The present Republican party seems determined to hate on, and fight against electric vehicles at every turn. Now, arstechnica.com reports that they have tucked into their proposed tax bill a new $200 per year tax on battery EVs. Hybrids will be dinged for $100. How about gas guzzling pickups, SUVs, and performance cars? Oh, they will pay a measly $20 per year…and even then only after October 1, 2030! Before that, nothing. Commercial vehicles are exempt, too. An argument the GOP makes is that EV drivers don’t pay any gas tax, and hybrid owners pay less gas tax than internal combustion engine vehicle owners. Of course, the EVs aren’t belching smog into the atmosphere either…to the climate change deniers, this tax is a win-win if it passes. This is a big ripoff for EVs and hybrids, as 39 states already charge EV drivers a registration fee and 28 states charge hybrid drivers. DISCLOSURE: I drive a hybrid, and have for the past 7 years…so yes, I have already been paying the gas tax…this is just an added tax penalty from the party that allegedly hates taxes.

Meta has its standalone ChatGPT competitor, which is pretty much the same as what you get with actual ChatGPT…but with an added feature. According to theverge.com, you can type to or talk with the app, generate images, and get real-time web results. The new wrinkle is that it has a Discover feed…which gets you a feed of interactions with Meta AI that other people…including, of course, your friends on Facebook and Instagram…have chosen to share on a prompt-by-prompt basis. Naturally since it is a meta product, you can like, comment, share, or remix the shared AI posts on your own feed. OpenAI is planning a social feed to ChatGPT, and Musk’s X is pretty intertwined with his Grok. Worth noting…Meta actually is using much of the View companion app for the Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses to underpin the freestanding Meta AI app.

Wikipedia is jumping into the AI game, but it stresses that artificial intelligence won’t be used to replace the community of editors and volunteers. Techcrunch.com says Wikipedia will use AI to build new features that “remove technical barriers,” allowing editors, moderators, and patrollers tools that allow them to accomplish what they need to do, without worrying about how to “technically achieve it.” Amid concerns that AI could eventually impact jobs held by people today, especially in terms of content creation, Wikipedia indicates that it intends to use AI as a tool that makes people’s jobs easier, not replace them.

The Waymo division of Alphabet and Toyota have announced a preliminary partnership to explore bringing robotaxi tech to personally-owned vehicles. “The companies will explore how to leverage Waymo’s autonomous technology and Toyota’s vehicle expertise to enhance next-generation personally owned vehicles,” the two companies announced. The companies said they aim to use the partnership to more quickly develop driver assistance and autonomous vehicle technologies for personal vehicles. Toyota is the world’s largest automaker by sales. Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana said the strategic partnership could also result in the Google-owned company incorporating Toyota’s “vehicles into our ride-hailing fleet.”

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.