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Artificial intelligence-driven IRS voice bots can now assist taxpayers by phone with setting up or making changes to payment plans.
However, some tax professionals are doubtful about the newly expanded automated service, saying it may further aggravate callers.

Westend61 | Westend61 | Getty Images

If you get a tax bill and want help from the IRS to set up a payment plan, newly expanded voice bots may make for faster phone service, according to the agency. But some tax professionals are doubtful about the new plan to reduce wait times. 
Artificial intelligence-driven IRS voice bots can now assist taxpayers by phone with setting up or making changes to payment plans.

“For the first time in 160 years, this agency is able to successfully interact with a taxpayer using artificial intelligence to access their account and resolve it, in certain situations, without any wait on hold,” IRS deputy commissioner Darren Guillot said on a press call. 
Callers, however, may still speak with an agent if needed.
That might be easier said than done.
Officially, the average phone wait time was 23 minutes in 2021, according to the National Taxpayer Advocate. But the agency has been struggling with staffing and increased call volumes. In its 2021 report to Congress, the National Taxpayer Advocate called out phone service as one of the most significant issues, noting that the agency only answered 11% of calls during fiscal year 2021.
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How voice bots can solve some taxpayer problems

Here’s how the voice bots work: When you get a bill from the IRS, you can call the agency and follow voice-prompted steps to verify your identity. By providing the caller ID from your IRS letter, the bots may share payment plan options and assist with setting one up.
You may qualify to use the service with a tax balance of $25,000 or less, which is the majority of IRS payment plans, according to agency officials. 
The IRS has used phone-answering voice bots since January, answering basic payment or notice questions to cut back on long wait times. However, the latest upgrade is the first opportunity for voice bots to resolve a taxpayer’s issue.
Of course, complex problems, such as penalty relief or hardship, may still require a live agent, the IRS said.
The agency plans to expand voice bot capability to allow authenticated callers to receive tax transcripts, payment history and the current balance due.

Tax professionals remain ‘skeptical’ about voice bots

While the IRS expects the newly expanded features to be fully deployed this week, some tax professionals are still iffy about the voice bots.
Dan Herron, a certified financial planner and CPA with Elemental Wealth Advisors in San Luis Obispo, California, said voice bots are a good idea for “very simple things,” such as balance due questions. But he’s “very skeptical” about bots setting up payment plans with multiple moving parts. 

Does anyone actually get anything settled by AI voice bots for any company, let alone the Internal Revenue Service?

Adam Markowitz
Vice president at Howard L Markowitz PA, CPA

What’s more, voice bots without answers may trigger further frustrations among callers, said Adam Markowitz, an enrolled agent and vice president at Howard L Markowitz PA, CPA in Leesburg, Florida. 
“Does anyone actually get anything settled by AI voice bots for any company, let alone the Internal Revenue Service?” he added.
Phyllis Jo Kubey, a New York-based enrolled agent and president of the New York State Society of Enrolled Agents is optimistic about the expanded voice bots and applauds the agency for “more sophisticated automated taxpayer assistance.”
However, she worries taxpayers may “bite off more than they can chew” and agree to unrealistic monthly payments when setting up a plan through the automated system.
“I hope the IRS has its AI set up to query the taxpayer about whether they can afford the monthly payment on which they agree,” she said.
CNBC has reached out to the IRS for comment.

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A days-long rail walkout that is causing severe travel disruption across the U.K. could be just the beginning of a summer of strikes, U.K. workers’ unions have warned.
Forty-thousand Network Rail staff and workers at 13 train operators will strike Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday after a dispute over pay failed to reach an agreement.
Labor unions say the strikes have been supported by staff in other sectors, and could galvanize them to step up action as the salary stalemate between public sector workers and the government intensifies.

Forty thousand U.K. Network Rail staff and workers at 13 train operators have staged walkouts over pay in Britain’s biggest rail strike in 30 years.
Jeff J Mitchell | Getty Images News | Getty Images

LONDON — A days-long rail walkout that is causing severe travel disruption across Britain could be just the beginning of a summer of strikes, U.K. workers’ unions have warned, as numerous professions consider industrial action over pay.
Around 40,000 Network Rail staff and workers at 13 train operators went on strike Tuesday in the first of a series of planned strikes. This came after talks between operators and Britain’s RMT union failed to reach an agreement on pay, working conditions and possible redundancies.

Just 20% of rail services in England, Scotland and Wales were running Tuesday, with further cancellations due on Thursday and Saturday, resulting in major disruptions for millions of workers and holidaymakers ahead of the peak summer travel season.
London Underground tubes were also running at limited capacity Tuesday as staff went on strike.
Labor unions say the rail strikes — the worst in a generation — are supported by staff in other sectors, and could galvanize them to step up action in an intensifying stalemate between the government and public sector workers.
That could lead to similar walkouts by teachers, health care workers and local government staff, the TUC, Britain’s main movement for organized labor, told CNBC Tuesday.
“Many public sector workers are waiting to hear what their pay offer will be. Unions in education, the civil service and other parts of the public sector have already been clear that if the offers are substantially below inflation they will ballot their members for industrial action,” TUC’s Deputy General Secretary Paul Nowak said.

It comes as the U.K. suffers its worst cost-of-living crisis in decades, with wages failing to keep up with rising food and energy prices.
U.K. inflation jumped to a 40-year high of 9% in May — a figure the Bank of England has forecast could hit 11% in October. Still, the government has sought to hold public sector pay increases well below that.

‘Existential crisis’ for public sector workers

Britain’s teaching union has said that the profession is on the brink of an “existential crisis” as workers struggle to make ends meet.
NASUWT has now said that it will ballot members for national industrial action in November if the government does not meet is demands to increase pay by 12% this year.
“Teachers are suffering, not only from the cost of living crisis, which the whole country is grappling with, but 12 years of real terms pay cuts which has left a 20% shortfall in the value of their salaries,” General Secretary Patrick Roach said in a statement Sunday.
Nurses are similarly seeking a 15% pay increase, with a spokesperson for nurses union RCN telling CNBC Tuesday that pay was a “crucial factor in recruiting and retaining the nursing workforce.”
TUC said any decision to strike would not be taken lightly, but urged the government to do more to support those facing pay freezes and real-terms pay cuts.
“It’s our hope that industrial action will not be necessary,” said Nowak. “But we need this Conservative government to recognize the harm they have done by holding down public sector pay for so long. It has pushed working people to the brink. We have teachers and nurses relying on foodbanks — that can’t go on.”

Britain’s rail strikes have resulted in major disruptions for millions of workers and holidaymakers ahead of the peak summer travel season.
Bryn Colton | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Talks between Network Rail and RMT fell apart Monday after the workers’ union rejected proposals, including for a 3% pay rise, in exchange for changes to workplace practices.
RMT leader Mick Lynch accused the government of “shackling” rail operators’ pay offers, calling instead for a 7% to 8% pay increase and warning that industrial action would last “as long as it needs to” until workers’ demands are met.
The U.K.’s Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said the standoff had been “manufactured” by unions and said workers were striking under “false pretenses.” However, he again on Tuesday dismissed calls for the government to step in on negotiations, saying it was “the job of the employers to meet with the unions.”

Implications for other industries

The strikes come as the U.K. economy struggles to get on its feet following the coronavirus pandemic and Brexit-related supply issues. New figures released last week showed the country’s economy unexpectedly shrank by 0.3% in April, adding to concerns of a forthcoming recession.

Business leaders have said that the walkouts could have major implications for other sectors, particularly those already hard hit by Covid-19 restrictions.
This week’s rail strikes alone could cost Britain’s leisure, theater and tourism industry more than £1 billion ($1.22 billion) as more people stay at home, according to trade body UKHospitality.
Susannah Streeter, senior investment and markets analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said the rail strikes have turned ongoing operational headaches into a “fully blown migraine” for the hospitality industry.
“Restaurants, bars and hotels were already struggling under the strain of sky-high energy prices, supply chain disruption and the ongoing labor crunch, and now the mass walkouts are set to cause fresh financial pain,” she said in a note Tuesday.
“As the transport network seizes up, bookings are expected to plummet as the lucrative lunchtime crowd stay at home, and night-time revelers cancel reservations whilst fearful they won’t be able to get home at the end of the night,” she added.

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Sales of existing homes in May dropped 3.4% to a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 5.41 million units, according to the National Association of Realtors.
This is the weakest reading since June 2020, which was during the early months of the Covid pandemic. Adjusting for that, it is the lowest since January 2020.
“I do anticipate a further decline in home sales,” said Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the National Association of Realtors.

Sales of existing homes in May dropped 3.4% to a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 5.41 million units, according to the National Association of Realtors.
Sales were 8.6% lower than in May 2021. April’s sales were revised slightly lower as well.

This is the weakest reading since June 2020, which was during the early months of the Covid pandemic. Adjusting for that, it is the lowest since January 2020.
This reading is based on closings during the month, therefore representing contracts likely signed in March and April. During that time the average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage rose from right around 4% to 5.5%. It is currently right around 6%, according to Mortgage News Daily. Rising rates, along with rapid home price appreciation and continued low supply, have given affordability a triple punch.
“I do anticipate a further decline in home sales,” said Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the National Association of Realtors. “The impact of higher mortgage rates are not yet fully reflected in the data.”
There were 1.16 million homes for sale at the end of May, an increase of 12.6% month to month but still down 4.1% from May 2021. At the current sales pace, that represents a 2.6-month supply.
Low supply continued to push home prices higher. The median price of a house sold in May was $407,600, an increase of 14.8% from May 2021. That is the highest price on record since the Realtors began tracking it in the late 1980s.

Supply is leanest on the lower end of the market, which is likely why activity there continues to be weaker than on the higher end. Sales of homes priced between $100,000 and $250,000 dropped 27% from a year ago. Sales of homes priced between $750,000 and $1 million were up 26%. Sales of homes priced above $1 million surged 22% year over year.
Homes are selling quickly, however. Houses stayed on the market an average of just 16 days, the lowest on record for the Realtors. All-cash sales were still elevated at 25% of all sales. Investors made up 16% of all transactions, down slightly from April and from a year ago.
First-time buyers made up just 27% of all transactions, down from 31% a year ago. Affordability is clearly hitting them hardest, as rents are rising as well.
“Higher short-term rates from the Fed are helping to drive a much-needed housing reset – a real estate refresh,” wrote Danielle Hale, chief economist at Realtor.com. “While the rebalancing is needed, it’s upping the challenge of navigating the housing market for both sellers and buyers as expectations and conditions are adjusting rapidly.”
Realtor.com recently updated its forecast for 2022 home sales, now projecting fewer this year than last year.  

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Kellogg plans to separate into three independent public companies, sectioning off its iconic brands into distinct snacking, cereal and plant-based businesses.
The company said it is exploring further strategic alternatives, including a potential sale, for its plant-based business.
The tax-free spinoffs are expected to be completed by the end of 2023.

Kellogg announced Tuesday that it plans to separate into three independent public companies, sectioning off its iconic brands into distinct snacking, cereal and plant-based businesses.
Shares of the company rose 6.5% in premarket trading on the announcement.

“These businesses all have significant standalone potential, and an enhanced focus will enable them to better direct their resources toward their distinct strategic priorities,” CEO Steve Cahillane said in a statement.
The company said it is exploring further strategic alternatives, including a potential sale, for its plant-based business.
Combined, Kellogg’s plant-based division and North American cereal business accounted for about 20% of the company’s revenue last year. The remaining business includes its snacks, noodles, international cereal and North American frozen breakfast brands.
The tax-free spinoffs are expected to be completed by the end of 2023.
Names for the new companies haven’t yet been decided, and proposed management teams for the two spinoffs will be announced by the first quarter of next year. Cahillane will stay on as chief executive of the global snacking company.

That business will house brands like Pringles, Cheez-It, Pop-Tarts and RXBAR and last year reported $11.4 billion in revenue. About 10% of those sales come from its growing noodle business in Africa, while another 10% comes from Eggo waffles and its frozen breakfast business. North America will represent nearly half of the company’s revenue.
The snack-focused company will also be looking to add to its portfolio through acquisitions, according to Cahillane.

The proposed North American cereal company will include Froot Loops, Special K and Rice Krispies. Last year, that business saw sales of $2.4 billion. In the near term, the spinoff would focus on bouncing back from supply chain disruptions and regaining lost market share. Kellogg expects it would generate stable revenue over time as a standalone company while improving profit margins.
“It’s a pretty stable business, somewhat declining,” Cahillane told CNBC’s Sara Eisen on “Squawk Box.” following the announcement, adding that he expects more innovation and brand building from the spinoff since its brands won’t have to compete with Pringles or Cheez-It for resources.
Kellogg’s plant-based division will use Morningstar Farms as its anchor brand. Last year, the business reported $340 million in sales and roughly $50 million in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. If completed, the spinoff offers investors another plant-based stock play besides Beyond Meat, which hasn’t turned a quarterly profit in nearly three years and has seen its shares tumble 63% this year.
Headquarters for the three businesses will remain unchanged. Both the North American cereal company and the plant-based food spinoff will be located in Battle Creek, Michigan. The global snacking company will keep its corporate headquarters in Chicago, with another campus in Battle Creek.
Kellogg hasn’t decided yet how it will divide up its dividend among the three companies, Cahillane told CNBC.
Read the full press release here.

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Crypto start-up MoonPay is partnering with Universal Pictures, Fox Corporation and Snoop Dogg’s Death Row Records, among other brands, to launch a new NFT platform called HyperMint.
The new platform enables large brands, agencies, and enterprises to mint hundreds of millions of NFTs a day, scaling up an operation that previously took months using blockchain technology.
Cryptocurrencies, which NFT purchases are made using, have suffered steep selloffs in recent trading, pushing some crypto players into financial difficulty.

MoonPay co-founder and CEO Ivan Soto-Wright at the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami.

Crypto start-up MoonPay said Tuesday that it’s partnering with Universal Pictures, Fox Corporation and Snoop Dogg’s Death Row Records, among other brands, to launch a new NFT platform called HyperMint.
The new platform enables large brands, agencies, and enterprises to mint hundreds of millions of NFTs a day, scaling up an operation that previously took months using blockchain technology. It’s being formally announced later on Tuesday during a keynote that MoonPay CEO Ivan Soto-Wright is giving at Radio City Music Hall as part of this week’s NFT.NYC conference in New York City.

The platform and its underlying technology present a big opportunity for legacy brands like Universal and Fox that are sitting on decades of intellectual property.
NFTs are digital assets that represent real-world objects — such as art, music and real estate — and can’t be replicated. In the past few months, big brands from every industry, including Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Nike, Gucci and the National Football League, have brought NFTs into their marketing initiatives.
“The potential of NFTs goes beyond collecting; it’s the utility. You can essentially program anything into these NFTs over time, which is why we decided to focus on this new product offering,” Soto-Wright told CNBC. “That’s really making this shift possible; to go beyond collectability and program utility into these NFTs and there needs to be enterprise-grade tooling.”

More coverage of the 2022 CNBC Disruptor 50

Founded in 2018, Miami-based MoonPay’s software lets users buy and sell cryptocurrencies using conventional payment methods like credit cards, bank transfers, or mobile wallets like Apple Pay and Google Pay. It also sells its technology to other businesses including crypto website Bitcoin.com and non-fungible token marketplace OpenSea, a model Soto-Wright calls “crypto-as-a-service.”
Soto-Wright has previously said the firm aims to make crypto accessible to the masses in the same way that video-conferencing tools like Zoom made it easier to make calls over the internet.

MoonPay’s pitch to investors is that it offers a “gateway” to digital assets. For now, that includes bitcoin, ether and other digital tokens like NFTs. The recent market volatility and risk-off investor environment hasn’t been kind to crypto trading, but Soto-Wright’s vision is to expand the platform to include everything from digital fashion to tokenized stocks.
The company’s latest product launch comes amid an extended selloff in cryptocurrencies, as investors continue to grapple with aggressive interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve and a worsening liquidity crunch that has pushed major players into financial difficulty. The crypto space is still reeling from the fallout of the $60 billion collapse of two major tokens last month.
“It’s been a rough few months for crypto,” Soto-Wright said. “I’ve seen many of these different cycles before. I’ve seen this movie. There’s always going to be periods of volatility. It’s a brand new asset class and we have a brand new subset of that asset class, which is NFTs.”
MoonPay says it has been profitable since launching its platform in 2019. Its service is now used by more than 10 million customers in 160 countries. Last month, MoonPay added more than 60 celebrity investors to its balance sheet, including Justin Bieber, Gwyneth Paltrow, Snoop Dogg and Ashton Kutcher, among others. Combined, its new investors poured $87 million into a previously announced $555 million funding round led by Tiger Global and Coatue, valuing the company at $3.4 billion.
Bitcoin rebounded on Monday, after the cryptocurrency fell below its 2017 high over the weekend, when it traded as low as $17,601.58. Bitcoin still sits 70% below its all-time high, hit in November, and it is down 57% year-to-date. Ether was higher in trading on Monday as well.
“I think it makes sense that we’re going to go through periods of price discovery and irrational exuberance … people eventually start to question the value of things and I think that’s why the shift beyond looking at NFTs as collectibles, but being able to program utility into them is going to be very, very important,” Soto-Wright said. “We need to take that tool set and arm the biggest brands and the biggest creators to work through the use cases that are going to actually matter.”
Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC.

MoonPay ranked No. 44 on this year’s CNBC Disruptor 50 list. Sign up for our weekly, original newsletter that goes beyond the annual Disruptor 50 list, offering a closer look at list-making companies and their innovative founders. More

Rich countries pour heart-stopping amounts of money into health care. Advanced economies typically spend about 10% of gdp on keeping their citizens in good nick, a share that is rising as populations age. America’s labyrinthine health-industrial complex consumes 17% of gdp, equivalent to $3.6trn a year. The American system’s heft and inertia, perpetuated by the drugmakers, pharmacies, insurers, hospitals and others that benefit from it, have long protected it from disruption. Its size and stodginess also explains why it is being covetously eyed by big tech. Few other industries offer a potential market large enough to move the needle for the trillion-dollar technology titans.In 2021 America’s five tech behemoths collectively spent more than $3bn on speculative health-care bets (see chart)—and may have invested more in undisclosed deals. Some of their earlier health-related investments are starting to pay off. Amazon runs an online pharmacy and its telemedicine services reach just about everywhere in America that its packages do, which is to say most of it. Apple’s smartwatch keeps accruing new health features, most recently a drug-tracking one. Meta has scrapped its own smartwatch plans earlier this year but offers fitness-related fun through its Oculus virtual-reality goggles. Microsoft is expanding its list of health-related cloud-computing offerings (as is Amazon, through aws, its cloud unit). Yet it is Alphabet, Google’s corporate parent, whose health-care ambitions seem to be the most vaulting. Between 2019 and 2021 Alphabet’s venture-capital arms, Google Ventures and Gradient Ventures, and its private-equity unit, CapitalG, made about 100 deals, a quarter of Alphabet’s combined total, in life sciences and health care. So far this year it has injected $1.7bn into futuristic health ideas, according to cb Insights, a data provider, leaving its fellow tech giants, which spent around $100m all told, in the dust. Alphabet is the fifth-highest-ranking business in the Nature Index, which measures the impact of scientific papers, in the area of life sciences, behind four giant drugmakers and 20 spots ahead of Microsoft, the only other tech giant in the running. The company has hired former senior health regulators to help it navigate America’s health-care bureaucracy. Alphabet’s approach to innovation—throw lots of money at lots of projects—has served it well in some other businesses beyond its core search engine. It has given rise to clever products, from Gmail and Google Docs to the Android mobile operating system and Google Maps, which support people’s digital lives. Alphabet thinks that some of its health offerings will become as central to their physical existence. Is that an accurate prognosis?Techno-pharmacopoeiaAlphabet has dabbled in health since 2008, when Google introduced a service that allowed users to compile their health records in one place. That project was wound up in 2012, resurfaced in 2018 as Google Health, which included Google’s other health ventures, and was again dismantled last year. Today Alphabet’s health adventures can be divided into four broad categories. These are, in rough order of ambition: wearables, health records, health-related artificial intelligence (ai) and the ultimate challenge of extending human longevity.Google launched itself into the wearables business in 2019 with a $2.1bn acquisition of Fitbit. The firm’s popular fitness tracker has been counting steps and other exertions on around 100m wrists. It has come a long way since the Nintendo Wii motion-detecting game console that inspired Fitbit’s founders. A new feature—a sensor which monitors changes in the heart rate for irregularities that can lead to strokes and heart failure—has just been been approved by America’s Food and Drug Administraton (fda). Google is also trying to boost the health-care potential of its other devices. To help it along, it has enlisted Bakul Patel, a former official tasked with creating the regulatory classification of “software as a medical device” at the fda.The fda’s stamp of approval for the Fitbit sensor is a big deal. It should make it easier to get a similar thumbs-up for Google’s higher-end Pixel Watch, which uses a lot of the same technology and is due out this autumn, as well as other gadgets. For example, the camera on its Pixel phones can be used to detect respiration and heart rates by tracking the subtle colour difference brought about by the fact that blood with fresh oxygen in it is slightly brighter. Google’s Nest smart-thermostat-turned-home-assistant can listen to snoring to assess your sleep. As significant, if not more, is that Google considered the regulatory go-ahead worth getting. It signals that the company intends its products to be more than fun consumer gadgets, actually able to influence the practice of medicine.Google is also giving health records another whirl. The new initiative, called Care Studio, is aimed at doctors rather than patients. Google’s earlier efforts in this area were derailed in part by hospitals’ sluggishness in digitising their patient records. That problem has mostly gone away but another has emerged, says Karen deSalvo, Google’s health chief—the inability of different providers’ records to talk to each other. Dr de Salvo has been vocal about the need for greater interoperability since her days in the Obama administration, where she was in charge of co-ordinating American health information technology. Until that happens, Care Studio is meant to act as both translator and repository (which is, naturally, searchable).Alphabet’s ai projects are also beginning to produce results. Starting in 2016 DeepMind, a British startup bought by Google in 2014, used data from Britain’s National Health Service (nhs) to create diagnostic tools, in one case training an ai algorithm to detect retinal diseases. It made headlines last year with AlphaFold, a groundbreaking piece of software that can predict the structure of proteins, which is responsible for many of the complex molecules’ characteristics. Alphabet has also launched another subsidiary, Isomorphic Labs, which will be run by DeepMind’s boss and use machine learning to build on AlphaFold to accelerate (and cheapen) drug discovery. The most out-there part of Alphabet’s health portfolio is an effort to slow the ageing process—or stop it altogether. The idea is that ageing should be viewed not as an immutable aspect of life but as a condition that can be managed and treated, or a problem that can be solved with the right technology. To that end one of Alphabet’s life-sciences subsidiaries, Calico, is looking into age-related diseases in partnership with AbbVie, a big drug firm that has chipped in $2.5bn and which last year extended the deal until 2030. Another Alphabet subsidiary, Verily, is working with L’Oréal, a French beauty giant, to better understand how ageing impacts the biology of the skin—and thus create better skincare. Inspiring stuff, to be sure. But obstacles remain. Some are technical. The data DeepMind got from the nhs proved hard for ai to digest. DeepMind’s ai assistant for doctors, called Streams, has been discontinued. Given the strides being made in machine learning, it may be only a matter of time before something like Streams is resuscitated. Other hurdles may be harder to overcome. Trustbusters are increasingly wary of letting through deals that might be seen as stifling nascent competitors. In Europe competition authorities have forbidden Fitbit (but not the Pixel watch) from favouring Google’s own phones and operating system, or from using user data to sell advertising. Governments also fret about privacy breaches, which is even more sensitive than usual when it comes to medical information. Last month plaintiffs filed a class-action lawsuit against DeepMind for misuse of nhs patient data. DeepMind has not made a public statement on the case. Last, good ideas are not the same things as a good business. The wearables market is highly competitive. So, increasingly, is the one for electronic health records. Google’s reputation for technical brilliance has not exactly made Care Studio into an overnight success; the system is reportedly used by just 200 or so clinicians. Verily, which besides solving ageing also offers various diagnostics, signed $50m-worth of contracts for covid-19 testing during the pandemic, a tidy sum but chump change next to Alphabet’s total annual revenues of nearly $260bn. DeepMind as a whole reportedly turned a profit for the first time in 2020 (seemingly from selling services back to the rest of Alphabet) but it gives away its flagship health product, AlphaFold, for nothing. Calico could be years away from generating real revenues, let alone profits. These are open-ended bets that a company of Alphabet’s size can absorb. Still, in the next decade the task will be to show they can graduate from being experiments and vanity projects to being transformative for the firm—and for Americans’ health. ■For more expert analysis of the biggest stories in economics, business and markets, sign up to Money Talks, our weekly newsletter. More

Emirates has said it doesn’t see travel demand dissipating any time soon, even as the industry battles a string of challenges that have led to weeks of flight delays and cancellations.
“It’s unlikely that, irrespective of impediment — whether it be price, whether it be airport facilities — that demand is going to dissipate in the short-term,” Emirates president Tim Clark told CNBC.
The airline industry has been hamstrung by a perfect storm of labor shortages, supply disruptions and rising fuel prices as it seeks to capitalize on a recent travel reopening.

Emirates has said it doesn’t see travel demand dissipating any time soon, even as the industry battles a string of challenges that have already sparked airport chaos ahead of the busy summer holiday season.
Tim Clark, president of the Dubai-based carrier and an airline veteran, said that he had “never seen anything” like the headwinds currently facing the industry. Yet, holidaymakers don’t seem to be deterred from seizing newly resumed travel opportunities.

“It’s unlikely that, irrespective of impediment — whether it be price, whether it be airport facilities — that demand is going to dissipate in the short-term,” Clark told CNBC’s Dan Murphy at the International Air Transport Association’s 78th Annual General Meeting in Doha, Qatar.
The airline industry has been hamstrung by a perfect storm of challenges, from labor shortages and supply disruptions to rising fuel prices, resulting in weeks of severe delays and cancellations across some of Europe and North America’s busiest airports.
On Saturday, more than 6,300 flights were delayed within, into or leaving the U.S., and 859 flights were canceled, according to the flight tracking platform FlightAware. Similarly, tens of thousands of flights have been disrupted across Europe in recent days, with 5,000 passengers at London’s Heathrow Airport expected to be hit by cancellations on Monday alone.

The airline industry has been hamstrung by a perfect storm of challenges over recent weeks, from labor shortages and supply disruptions to rising fuel prices.
Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

However, Clark said that passengers currently appear to be willing to pay the price — both financial and otherwise — for post-pandemic travel.
“The airline community has had to raise its prices to cover off and mitigate the fuel price increase, which has been astronomical. But the demand remains resilient, and we don’t see any slackening of that,” he said.

How long that may last is anyone’s guess, Clark said. Rising inflationary pressures and a worsening cost of living crisis, as well as wider sociopolitical concerns as a result of the war in Ukraine, all spell further headwinds for the industry, he added.
“Will demand taper or dilute over the next years as these major economic factors — which are so adverse to our business, and the global economy — remain in place? Or will those go down first? I don’t know which it’s going to be,” he said.
Clark urged greater industry collaboration and coordination to get through the summer travel peak, noting “we’ve just got to muddle through this and focus on getting the job done, rather than beating each other up.”
Still, he said he expects Emirates, hampered by two years of billion-dollar losses, including a $1.1 billion loss in 2021, expects to return to profitability in 2022.
“At the moment I’m pleased to say we’re making money,” Clark said. “Unless something else extraordinary happens, I think Emirates will be profitable in this financial year.”

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There are over two million electric vehicles in the U.S., and roughly 55,000 EV charging stations.
The U.S. may need to increase the supply of EV charging by as much as 20 times, to over 1 million public and 28 million private chargers.
Ford already has the largest charging infrastructure, GM is planning to leverage its dealerships as local EV charging partners, and Tesla is opening its network to all cars.

Charging port for a Ford Motor Co. Mustang during the Washington Auto Show in Washington, D.C., on Friday, Jan. 21, 2022.
Al Drago | Bloomberg | Getty Images

More people than ever are buying electric vehicles. There are about 2 million EVs on the road in the U.S., up six-fold since 2016, but the number of EVs is still a very small slice of the more than 280 million vehicles in operation. Some factors, such as upfront cost and battery range, are largely manufacturing and innovation challenges being handled inside companies. But another source of consumer resistance opens up a complex set of questions that will need to be addressed on a macro level – the availability of charging stations and a power grid that can handle them.
Currently, cars and trucks combine to produce about one-fifth of green-house gas emissions. In order to meet net-zero emissions targets in the decades ahead, consumers are going to have to buy a lot of electric vehicles, and they are going to need a lot of places to charge them. The Department of Energy actively tracks the total number of public charging stations (the total number of charging ports is higher) in the country, a number that now stands at 55,000. If that sounds like a lot, consider that there are close to three times as many gas stations. Also, bear in mind that although EV charge times vary widely, they are significantly slower than gassing up, so congestion is a significant issue at charging stations. 

According to a recent McKinsey & Company Report, about 20-times more charging stations will be needed than are now available, up to 1.2 million public chargers.
Where competition has been an important part of EV innovation, public and private cooperation will help to drive development of EV-charging infrastructure. The Biden administration recently announced new standards for EV charging in line with its goal of installing 500,000 additional charging stations by 2030, and the $7.5 billion set aside by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law represents the government’s first investment in EV chargers. The minimum standards will help establish the groundwork for states to build charging station projects that are accessible to all drivers regardless of the location, EV brand or charging company.
“Public funding is especially important for highway corridor charging given the challenging business case as the EV market continues grow,” said a GM spokesman.
Infrastructure doesn’t have the appeal of splashy new vehicle rollouts like the Chevy Silverado EV or Ford’s electric F-150 Lightning pickup, and as the GM spokesman explained, there is an ongoing need for cross-sector collaboration and policy support to streamline permitting, proactively engage electric utilities, accelerate siting and grid interconnection timelines, and eliminate other outstanding infrastructure deployment barriers.
“This really requires an ‘all hands on deck’ approach,” he said.

Part of the shortfall of charging infrastructure has to do with the nature of EV purchases thus far. Tesla represents 80% of the EV market in the U.S. With an entry-level Tesla costing around $50,000 and 80% of Tesla owners charging at home, the development of public charging stations has not kept pace with future needs. 
But there are signs this is changing. 
Tesla, which had used its own proprietary technology for its Supercharger network, has been moving away from that model. Last July, Tesla CEO Elon Musk noted in a tweet that Tesla created its own network because none existed. “We created our own connector, as there was no standard back then & Tesla was only maker of long range electric cars. That said, we’re making our Supercharger network open to all other EVs.” 
As GM sees it, the sheer number of chargers, while important, is only part of the story.
“We believe the focus needs to be on building an overall charging ecosystem that enables convenient, reliable, affordable charging access for all, and this is what we’re trying to do with Ultium Charge 360,” the GM spokesman said. This includes expanding access at home (including multi-family housing), at work, and in strategic public locations, as well as for additional use cases like fleets. “It also means getting the right chargers in the right locations to meet customer needs and build confidence both now and in the future,” he said.
At the Future of the Car conference in May, Musk said that Tesla will add CCS connectors to its Supercharger network: “It’s a little trickier in the U.S. because we have a different connector than the rest of the industry, but we will be adding the rest of the industry connector as an option to Superchargers in the U.S.,” Musk said. The combined-charger system (CCS) is standard across Europe, and adding the Tesla adapter gives Tesla-owners access to more charging options, combined with allowing non-Tesla owners access to the Supercharger network. 
In April, Musk — whose relationship with the Biden administration, and Democratic Party, has been tense — sat down with Biden officials and GM CEO Mary Barra to discuss EV-charging infrastructure. The Department of Transportation described the event in cooperative terms: “​​Broad consensus that charging stations and vehicles need to be interoperable and provide a seamless user experience, no matter what car you drive or where you charge your EV,” said a DoT statement.
Over the next ten years, Ford plans to increase spending on EVs by as much as $20 billion. Its BlueOval Charging Network is the largest public charging network in North America, with close to 20,000 charging stations featuring 60,000-plus plugs. Speaking about the rapid acceleration of its EV plans, Ford CEO Jim Farley said at a recent EV launch event, “That’s something that no one would have believed just two years ago from us.”
The culture surrounding EV-charging stations differs significantly from that of gas stations, with the prevalence of at-home charging raising questions about equity and access, and a divide between urban and rural areas, according to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. There are significant parts of rural America where one could drive for some time without seeing an EV-charging station, while filling stations punctuate the landscape at regular intervals. GM and Ford will have to be a big part of this essential effort to combat “charging deserts.”
GM, through its Dealer Community Charging Program, will distribute up to 10 charging stations to its EV dealers. This will add some 40,000 stations, evenly distributed across the country, particularly in underserved areas. This will help place many consumers in range of charging: nearly 90% of Americans live within 10 miles of a GM dealership. As part of a $750 million initiative, these stations can be distributed at the discretion of the GM dealerships throughout their communities.
“We want to give customers the right tools and access to charging where and when they need it,” GM President Mark Reuss said in a statement last October about its goals, “while working with our dealer network to accelerate the expansion of accessible charging in underserved, rural and urban areas.”
GM expects most charging will occur at home, which is convenient for most customers. McKinsey estimates that the U.S. will need 28 million private chargers by 2030. GM’s Ultium smart chargers, which will be available later this year, will give customers and businesses the opportunity to roll the cost into lease payments and vehicle loans.
It is also placing charging in public locations where customers are already spending time intervals of 30 minutes to a few hours — such as grocery stores and gyms – to enable more convenient public charging. An example of this is GM’s collaboration with EVgo to install 3,250 DC fast chargers in major metropolitan areas by the end of 2025.
As challenging as the issue of charging deserts is the question of urban infrastructure, where even willing buyers – many of whom are also apartment dwellers – may have significant challenges in locating convenient and reliable charging stations. In an urban setting or in the case of urban fleets, a big issue is lack of garages or other facilities where individual charging stalls could be deployed. According to Yury Dvorkin, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and member of the C2SMART Tier 1 Transport Center at NYU Tandon, a key solution is public charging infrastructure, which needs to be high-wattage (to ensure high charging power and thus charging speed) and multi-stall (to ensure that many EVs can charge at the same time).
“If you can buy a relatively cheap EV (if you collect all incentives and tax benefits), the purchasing price is affordable to a vast number of people living in U.S. urban areas and the real limit for adoption is in fact access to public charging infrastructure,” Dvorkin said. 
The major automakers are calling for an extension of those government incentives for EV purchases. Meanwhile, the recent infrastructure funding is an “important step forward” for EV infrastructure, Dvorkin said, but more as an opening to further R&D than a cure all.
There are numerous “techno-economic challenges,” Dvorkin said, to be solved beyond the direct control of the auto companies. Primary ones are permitting restrictions and, more essentially, power grid limitations. “Permitting is still a challenge and it may take months until an EV charging station is approved,” he said. “And there is a need to ensure that the grid is capable of delivering electric power to the EV charging stations; this requires the development of tools for deciding where EV charging infrastructure should be deployed in order to satisfy consumer demand and power grid limits.”
Actions from legacy automakers like GM and Ford underscore the cultural shift built into the move toward EVs and can spur a change in the national automotive culture. Although later to the game than Tesla, the big automakers represent core notions of the automobile long woven into the American imagination: freedom, possibility, escape — none of which play out very well if you can’t keep your battery charged. As GM and Ford pick up the pace of their EV manufacturing, and Tesla expands access to its EV-charging infrastructure, the larger imagination can move with them, with more readily available charging along the way.
“It’s Ford Motor Company … the Model-T. This is what we do. We aren’t some new start-up,” Farley recently told CNBC.  
–By Trevor Laurence Jockims, special to CNBC.com More