Sky, HBO team up to produce dramas
LONDON -- Sky PLC and HBO are widening a co-production partnership with a commitment to spend $250 million on dramas to counter entertainment heavyweights including Netflix Inc. and Amazon.com Inc.
Sky, the European pay-TV company being acquired by Rupert Murdoch's 21st Century Fox Inc., will seek to produce two high-end dramas a year with Time Warner Inc.'s HBO, in the deal announced last week. The companies will aim to get the first production onscreen in 2018. Sky has existing rights to show HBO programs on its Sky Atlantic channel until 2020.
"Always the search is to get the very best productions," Sky Chief Executive Officer Jeremy Darroch said on a call with reporters. "It's all part of the mix and part of an ecosystem where we're trying to work with the very best producers and distributors around the world."
The deal builds on the three-way collaboration with France's Canal Plus that created The Young Pope, a drama about the fictional Pius XIII, the first-ever American pope. Sky is broadening its reach and diversifying from its core sports TV offering by boosting spending on entertainment. It's increasingly buying stakes in production companies and investing in its own studio business.
-- Bloomberg News
Nevada utility completes solar array
BOULDER CITY, Nev. -- Nevada's dominant electric utility is marking completion of a solar power array in the desert outside Las Vegas.
Officials with NV Energy and Alabama-based Southern Power and SunPower said recently the Boulder Solar I facility began providing 100 megawatts of electricity last December. That's enough to power 30,000 homes during daytime hours.
The plant has almost 290,000 solar panels on nearly 1 square mile in a dry lake bed in the Eldorado Valley area of Boulder City. That's about 20 miles east of Las Vegas.
The adjacent Boulder Solar II plant produces another 50 megawatts for NV Energy, and it helps power Las Vegas city buildings, parks and lighting.
Publicly traded NV Energy is owned by Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary MidAmerican Energy Co. of Des Moines, Iowa.
-- The Associated Press
App to spotlight vehicle charging sites
Apple is expanding the capabilities of its Maps app in Europe to help users charge their electric vehicles or find bike rental hubs.
The company has added the locations of the U.K.'s electric vehicle charging stations by incorporating data from Munich-based Cirrantic's Moovility service, which lists recharging points for cars made by Tesla and Nissan, among others.
It has also added public bicycle rental and drop-off points to maps of London, New York and Paris in a catch-up to longtime mobile navigation leader Google, which has listed such stations in multiple countries for some time. Apple laid out its updates to Maps in a briefing in London last week.
Improving its mapping products has become a key focal point for Apple in its battle with Google.
Apple introduced electric vehicle charging points in Maps in the U.S. in December. In May last year, Apple's Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said his company would open a new Indian development center in Hyderabad, with a specific focus on speeding up the development of more competitive mapping tools. It plans to employ as many as 4,000 people in that facility.
-- Bloomberg News
Toyota to test hydrogen-powered truck
LOS ANGELES -- The newest heavy-duty truck set to operate at the Port of Los Angeles emits an unusual byproduct that California could certainly use more of: water.
Toyota Motor Corp.'s hydrogen fuel-cell truck, which will emit nothing but vapor, will begin a feasibility study at the port this summer. The Japanese automaker unveiled the concept recently and will start testing it in short-distance fleets that run back and forth between the city's docks and nearby warehouses operated by retailing giants.
Swapping internal-combustion engines for fuel-cell stacks will support Gov. Jerry Brown's efforts to cut emissions from freight movement in California.
"We think this is a really important step to demonstrate the capability of fuel cell," Bob Carter, the president of Toyota's U.S. sales unit, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. Toyota developed the powertrain for the semi truck, which was built by Paccar Inc., he said.
-- Bloomberg News
N.Y. moves to require Uber tip option
NEW YORK -- New Yorkers have for years been able to tip a taxi driver by adding a few dollars to their bill before swiping a credit card. But they cannot add a tip when they use the popular ride-hailing app Uber.
Now officials in New York City are moving to require Uber to provide a tipping option in the app.
The city's Taxi and Limousine Commission announced a proposal last week requiring car services that accept only credit cards to allow passengers to tip the driver using their card.
"This rule proposal will be an important first step to improve earning potential in the for-hire vehicle industry, but it is just one piece of a more comprehensive effort to improve the economic well-being of drivers," Meera Joshi, the city's taxi commissioner, said in a statement.
The decision was prompted by a petition from the Independent Drivers Guild, a group representing Uber drivers in New York.
A spokesman for Uber, Alix Anfang, said the company would review the proposal.
-- The New York Times
PayPal, Google team up for payments
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- PayPal Holdings Inc. and Alphabet Inc.'s Google deepened their relationship with a new agreement that enables payments through the tap of a phone from PayPal accounts at thousands of new retail locations.
The partnership lets PayPal users link their accounts to Android Pay, Google's digital wallet, on smartphones running most versions of the Android operating system. This makes PayPal a funding option when people use Android Pay in locations including Walgreens Boots Alliance drugstores and Dunkin' Donuts restaurants.
PayPal was added as a payment method for Google's Play app and digital content store almost three years ago.
PayPal CEO Dan Schulman has been busy cutting deals with banks, credit card issuers and wireless carriers to convert PayPal from a payments button on websites into a versatile financial tool used to make payments in stores, transfer money overseas and shop from smartphones on the go.
The Android Pay deal increases PayPal's reach in stores, which Schulman sees as key to getting customers to use PayPal more frequently than the current average of two to three transactions per month.
-- Bloomberg News
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