Tesla will make as many EVs in 6 months as it did in all of 2015

Tesla isn’t waiting for the Model 3 (or the Gigafactory) to be ready before it kicks its poduction into overdrive. The electric car pioneer now expects to build and deliver over 50,000 vehicles in the second half of 2016 — that’s as many as it built in all of 2015. It hopes to make 2,400 EVs per week by the end of the year, which is no mean feat when it made just under 2,000 a week in the spring. You can pin a lot of this on an “extreme” boost to production in the second quarter, where nearly half of the cars were made in the last month.

There is a dark side to this, at least in the short term. While it made 18,345 EVs in the second quarter, that last-minute rush left it shipping 14,370 of them. If you’d plunked down cash for a Model S or Model X early this year, there was a real chance that it was still sitting in a boat or truck as summer began. In tandem with earlier orders, there were 5,150 cars still on their way — almost twice as many as at the start of 2016.

The figures underscore the challenges Tesla faces as it shoots for its goal of building 500,000 cars a year by 2018. Even with the help of its battery-making Gigafactory, it still faces a lot of risks: it has to not only scale its production to fulfill a massive amount of Model 3 demand, but find a way to get all those cars to customers in a timely fashion. It doesn’t want to see a repeat of this last quarter’s setbacks on a much larger scale, as that would amount to tens of thousands of annoyed customers twiddling their thumbs.

Source: Tesla

Google Offers Free 4-Month Play Music Trial Subscription to Celebrate July 4th

In celebration of July 4th, Google is offering new U.S. subscribers to its Play Music streaming service a four-month trial completely free of charge.

Play Music subscribers can choose from a library of over 35 million tracks, which usually costs $9.99 per month, so the offer amounts to a $40 saving and users can cancel the subscription at any time.

Customers who sign up to the trial will also gain access to the company’s ad-free YouTube Red service, which features original content, and enables offline and background playback of YouTube videos on mobile devices.

Prospective users of the service should note that it’s a U.S.-only promotion, and is only available to those who have never signed up for Play Music or YouTube Red in the past.

Google Play Music is a viable alternative to Apple Music, Tidal, and Spotify, as the company offers an iOS app as well as desktop access via a web browser. Third-party standalone apps like Radiant Player are also available for accessing the service on a Mac.

In addition to music streaming, Play membership includes access to a cloud storage locker where users can store up to 50,000 of their own songs, with or without a paid Play Music subscription, using the Google Music Manager client.

Google’s promotion comes the same week that Spotify accused Apple of using its App Store process to stymie rival streaming services after Apple rejected a Spotify app update.

Apple responded to the accusation through its lawyers, who said Spotify was seeking exemptions to rules that have applied to all app developers long before Apple Music was introduced.

Apple Music also celebrated its one-year anniversary earlier this week. The service has 15 million paying subscribers, far short of Spotify’s user base, which is roughly twice that amount.

Tag: Google Play Music
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How to back up Android settings

How do you back up Android settings?

Your phone is loaded with your preferred settings, from Wi-Fi passwords to app preferences, and it took you some work to get everything just the way you like it. Maybe you have your accessibility settings set up just so, or maybe you’re switching to a new device and you’d like to load all your settings just the way you had them on your old phone.

Maybe (and this is a sad thought) your phone gets lost or stolen and you’d like those settings to stay as they were if you have to start over. With a few easy steps you’ll be able to back up your settings to Google Drive and put your mind at ease.

• Sync your settings to the Google server
• Set up Google’s automatic restore

Sync your settings to the Google server

Launch the Settings app from your home screen or your app drawer.
Scroll down and tap Accounts.
Tap on Google. If you have more than one Google account associated with your phone, tap the primary account you set your phone up with.

Tap on each service you want to automatically sync.

Each synced service, like passwords, Chrome bookmarks, and app data will also then be available to your other devices when you sign in with your Google account, like a tablet.

Set up Google’s automatic restore

Automatic restore is helpful overall, but especially if you delete an app or service from your phone, then later reinstall it, or reset your phone.

Launch the Settings app from your home screen or your app drawer.
Scroll down and tap Backup & reset.

Tap Back up my data.

Tap On at the top of the screen.
Tap back at the top left of the screen.

Tap Automatic restore on.