pain and suffering, much of which has gone unrecognized,” the teens said in a prepared statement read in court, according to SPLC. “We hope our actions today help to resolve this matter for Justin, Mr. and Mrs. Barker, and all others affected, including the Town of Jena.”
DA said race not a factor
The district attorney at the time, Reed Walters, claimed race wasn’t a factor in the charges.
“It is not and never has been about race,” Walters said, according to an AP report at the time. “It is about finding justice for an innocent victim and holding people accountable for their actions.”
Local activists disagreed.
“From racial profiling to unequal punishment in school to potential misconduct by authorities, the Jena Six case causes great concern,” Marjorie Esman, executive director of the ACLU of Louisiana, said in a 2007 statement.
“It is time to fully examine the facts surrounding this case to determine if any racially motivated misdeeds have taken place. Considering the concerns that the Jena Six bring up, we must redouble our commitment to equal protection — not just in Jena, but across Louisiana and the rest of the country.”
Thousands came out to protest during their trials in 2007. Demonstrators were furious with disparities in the criminal justice system, which they said often resulted in harsher, more unjust charges and sentences for Black people compared with white people.
Trying to move on
Following the incident and their convictions, the other men too wanted to move on — some going to college, others entering the labor force. Shaw also maintained his innocence, claiming he was not involved in the fight.
Purvis said racial division and segregation had long been an issue in Jena, for as long as he could remember, but the experiences of the Jena Six shined a national spotlight on the tensions that were building up.
“I would say we kind of put pressure on the officials and everybody that run the town to make a change,” Purvis added. “We brought a lot of attention to the community … A lot of other things that happened leading up to that fight that really weren’t publicized.”
Years later, Purvis has a message for Black men about ongoing injustice in America: “Carry yourself in the right manner, and don’t let one situation define who you are.”
“Things are gonna happen to you,” he added, “but it’s not about what happened — it’s how you respond.”
(NEW YORK) — The latest COVID-19 variant of concern, omicron, first reported to the World Health Organization from South Africa last week — and now detected throughout the U.S. — continues to worry many Americans with still much unknown about the virus.
Health authorities continue to urge calm as scientists across the globe search for answers.
“Right now, we’re really in a state of knowledge acquisition,” said Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Massachusetts. “We really need to know more. We need to know how pathogenic it is. We need to know how transmissible it is and we need to know whether or not it evades antibody responses induced by the vaccines.”
Experts caution that answers to those questions may not come for months.
“What’s going to happen is our band of confidence is going to narrow over time as opposed to saying in this amount of time we will have an answer. And that’s what we have to recognize,” said John Brownstein, epidemiologist and chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital. “We just need to have some patience,” Brownstein added.
When will we know about omicron transmission?
Researchers, however, expect to have estimates for transmissibility “probably ahead of some of the other questions that we have,” said Brownstein.
In a press conference Wednesday, WHO COVID technical lead, Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, said there is some suggestion omicron may be more transmissible but it’s too early to say definitively. “We expect to have more information on transmission within days, not necessarily weeks,” Van Kerkhove said.
“Based on the data collected through surveillance, we have a rough estimation of the proportion of infections that relate to omicron where you can start to make basic estimates of transmissibility very quickly,” said Brownstein.
During the White House COVID-19 briefing on Friday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House’s chief medical adviser, said as more omicron cases are detected, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would be able to model how the new variant will spread, similar to how quickly CDC predicted the delta variant would spread from the initial 3% to 4% of cases to nearly all cases.
“We really don’t know what’s going to happen, how well it is going to compete or not compete with delta, but we will know as more cases occur and what the doubling time of the relative percentage of omicron versus delta will be,” Fauci said.
When will we know how effective current COVID-19 vaccines are on omicron?
The Food and Drug Administration said in a statement on Tuesday it is working “as quickly as possible” to evaluate the potential impact of omicron on current treatments, vaccines and tests and said it expects to have answers in the next few weeks.
If a modification to current vaccines is necessary, vaccine manufacturers say they are prepared to make those modifications quickly.
In a statement on Sunday, Pfizer and BioNTech said they have been monitoring the effectiveness of their vaccine against emerging variants and if a “vaccine-escape variant emerges” they expect to be able to make a “tailor-made vaccine against that variant in approximately 100 days, subject to regulatory approval.”
Matt Barrows, Moderna’s senior director of manufacturing told ABC News that the company has the capacity to produce an omicron-specific booster vaccine within a month if it becomes necessary. He said experiments testing the efficacy of their current vaccine against omicron are ongoing and will take at least two to three weeks.
“Although we haven’t proven it yet, there’s every reason to believe that if you get vaccinated and boosted that you would have at least some degree of cross protection, very likely against severe disease, even against the Omicron variant,” said Fauci.
When will we know if omicron causes more serious illness?
Learning if this version of the virus is deadlier could take many months, experts say.
“We don’t even know if omicron will have the ability to overtake delta and we’re dealing with a delta surge right now. There’s a lot of ifs and a lot of open questions,” said Brownstein.
Currently, the delta variant is driving nearly all cases across the U.S., with 99.9% of cases in the country from the delta variant.
Health officials are encouraged by the mild symptoms the omicron cases are experiencing so far. According to health officials, the man who tested positive for omicron in Minnesota is fully vaccinated and had been boosted in early November. The woman identified in Colorado is also reported to be experiencing only mild symptoms and was fully vaccinated, however not boosted.
Early cases identified in South Africa have also reported no severe disease according to local officials. “Right now it does not look like there’s a big signal of a high degree of severity, but it’s too early to tell,” said Fauci, in an interview with CNN.
As of today, there are more than 400 confirmed cases of Omicron in over 30 countries across the globe, including in the US. As scientists work on getting more answers, experts are urging to not wait and get vaccinated or boosted if eligible.
“As it stands now with the information we have, you do the best with the information you have in front of you and that information says that you get an incredible advantage by getting that booster,” said Brownstein.
Barouch said that the only way to stop new variants is to vaccinate people across the globe.
On Friday, the White House announced that it’s shipping out 11 million more vaccines worldwide in an effort to increase vaccination around the world. The U.S. has shipped 291 million doses so far and President Joe Biden announced plans Thursday to provide 200 million more doses worldwide in the next 3 months.
“Currently, sub-Saharan Africa has less than a seven percent vaccination rate. And so it’s not a surprise that new variants are emerging in that part of the world,” Barouch said. “The only way to stop these variants is to have a widespread vaccination campaign that really reaches all four corners of the planet.”
Esra Demirel, M.D., is an OB-GYN resident physician at Northwell Health-North Shore University Hospital & LIJ Medical Center and is a contributor to the ABC News Medical Unit.
(PENNSYLVANIA) — Omicron has been making headlines as cases of the new COVID-19 variant continue to be detected in the United States. While the strain is concerning, health officials are heeding that delta continues to fuel widespread transmission and is a problem now.
That’s the current case in Pennsylvania, where the number of daily confirmed COVID-19 infections crossed 10,000 Friday for the first time since the state’s winter wave.
In the past week, the number of COVID-19 cases, case rates, hospitalizations and patients on ventilators have all gone up, according to state data. Amid its latest surge, Pennsylvania has one of the highest COVID-19 hospitalization rates in the U.S.
“We continue to see a tremendous amount of COVID-19 patients,” Dr. Eugene Curley, the medical director of infectious disease for WellSpan Health, which has six acute care hospitals in south-central Pennsylvania, told ABC News.
One month ago, there were about 250 COVID-19 patients total being treated across the six hospitals; on Friday, that number was 310, Curley said. The peak, during last year’s winter surge, was around 430, he said.
The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, which operates over 35 hospitals throughout Pennsylvania, has seen its second-highest number of COVID-19 patients since the pandemic began, hospital officials said. As of Friday morning, there were 779 patients with active COVID-19 infections admitted across all UPMC facilities; the peak, in December 2020, was 1,250, UPMC Chief Medical Officer Dr. Donald Yealy told ABC News.
“Across our system, we’re at about two-thirds to three-quarters of what that peak is,” he said. “So it is very, very brisk.”
The state’s current surge has been building since late summer, Yealy said. It reached a peak in late September before “there was the beginning of a pullback in activity,” Yealy said.
“That pullback no longer exists and we are back on essentially an upward trajectory,” he continued.
It’s hard to predict if Thanksgiving gatherings will have an impact on hospitalizations; holidays are a “wild card,” Curley said. But many people in the state have no protection against COVID-19, Yealy noted, which will help fuel transmission.
Statewide, around 41% of residents have still not gotten fully vaccinated, according to federal data. Within some counties, that percentage is in the 60s, state data shows.
Unvaccinated people continue to represent the vast majority of hospitalized COVID-19 patients, including those who are in intensive care units, state and hospital data shows.
For the 30 days ending Nov. 2, nearly 75% of people hospitalized due to COVID-19 were unvaccinated, according to state data.
Across WellSpan’s six acute-care hospitals, over 90% of COVID-19 patients in the ICU and on ventilators since early September have been unvaccinated, the health system said this week.
“Those numbers just reinforce what we already know — is these vaccinations are safe and effective,” Curley said.
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf has urged people to get vaccinated if they haven’t already.
“In Pennsylvania and around the country, the vaccine is still our strategy, so get your shot,” the governor said last week on KDKA-AM radio, according to The Associated Press.
A renewed push for vaccination and boosters has come amid the spread of omicron, which has concerned scientists due to its large number of mutations. The variant has been detected in at least 11 states — including Pennsylvania, where the state’s first case was identified Friday in a man from northwest Philadelphia, health officials said.
For Curley, if concerns around the omicron variant encourage people to get vaccinated, that’s a good thing. But he warned that delta “is here now.”
“People need to get vaccinated for that reason,” he said. “If you’re out there and you’re eligible to be vaccinated, get vaccinated now because of delta.”
Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, echoed that sentiment on Friday in an interview on CNN.
“We now have about 86,000 cases of COVID right now in the United States being diagnosed daily and 99.9% of them, the vast majority of them, continue to be delta,” she said. “And we know what we need to do against delta. And that is get vaccinated. Get boosted if you’re eligible and continue all of those prevention measures, including masking.”
It is too soon to tell if omicron will overtake delta as the predominant variant in the U.S., she said. Though either way, the actions will likely remain the same, experts say.
“The truth of the matter is, both delta, which is the predominant variant now, and omicron are easily transmitted. And so the concerns are really not changed all that much, and the actions that we all need to take remain exactly the same,” Yealy said. “Get vaccinated, wear a mask indoors and in crowds, keep a little distance and if you get sick, don’t go out with others and get tested as quickly as possible.”
