Ford Motor has asked its nearly 3,000 dealers to invest up to $1M in upgrades to sell electric vehicles. The automaker offered its dealers the option to become EV-certified under two programs with investments of $500,000 or $1.2M. Dealers who pick the $1.2M option would carry upfront costs of $900,000 and get allocated more EVs. More: - Dealers have until the end of October to make a selection and until the end of the year to make the payments.
- Ford separated its EV business, Model e, from its combustion engine business earlier this year.
- The automaker’s current lineup of all-electric vehicles includes the Ford F-150 Lightning pickup, Mustang Mach-E crossover, and e-Transit van.
- CEO Jim Farley wants Ford’s retailers to cut selling and distribution costs by $2,000 per vehicle to be competitive with the direct-to-consumer model Tesla employs.
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South Korea has issued an arrest warrant for Do Kwon, the co-founder of defunct cryptocurrency firm Terraform Labs. The warrant accuses Kwon of violating capital market rules after the company lost investors $40B from its Terra and Luna tokens earlier this year. More: - The South Korean court also issued arrest warrants for five other people connected to Terraform Labs who reside in Singapore.
- Terraform Labs co-founder Daniel Shin was not issued an arrest warrant.
- Kwon is accused of financial fraud, among other charges.
- Korean prosecutors claim Terraform’s terraUSD stablecoin was a kind of investment security under South Korea’s capital markets act.
- A spokesperson said prosecutors were looking into ways to arrest and extradite Kwon, whom they believe resides in Singapore.
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Twitter’s former security head, Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, testified before the U.S. Senate judiciary committee on Tuesday. Zatko said Twitter was over a decade behind industry security standards. He accused the leadership of the social media company of prioritizing profits over security. More: - Zatko was hired by former Twitter CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey in 2020 to lead security at the social media company.
- Zatko was fired in January 2022 by Twitter’s new CEO, Parag Agrawal.
- Agrawal took over the reins at Twitter in November 2021 following Dorsey’s resignation from the role.
- Zatko filed a whistleblower complaint to U.S. authorities in early July, accusing Twitter’s executives of misleading the public, lawmakers, regulators, and its own board of directors on its security practices.
- Zatko claimed the security vulnerabilities were so severe they threatened the national security of the U.S.
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Germany has committed to repurposing a COVID-19 bailout fund to support struggling energy companies. The country has been battling record-high gas prices after Russia turned off its Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline to the country. The German government hopes to prevent a wave of insolvencies across the country’s energy sector. More: - Germany’s state development bank, KfW, said it would deploy €67B ($67B) in loan guarantees and liquidity assistance to energy firms.
- The funds were initially earmarked for companies struggling with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Other European energy companies have appealed to their governments for support to prevent default or failure.
- Finland and Sweden recently unveiled €33B ($33B) to support electricity producers in the countries.
- Switzerland’s largest renewable electricity producer Axpo also received new state-backed credit lines.
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Fashion rental service Rent the Runway announced it was laying off about 24% of its corporate staff. The company didn’t specify the number of jobs the layoffs would impact; however, according to securities filings, the firm had 958 full-time and 138 part-time employees in January. More: - Co-founder and CEO Jenn Hyman said the move is meant to transform the company from a cash burner into one that can fund itself with its revenue alone.
- Rent the Runway was founded in 2008; the company went public in October 2021.
- Since its founding, the company has incurred nearly $900M in losses.
- At its last earnings call, the company said it noticed more customers were pausing or ending their subscriptions, and fewer people were rejoining the platform.
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Google has canceled its next Pixelbook laptop and disbanded the team responsible for building the product. According to sources, the latest version of the computer was scheduled to come out next year, but the project was cut as part of Google’s recent cost-cutting measures. Members of the team have been transferred to other areas within the company. More: - According to sources, the company had planned to keep the Pixelbook going as recently as a few months ago.
- In a July memo, Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai had told employees the company plans to slow down hiring and cut some projects across the company.
- The Pixelbook team and the Pixelbook product appear to be one of the casualties of that resource reallocation.
- Google launched the first Pixelbook laptop in 2017.
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- The owner of the Phoenix Suns, Robert Sarver, has been suspended by the NBA for one year and fined $10M after investigations revealed Sarver used the N-word at least five times when recounting the statements of others.
- According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., U.S. banks lost a record $370B in deposits in Q2, its first decline since 2018. Deposits in U.S. banks fell to $19.56T as of June 20, down from $19.93T reported at the end of March.
- Corteva Agriscience, a U.S. agricultural chemical and seed company, announced its board of directors authorized a new $2B share buyback program. The new authorization is in addition to the company’s existing $1.5B share buyback program announced in August 2021.
- Amazon’s workplace health and safety chief, Heather MacDougall, is leaving the company on Oct. 7. MacDougall Joined Amazon in 2019 from the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission.
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 |  | Vanessa Omeokachie is a Freelance Writer for Inside.com. She writes the Inside Business and Inside Cloud newsletters. Her interests include finance, technology, and entrepreneurship. In her free time, she enjoys reading, hiking, attending concerts and music festivals, exploring cities, and traveling. Connect with her on Twitter @VanessaOmeo or on LinkedIn. |   | | Editor | Aaron Crutchfield is based in the high desert of California. Over the last two decades, he has spent time writing and editing at various local newspapers and defense contractors in California. When he's not working, he can often be found looking at the latest memes with his kids or working on his 1962 and 1972 Fords. | |
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