The Kia Niro is an interesting car, in that it’s offered in both hybrid and electric variants. Having driven both versions of the recently redesigned 2023 Niro, we appreciated its unique styling, efficiency and overall value. And now we know how much the battery-electric trims will cost.

Kia on Monday published pricing information for the 2023 Niro EV. Two trims will be available, Wind and Wave, and in traditional Kia fashion, each is sufficiently well-equipped and devoid of frustrating, convoluted options packages galore. Both versions of the Niro EV come with the same powertrain, comprising a 64.8-kilowatt-hour battery and a 201-horsepower electric motor, with an EPA-estimated range of 253 miles and a max DC fast charging rate of 85 kilowatts.

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The base 2023 Niro EV Wind will set buyers back $40,745, including $1,275 in destination and delivery charges. The base model is no bargain-bin slouch, offering matte-black exterior trim details, seats made from a combination of cloth and vegan leather, heated seats and a 10.3-inch touchscreen infotainment system with wired Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. It also comes loaded with active and passive driver aids, including blind spot monitoring, rear parking sensors, automatic emergency braking, lane-keeping assist, lane-departure warning, automatic high beams and full-speed adaptive cruise control.

If you’re feeling a little fancier, there’s the $45,745 Niro EV Wave. This trim adds a whole host of creature comforts, like full vegan leather seats with ventilation, power-folding side mirrors, an auto-dimming rearview mirror, LED cabin lighting, front parking sensors and a heated steering wheel, as well as Kia’s vehicle-to-load system, which allows the EV to power outboard equipment.

The 2023 Kia Niro should start arriving at dealerships across the country this fall.

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The post 2023 Kia Niro EV Starts at a Hair Over $40,000 first appeared on Joggingvideo.com.

When a celebrity who was once nominated for an award called “Choice Selfie Taker” can wipe a billion dollars off a tech company’s valuation, perhaps that company has always been on shaky ground.

Snapchat has not been in a good way. The company has struggled since its inception to find ways to monetize its here-for-a-limited-time camera app. Its most recent redesign is a clear attempt to shove as many of those moneymaking features as possible in front of its users’ faces, and as you might expect, it’s not going so well.

That’s why it was extra hilarious when Kylie Jenner, who dared try to trademark “Kylie” when we all know that should to go Kylie Minogue, tweeted about how Snapchat has lost its way, presumably post-redesign. Bloomberg pointed out that this tweet occurred alongside a 7.2-percent drop in SNAP’s share price, which wiped about $1 billion off the company’s market value.

Here’s the thing — Snapchat should have never made it this far. While Spiegel and company might talk about how this revives the idea of spontaneity in the age of social media posts that exist forever, let’s swerve around the circuitous language and hit the crux of the matter — Snapchat was for sexting, and you cannot monetize a sexting app without treating it like one.

You can attempt to ignore that side of it and monetize the parts that work — namely, the ability to have your content shoved in front of millions of faces on yet another medium — but there’s no guarantee that will work, and it’s clear that it hasn’t.

Other tech companies with similarly lofty valuations (and, perhaps, aspirations) have ended up in troubled waters, as well. Let’s take Facebook, which according to the super-factual-totally-based-on-a-totally-true-story movie “The Social Network” was set up in part to help its founders with the opposite sex. Now, over a decade later, and Zuckerberg’s company is being dragged across the coals for helping Russia ruin the pillars of US democracy. At least Snapchat isn’t part of that mess, but it’s not much better off.

Tech bros need to stop thinking they can change the course of human existence (except for Zuck, who is definitely making history, just… not in a good way). Just call a spade a spade. If your app is perfect for sexting, let it be that. If Snapchat had marketed itself as a cure for the scourge of career-ending revenge porn, I think the sexually liberated among us would have welcomed it with open arms. At least then the app would have a distinct, and perhaps even monetization-ready, purpose. Right now, it’s just another slowly floundering and overvalued do-it-all app that even a member of the extended Kardashian clan doesn’t want to keep up with.

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Roadshow: Normally I write about cars, which is probably a good thing. You should go there and read about them, because they probably factor into your life in more ways than you’d think.

2019 Volvo V60: Here’s a car you should really, really care about.

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For car enthusiasts, online configurators are a great way to kill some time — you get to build your perfect idea of a car from scratch. Bentley’s taking the whole process to a new extreme with its Inspirator app, which uses facial recognition to assemble your perfect car without asking you to make a single conscious choice.

Inspirator is a free app that uses your smartphone or tablet’s front-facing camera to track your face while you watch a series of videos containing fancy, artsy things: beachside cabanas, architecture and things of that ilk. The app monitors your reactions to these images to create a car that it thinks you will enjoy. Your face dictates the resulting car’s exterior and interior colors schemes, wood veneer and wheel design.

While it amounts to little more than a novelty (free-app users can’t all afford Bentleys), it’s interesting in that it allows technology to create experiences for people. Surely, there’s an advertising executive out there, rubbing his hands together at the idea of using cameras to help monitor ad reaction toward making adjustments in how and to whom content is delivered.

If you’d rather not stare at a camera for a few minutes, you can treat the app like any other configurator and follow a touch-based system that also builds you a car. The app being a marketing vehicle more than anything, you can also use Bentley Inspirator to browse pictures and share your creations on social media.

Inspirator does come with some limitations. Currently, the app is only available for iOS users through the Apple App Store, so Android aficionados are stuck with Bentley’s plain-Jane website. Only one car is available at the moment, as well — Bentayga, the automaker’s new crossover — but it will expand to include the whole lineup in time.

The post Bentley’s app builds the perfect car by analyzing your face’s emotions in real time first appeared on Joggingvideo.com.