The Department of Health and Human Services—under the control of anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—has canceled millions of dollars in federal funding awarded to Moderna to produce an mRNA vaccine against influenza viruses with pandemic potential, including the H5N1 bird flu currently sweeping US poultry and dairy cows.

Last July, the Biden administration's HHS awarded Moderna $176 million to "accelerate the development of mRNA-based pandemic influenza vaccines." In the administration's final days in January, HHS awarded the vaccine maker an additional $590 million to support "late-stage development and licensure of pre-pandemic mRNA-based vaccines." The funding would also go to the development of five additional subtypes of pandemic influenza.

On Wednesday, as news broke that the Trump administration was reneging on the contract, Moderna reported positive results from an early trial of a vaccine targeting H5 influenza viruses. In a preliminary trial of 300 healthy adults, the vaccine candidate appeared safe and boosted antibody levels against the virus by 44.5-fold.

An HHS spokesperson said that decision to cancel the funding—which would support thorough safety and efficacy testing of the vaccines—was because the vaccines needed more testing.

"This is not simply about efficacy—it’s about safety, integrity, and trust." HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon told The Washington Post. "The reality is that mRNA technology remains under-tested."

Nixon went on to claim that the Trump administration wouldn't repeat the "mistakes of the last administration, which concealed legitimate safety concerns." The accusation refers to mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines, which were developed and initially released under the first Trump administration. They have since been proven safe and effective against the deadly virus.

Kennedy, a staunch anti-vaccine advocate, has unflaggingly made false claims about the safety and efficacy of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. In 2021, Kennedy petitioned the Food and Drug Administration to revoke authorization for COVID-19 vaccines and refrain from issuing future approvals. In recent days, Kennedy has also restricted access to COVID-19 vaccines and unilaterally revoked recommendations for healthy children and pregnant people to get the vaccines.

The federal funding for pandemic influenza vaccines was awarded as health officials around the country, including federal officials, were closely monitoring the swift and unprecedented spread of H5N1 bird flu through US dairy cows, which also spread to 70 people and killed one. Under the Trump administration, regular updates on the outbreak have ceased, and experts fear that cases are going undocumented.

In a statement Wednesday, Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel struck an optimistic note, saying the company would pursue other funding sources to continue moving forward.

"While the termination of funding from HHS adds uncertainty, we are pleased by the robust immune response and safety profile observed in this interim analysis of the Phase 1/2 study of our H5 avian flu vaccine and we will explore alternative paths forward for the program," he said. "These clinical data in pandemic influenza underscore the critical role mRNA technology has played as a countermeasure to emerging health threats."

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Earlier this month authorities in Texas performed a nationwide search of more than 83,000 automatic license plate reader (ALPR) cameras while looking for a woman who they said had a self-administered abortion, including cameras in states where abortion is legal such as Washington and Illinois, according to multiple datasets obtained by 404 Media.

The news shows in stark terms how police in one state are able to take the ALPR technology, made by a company called Flock and usually marketed to individual communities to stop carjackings or find missing people, and turn it into a tool for finding people who have had abortions. In this case, the sheriff told 404 Media the family was worried for the woman’s safety and so authorities used Flock in an attempt to locate her. But health surveillance experts said they still had issues with the nationwide search. 

“You have this extraterritorial reach into other states, and Flock has decided to create a technology that breaks through the barriers, where police in one state can investigate what is a human right in another state because it is a crime in another,” Kate Bertash of the Digital Defense Fund, who researches both ALPR systems and abortion surveillance, told 404 Media. 

One of the biggest problems limiting the adoption of electric motorcycles is just the fact that they cost so much for what you get. An electric motorcycle with range even somewhat similar to your gasoline bike can run you $15,000 or more in America. Even harder is getting poorer nations into EVs, and one company is producing some of the cheapest, most practical motorcycles I’ve seen yet. This is the Zeno Emara, a new electric motorcycle promising up to 62 miles of real-world range. Depending on where you live, you can score one of these for the equivalent of just $1,000.

Electric motorcycles have simultaneously been one of the best and most disappointing EV developments in recent years. Today’s ‘lectro bikes make mountains of torque and produce infinite wheelies with just the twist of the throttle. They’re also whisper quiet, which might not even be something you thought you wanted in a motorcycle until you experience it for yourself. Electric motorcycles even handle beautifully.

But then you start digging into the details, and these bikes start looking a whole lot less attractive. Electric motorcycles in the mid-teens for pricing still go fewer than 100 miles on a charge. If you spend $20,000 or over, you can go over 100 miles, but only if you take slow roads. Some of these very expensive machines can’t even benefit from fast-charging technology, so you’re stuck topping up for hours.

Truth be told, there’s nothing wrong with the range. The problem is how much you’re paying to go so few miles. Yet, if you look outside of the United States or Europe, there’s a whole world of possibilities out there. The Zeno Emara doesn’t go very fast or very far, but it doesn’t cost much money, either, so it all makes sense! Then there’s the weird part: This bike’s origin story involves Tesla.

From Model Ys To Motorcycles

Zeno was founded in 2022 by Tesla alum Michael Spencer. He built a team including former Apple TV engineer Rob Newberry, former Lucid powertrain engineer Swaroop Bhushan, and other engineers from the likes of Gogoro and Tesla. Spencer’s vision for Zeno is to do for emerging markets what Tesla did for EVs in America.

As TechCrunch notes, bodaboda, or motorcycle taxis, are a huge deal in East Africa. Riding on a motorcycle taxi helps commuters cut through dense urban traffic and get to their destinations for less than riding in a car-based taxi. Of course, this is also cheaper than owning a car, too. Sadly, the motorcycle taxi riders get the short end of the stick as they end up spending around 50 percent of their income on fuel alone.

The team at Zeno sought to solve this issue and more. If motorcycle taxi owners could spend less on fuel, they could keep more of their pay.

Now, Zeno could have just done what a lot of startups in America and Europe do and just slapped a battery and an electric motor into a motorcycle frame. However, there’s a huge limitation there. Once you drain that battery, such as when you’re working as a delivery driver or taxi driver, you have to park and wait for the battery to recharge, which means losing income.

The solution for this has largely come from the likes of Taiwan’s Gogoro (above), which has pioneered a battery swapping system. If you’re riding a Gogoro-branded scooter and run out of juice, you just ride to a station, pull out your depleted battery, and drop in a charged battery. Boom, you get back on the road in an even shorter time than it would take to fill a gas tank.

Zeno had operated silently for the first couple of years of its existence. As TechCrunch notes, Zeno tested over a few dozen electric Chinese bikes in Kenya and found out that they just weren’t tough enough for the environment. Locals were also disappointed that they had these battery-powered motorcycles, but the batteries couldn’t be taken out and used as a power station. So, Zeno decided to take a different path.

Startups in Africa have embraced battery-swapping technology. Back in 2022, I wrote about the Roam Air, an electric motorcycle with 56 miles of range and easily swappable batteries for just $1,500. Well, Roam isn’t alone. Joining in on this African EV moto revolution are Ampersand Solar, Arc Ride, Spiro, Zembo, and now, Zeno.

The Emara

Zeno is targeting markets in Africa and India with an ambitious goal. Not only are Zeno’s motorcycles supposed to get up to 60 miles of range, but Zeno says that they’ll cost less than a comparable gasoline motorcycle. There’s an asterisk to that, which we’ll get to in a bit.

Zeno says that the Emara is supposed to be like the equivalent of a 150cc gasoline motorcycle, but it’s designed to do almost everything better. It’s designed to carry 551 pounds, climb a 30-degree slope, have a top speed of 56 mph, and have a motor that punches out 10.7 HP. Now, some of those are impressive.

A common 150cc motorbike might have a weight limit of 350 pounds or above 400 pounds, depending on the model, so the Emara sounds pretty rugged in that regard. That said, the Emara comes a few ponies and some mph shy of the capabilities of a good 150cc gasoline motorcycle, but it’s not far off.

The real magic is what’s underneath. The Zeno Emara is powered by at least one 2 kWh lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) battery, and there’s a slot on the bike to carry a second. This is supposed to be good for up to 60 miles of real-world range. These batteries are removable, which allows them to be brought inside and charged at home. Or, you can take the batteries out and use them for emergency power or as a campsite power station.

Zeno also took a look at all of the other electric motorcycle projects going on in Africa and took note that a lot of them look like high school shop class projects. Because of this, Zeno decided to do extra work to create a more finished product. Basically, the idea is that part of the reason you’d buy an Emara is because you think it looks cool, not just because it can save you money.

Even the marketing tries to be hip and cool. I mean, check this out:

The bike even has four riding modes, a color LCD display, LED lighting, and disc brakes on both ends. Sure, there are no fancy radars or anything like that here, but there’s some pretty modern tech at play here. This sounds like something I would be glad to zip around town on.

The last two mechanisms in the Zeno plan are the battery swapping stations and the purchasing scheme. A buyer has three options for their Emara. The ideal customer is someone who buys the motorcycle and then pays a subscription for the battery. In doing this, the initial purchase price is said to be lower than an equivalent gasoline motorcycle. According to Zeno, the subscription is $17 per month for up to 48 kWh of energy or $29 per month for up to 120 kWh of energy.

Subscription customers will gain access to Zeno’s network of battery swap stations, where you just ride up to the station, pull out your depleted battery, and then drop in a charged battery. Alternatively, Zeno offers an option that works like a pre-paid phone where you buy a bike without batteries, and then pay by the kWh consumed to use loaned batteries. That option costs 61 cents per kWh consumed, and these customers can also use the swapping stations.

Finally, if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t want to bother with subscriptions or anything like that, you can just buy the motorcycle and its two batteries outright. That version costs $1,500, depending on the market and currency.

As of now, Zeno is targeting Africa and India with pricing roughly equivalent to $1,000 for the model with the battery subscription. Zeno says it’s selling the first 5,000 battery subscription-based units in India for about $750 before the price goes up to $1,000.

This price is definitely competitive. As of right now, a brand-new, roughly equivalent 150cc motorcycle costs around $1,500 in East Africa. So, technically, if a buyer gets the subscription version of the Emara, they can save a little wad of cash on the initial purchase compared to buying a new gas bike. But what’s also cool is that the full price of an Emara is similar to a 150cc motorcycle.

Zeno says it already has a waitlist that’s thousands of people long, and the list has been getting longer since the order books opened up last week. The company hopes to deliver the Emara later this year, and with luck, it’ll make a dent in the highly competitive low-cost motorcycle markets in Africa and India.

Honestly, the part of this story that gets me is how great these bikes would be for Americans. The Zeno Emara’s spec sheet sounds similar to what you’d get with a Honda Grom or a CFMoto Papio SS, but in all-electric flavor. Even at $3,000, I bet the Emara could find a small market here. There are some American riders out there who are okay with a lower range so long as it comes with a lower price, and this hits that spot. Sadly, like all of the other super cheap electric bikes I’ve written about, this one will remain forbidden fruit.

The post A Startup Is Launching A Surprisingly Good Electric Motorcycle That Costs Just $1,000 appeared first on The Autopian.

His name is Trevor Webb, and he’s either a madman or a genius, depending upon whether you see his ridiculous creation as the most abominable Jeep Wrangler of all time or the most fuel-efficient one. Here’s how — and more importantly, why — this Minnesota-based precious metal dealer built a Jeep Wrangler TJ on a Toyota Prius unibody.

Before I get into my interview with Webb, let’s just look at this thing for a moment, because it’s a bit hard to fathom what the heck is going on. Listed on Facebook Marketplace as a “1997 Jeep wrangler S Sport Utility” with 254,000 miles on the clock, the listing’s description reads:

Started life as a 05 Prius and we cut the body off the chassis, started adding a 97 wrangler tub into it, it’s a full out Prius with the outer sheet metal of a jeep. I’d recommend shorter diameter tires, there’s a lot of lights on the dash because of so many sensors disconnected. Will trade for a 540 PTO cat 1 3 point sickle mower, hay wagon, other farm equipment.

Upon reading this, my mind melted into a pink foamy goo — not unlike a McDonald’s chicken nugget.

What do you mean you “started adding a 97 Wrangler tub into [an 05 Prius]”? That does not compute. The Prius has a unibody, and the Jeep is body-on-frame. To learn more, I reached out to Webb.

“Started with a free car and a cheap Jeep tub,” the off-road Jeep tinkerer told me. “Never got [a] title for the car after two years, so we began to process ways to use it, ran too good to part it out.”

So there was a Jeep tub and a nice-running Prius with no title. Honestly, I get it now; Webb had pretty much no choice but to build this contraption!

“I had moved some vehicles around at my place and they were side x side, then the idea came to me, I have a titled Jeep tub, a good running car with no title, here I sit watching everyone unibody swapping all kinds of stuff, so I thought hey, what a fun day, get some buddies together and build something out of our normal jeeps for rock crawling.”

That’s a heck of an undertaking, but Webb has a pole barn with a hoist, fabricating skills, and some buddies — so he figured he could pull it off.

“So I set the date, bought some meat for the smoker, a few beers, and started cutting it apart. We spent a full day cutting it apart, mocking up pieces, and spent the next two weeks making it what it is an hour or two every night after work putting around welding, removing, re-welding,” he told me over Facebook Messenger. “The tub was cut into 5 pieces basically and started hanging the parts around the car to retrofit it. I’d still say nothing is 100% done, but it’s fun to drive, gets lotsa laughs and looks.”

What’s great is that this whole project basically cost Webb nothing but time. “By the time I sold parts of value, it paid for the tub of Jeep, plus a few hundred bucks even after title transfer, so I haven’t really got. Much into it so to speak.”

As for fuel economy, Webb told me the Jeeprius gets “27-30 cruising highway,” and that if one were to put smaller tires on, he bets it “would be back to 40’s.”

Webb admits that he doesn’t have the “proper tools” to do a “quality build,” but it was all in good fun. “This started as a joke,” he told me, “then went into silly mode once the boys got involved, it took the whole day before anyone really saw my vision.”

“We are LS swapping into another Prius I’ve got soon here. Happen to have a spare 6.0, 4l80e & a narrowed 9” just sitting here.” Oh boy. I’m not sure if I’m more worried about the structural integrity of an LS-powered Prius or that of this hacked-up, roofless Jeeprius. All I know is, this is some of the finest Sawzall-engineering I’ve ever seen.

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Parrying is bad and you know it

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Everybody’s gangsta until somebody parries your bullshit

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