Daily Authority: ? EVs power your home

? Good morning, and welcome to another Tuesday edition of Daily Authority. This week I’ve finally given in and pulled my winter coat out of the closet. Summer’s definitely over here!

Early days yet

This all sounds pretty great, but it’s still early days.

However, bidirectional chargers still aren’t common, and they’re expensive, though that’s changing. Earlier this month, Nissan approved its first bidirectional charger for the Leaf, while Ford’s F-150 could power your home for up to three days.

How might it work?

Standardization will be key to rolling this out — if EVs and charging systems from various manufacturers are technologically integrated, life will be much easier.

• Your utility company could give you a heads-up — either via text, app, or a notification on your vehicle dashboard — that they need your EV battery power availability during a heatwave or deep freeze.
• You should get the option to decline — for example, if you need your car fully charged for a work trip or vacation.
• This could make power outages practically invisible, avoiding rolling blackouts, keeping your smart home devices running, and decreasing demand on the grid when it spikes, as during the recent heatwave in California.
• In the near future, it’s likely this is something we’ll all be doing without even thinking twice.

? Rockstar Games confirms GTA 6 footage leak: The company suffered a “network intrusion” resulting in a leak of 90 videos of early development versions of the next chapter in the franchise, but work will continue as planned (TechCrunch).

This week kicks off Banned Books Week 2022, running from September 18-24.

• Launched in 1982 as a response to the increasing number of challenges to books in libraries, bookstores, and schools, the event celebrates the freedom to read, highlights persecuted individuals, and draws attention to banned and challenged books.
• The Harry Potter series saw the most attempted bans between 2000 to 2009.
• Some of Judy Blume’s books are also on the list of the most frequently challenged books of the 1990s, including the popular Are you There, God? It’s Me Margaret.
• Other books that have come under threat include Anne Frank’s The Diary of A Young Girl, which has been called “too pornographic” as well as To Kill a Mockingbird, which has been objected to and/or removed as recently as 2009, when it was removed from a high school in Canada after a parent objected.
• Since the inception of Banned Books Week, more than 11,300 books have been challenged.
• In 2021, there were 1,597 book removals or challenges.
• According to the American Library Association (ALA), most of the books were by or about LGBTQIA+ or Black people.
• Speaking of, the ALA has an interesting timeline of banned books.
• And you can follow along with all the week’s events and news on Twitter.

Whether you prefer reading physical paperback or hard-cover books or like to take in the latest bestsellers on your Kindle or other e-reader, here’s to the freedom of being able to read what we want, whenever we want.

Paula Beaton, Copy Editor.