Kia’s EV6, which shares a platform, battery, motors and more with Hyundai’s Ioniq 5, will start at $42,115 including the $1,215 destination charge, the company announced. That sum will get you the base “Light” rear-wheel drive (RWD) model with a 167-horsepower motor and 58-kWh battery pack delivering a 232-mile EPA range. The model is eligible for a full $7,500 federal tax credit, which would reduce the price down to $34,615. 

That’s $1,190 more than the Ioniq 5, if you’re keeping score at home. While the two vehicles share the same platform and offer similar performance, the Ioniq 5 has a more edgy, angular design, while the EV6 offers a more classic, rounded look. 

Kia’s higher-end EV6 models jump considerably in price. The “Wind” RWD EV6 with the 77.4-kWH battery pack and 225-horsepower motor starts at $48,215, offering an EPA range of 310 miles. Meanwhile, the GT-Line RWD comes with more luxurious options but the same drivetrain and starts at $52,415. Both the Wind and GT-Line models can be updated to all-wheel-drive (AWD) starting at $52,115 and $57,115, respectively. EPA range drops to 274 miles for both models, again eligible for $7,500 federal tax credits.

By comparison, Ford’s Mustang Mach-E starts at $44,995, while the Tesla Model 3 has a $46,490 MSRP and the Volkswagen ID.4 is $39,995, all before any incentives. 

In our road test with the Ioniq 5, we found that Hyundai had produced a retro-futuristic winner that offers cutting-edge tech and is a pleasure to drive. The EV6 will hopefully live up to that same standard — the first models are expected to arrive at dealers in the coming weeks.

Source: Engadget – Kia’s EV6 pricing will start at ,115 when it goes on sale in the coming weeks

The SAT standardized college admissions tests will be taken exclusively on computers starting in 2024, The New York Times has reported. The new system will spell the end to tests taken on paper with No. 2 pencils, a right of passage for American high school students since the SAT was first administered nearly a hundred years ago.

Students will instead complete the exams on laptops or tablets, either their own or devices issued by the school. If students don’t have a device, the board will provide one on the test day. And if a student loses power or connectivity, “the digital SAT has been designed to ensure they won’t lose their work or time while they reconnect,” said the College Board, which administers the tests.

On top of the technical changes, the testing time will be shortened to two hours instead of three. It’ll feature shorter reading passages with one question for each, reflecting a wider range of topics more representative of what students will see in college. For the math section, calculators will finally be allowed. And students and teachers will get test scores in days rather than weeks, with educators no longer having to deal with packing, sorting or shipping test materials. 

It felt a lot less stressful, and whole lot quicker than I thought it’d be.

The College Board said that in pilot testing, 80 percent of students found the digital-only tests less stressful. “It felt a lot less stressful, and whole lot quicker than I thought it’d be,” 11th grade student Natalia Cossio told the board. “The shorter passages helped me concentrate more on what the question wanted me to do.”

The new testing standard was announced amid a growing trend for schools across the US to drop the SAT (or rival ACT) tests altogether. For Fall 2022, around 1,815 schools (of nearly 4,000 degree-granting institutions) have eliminated the requirement for standardized test scores, according to the FairTest non-profit foundation. 

“Schools that did not mandate ACT/SAT submission last year generally received more applicants, better academically qualified applicants and a more diverse pool of applicants,” FairTest Executive Director Bob Schaeffer told the Los Angeles Times last year. 

Critics have also noted that the SAT tests handicap students who don’t have access to expensive test preparation courses or who can’t afford to take the $55 test multiple times. The digital SAT shift “does not magically transform it to a more accurate, fairer or valid tool for assessing college readiness,” Schaefer told the NYT. The College Board, meanwhile, has said that SAT scores can actually help students who don’t have top-flight grade-point averages. 

Source: Engadget – The SAT will drop the pencil and go completely digital by 2024

Amazon won’t be paying most warehouse workers in the US to quit their jobs this year. According to The Information, the e-commerce giant has paused its “pay-to-quit” program for majority of its workers for 2022, and it’s unclear if it will be reinstated. The publication has obtained a copy of Amazon’s message to its employees, which was then verified by a spokesperson from the company. Typically, Amazon pays its warehouse workers up to $5,000 to quit their jobs after peak seasons like the holidays as a way to pare down its workforce in the slowdown that follows. 

Jeff Bezos also once told shareholders in a newsletter that it’s a way to give employees an out if they’re no longer happy working for Amazon. The company would usually make “The Offer,” as it’s also called, towards the end of the first quarter of the year. For 2022, however, it told employees that only workers who graduated from Amazon’s Career Choice training program will be eligible for the payout. They’re also only eligible within 90 days after graduating. Amazon pays tuition reimbursements for workers part of the Career Choice program, which expands this January to include GEDs, English as a Second Language (ESL) certificates and bachelor’s degrees. It only used to cover certificates for technical skills and associate degrees.

Karen Riley Sawyer, the company’s representative, has confirmed the changes to the pay-to-quit program, telling The Information that it’s currently only available “to graduates of Career Choice to support their transition to a new career should they choose to leverage their new certifications.” While Sawyer didn’t say why the program’s scope has been narrowed down, it could be because vaccine mandates and the rising infection rates caused by the spread of the Omicron variant are making it hard for Amazon to find adequate staffing. Earlier this month, Motherboard reported that over 1,800 workers at a single Amazon facility in New York were out on leave due to COVID. A source also told The Information that the warehouse had been facing severe staffing shortages over the past months. 

Source: Engadget – Amazon’s ‘pay-to-quit’ program won’t cover most US workers this year