• Nikola says its Nikola Two hydrogen-powered semi truck will have 500-750 miles of range, compared to the 300-500 miles Tesla has said its Semi will be able to drive between charges.
• Battery-powered vehicles require a trade-off between range and storage capacity, Nikola CEO Mark Russell told Business Insider.
• More range means a bigger battery, and less room for freight.
• Are you a current or former Nikola employee? Do you have an opinion about what it's like to work there? Contact this reporter at mmatousek@businessinsider.com, on Signal at 646-768-4712, or via his encrypted email address mmatousek@protonmail.com.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has mocked the idea that hydrogen fuel cells could serve as a viable alternative to batteries as a power source for electric vehicles. But, according to the electric-vehicle startup Nikola, which, among other products, plans to make semi trucks powered by hydrogen fuel cells, its models will have a range advantage over Tesla's freight truck, the Semi, which will run on batteries.

"Diesel's more energy-dense than a battery. Hydrogen's more energy-dense than diesel fuel. So we can get a freight load a long way with just a little bit of hydrogen," Nikola CEO Mark Russell said in an interview with Business Insider.

The Nikola Two semi truck will have 500-750 miles of range, the startup says, compared to the 300-500 miles offered by the Semi. Of course, like the other electric-vehicle startups that have promised head-turning specs, Nikola has not yet delivered any vehicles (it plans to release a battery-powered semi truck next year, with its hydrogen-powered models to follow in 2023), so it remains to be seen whether the production version of the Nikola Two will live up to the expectations the company has set.

But there's a simple reason the Nikola Two will be able to travel farther than the Semi between refuelings, according to Russell. Batteries are heavy and take up space, creating a trade-off between a semi truck's capacity and range. If you want more range, you'll need a bigger battery, which means you won't have as much room to carry freight. Russell gave as an example Anheuser-Busch, which has pre-ordered up to 800 semi trucks from Nikola. Anheuser-Busch transports beer from Los Angeles to Phoenix every day, Russell said, on a route that spans over 400 miles.

"If you tried to do that with batteries — to go 400 miles — then your battery is so big and heavy that you would have to take several pallets of beer, thousands of pounds of beer off of that truck and replace it with extra batteries to get that far," he said.

Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.

One potential issue with hydrogen-powered vehicles, and a possible reason why they're not as popular with consumers as battery-powered vehicles, is that they require new refueling infrastructure; you can't plug in a hydrogen-powered vehicle at your home or business. To address that concern, Nikola is building a network of fueling stations that will begin in California and eventually spread across North America and Europe. The cost of fuel will be included in the lease agreements it signs with customers.

Are you a current or former Nikola employee? Do you have an opinion about what it's like to work there? Contact this reporter at mmatousek@businessinsider.com, on Signal at 646-768-4712, or via his encrypted email address mmatousek@protonmail.com.

• Read more:
• Car companies will sacrifice autonomous vehicles before they cut spending on EVs as the auto industry faces its biggest threat since the 2008 financial crisis, an expert says
• Tesla competitor Nikola Motor's electric pickup truck reservations are now open. Here's how you can reserve the Badger.
• MORGAN STANLEY: These 48 stocks could help investors who want to cash in on the electric-vehicle revolution
• We compared the Tesla Cybertruck, Rivian R1T, and 5 other upcoming electric pickup trucks by 11 different specs. The Cybertruck won nearly half.

SEE ALSO: This $93,450 RV sleeps 4 and has its own workspace on board to make it an office on wheels — see inside the Business Line

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Why thoroughbred horse semen is the world's most expensive liquid

• I tested a $396,994 Ferrari F8 Spider, the convertible version of Ferrari's extremely powerful F8 Tributo supercar.
• The F8 Spider rocks a 710-horsepower, twin-turbocharged V8.
• The engine comes from the track-oriented 488 Pista. It's the most powerful motor Ferrari has ever dropped into a mid-engine production car.
• Despite mountain-moving power and blistering speed, I found the F8 Spider to be oddly soothing to drive. It's almost too good for it's own good.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

This wasn't my first go-round with a drop-top, mid-engine prancing horse supercar based on the stupendous Ferrari 488.

In 2018, I drove the convertible, or "Spider" version of the 488 up to Lime Rock Park in Connecticut to watch non-ragtop, racing-car versions of the car circle the famous track for an IMSA event.

Since then, Ferrari has updated the 488 and changed the name to "F8 Tributo," a reference to the potent V8 that propels the machine. I haven't yet had a crack at the hardtop, but Ferrari did let me borrow a $397,000 example of the Spider, in a dashing "Giallo Modena" paint job, for a mere day to make a run out to the eastern tip of Long Island.

I'll spoil the ending and let you know right now that the Ferrari was almost too good for its own good. Here's why:

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The 2020 Ferrari F8 Spider, in all it's beachfront, bright-yellow glory! My test car started at $297,250. But options, options, and more options took the sticker to a hair under $397,000.

The F8 Spider is the convertible version of the F8 Tributo, which arrived in 2019 ...

... To replace the 488 in Ferrari's lineup. The F8 Tributo sported a completely redesigned front end.

Read the review.

I borrowed the convertible version of the 488 to take a drive up to Lime Rock Park, a legendary track in the Connecticut countryside.

Read the review.

It wasn't all sand and sun for the F8 Spider on my drive, which covered about 400 miles, from the New Jersey suburbs to the Montauk, on Long Island. The F8 looked gorgeous in the golden light of an East Coast sunset.

This Ferrari has a retractable hardtop that neatly stows in a compartment behind the cockpit. It disappears in about 20 seconds.

The most prominent new feature for the F8 Spider, as with the F8 Tributo, is an "S-duct" in the front that pipes air through the hood and intensifies downward pressure on the front wheels. It amps up downforce by 15%.

The arrangement is more Ferrari Enzo than 458 — the 488 predecessor was noted for its elegant fascia. But there's no debating the engineering.

The front splitter and ducting are all intended to shape the air around the F8 for performance, but it all adds up to a beautiful industrial design, even if it errs slightly on the side of aggression.

The "SJ" shields — Scuderia Ferrari, the origin of the Italian brand, Enzo Ferrari's racing operation — on each fender are $1,856 extra. As it turns out one of the less expensive options.

Pop that hood and you'll find the F8 Spider's front trunk, or "frunk," which offered just enough stowage for an overnight bag and a large tote. Pack light!

The drive out to Montauk found me contemplating this Hiroshi Sugimoto-esque view of the Atlantic Ocean.

The following day, I took the Ferrari F8 Spider to the beach.

The rear louvers vent the engine — and evoke the Ferrari F40, an iconic late-80s-early-1990s Ferrari. Although they don't evoke it as earnestly as the Tributo.

Here's the F40, just so you know what I'm talking about.

And while the prancing horse takes up some modest real estate up front, the classic Ferrari script is rendered in chrome atop the engine compartment.

The F8's spoiler was actually pretty low-key, compared to some of the airplane lifters I've had riding behind me on some recent cars. It's a nod to the F40's signature tall wing, with a more modest spoiler wrapping around the tail lights.

A pair of titanium exhaust pipes is $2,531. The diffuser completes the airflow efforts that commence up front.

Ferrari F8 Spider

The dynamically-spoked, "Glossy Silver" forged wheels added $6,243 to the price tag ...

... front and rear.

The blue brake calipers and ventilated discs, also front and rear, combined to deliver prodigious stopping power.

The vane on this duct is a carryover from the 488.

The F8's headlights are relatively straightforward, though swept-back. They're less jewel-like in the interior complexity than some of the LED rigs I've seen of late.

But they're effective!

The way they shape to the fender, forming a gentle angle, is hypnotic.

The F8 Spider is a magnificent, flowing piece of automotive design, and you can decide for yourself if the silhouette benefits or suffers from having the roof retracted. I know what my choice would be!

Let's slide inside and check out that "Blu Sterling" interior.

Even the carpeting is "Blu," by the way.

Ferrari invites you to never forget what you're sitting in.

The F8 Spider might not look that roomy, and as a two-seater, it isn't. But because the engine is amidships, the cabin has an open, airy quality, even with the top down. Those "Corsa" carbon-fiber racing seats are ... $9,112.

The stripes were another $1,181. Honestly, I expected the seats to be unforgiving over a few hundred miles, but they were surprisingly easygoing.

The F8's cabin is organized around the car's steering wheel.

Carbon fiber, leather, and the prancing horse, all together, as well as turn signals and just about everything one needs to operate the car.

The famous red stop-start button, alongside the "bumpy road" button that adjusts the suspension for uneven terrain.

The manettino is totally Formula One and allows quick switches among three drive modes. You can deactivate the traction and stability control, but don't.

The yellow tachometer dominates the instrument cluster.

This small screen to the right is where infotainment happens. Shockingly, everything from Bluetooth integration to navigation to media is available, controlled using a small dashboard interface. It isn't modern, but it's refreshingly un-distracting.

Cruise control is to the left.

These long, elegant, carbon-fiber paddle shifters are so, so good.

Otherwise, the F8's instrumentation and controls are exceptionally minimal.

Gotta love the key-fob holder.

The passenger also has a digital display panel, so two can play along.

I wouldn't call the F8's interior over-the-top luxurious, but it does exude a premium, handcrafted vibe just about everywhere.

Lots of space in the glove compartment!

The JBL premium audio system sounded excellent (it was a $6,200 upgrade).

OK, the moment we've all been waiting for! Let's open the hatch and have a gander at the engine — the thrumming heart of the F8.

Here we have a 710-horsepower, twin-turbocharged, 3.9-liter V8, making 568 pound-feet of torque.

Sending the power to the rear wheels through a seven-speed dual-clutch transmission, the F8 Spider blasts through the 0-60 mph run in three seconds and tops out north of 210 mph.

Fuel economy? Not good, maybe 15-16 mpg in combined highway-city driving. But while in previous Ferrari road tests I've usually had to make a stop at a gas station, this time around I drove from the Jersey 'burbs to the end of Long Island and back — and hadn't run out of gas.

So what's the verdict?

The F8 Spider, like the F8 Tributo, has taken the spectacular twin-turbo V8 from the 488 and via the 488 Pista, jacked the horsepower up to an impressive level. You might think that would make for a more beastly machine than the 488, which produced an already stunning 661 hp.

Ironically, it doesn't. If anything, driving the F8 Spider is a more ... dare I say "mellow" experience than managing the 488 Spider. Mellow is the wrong word, of course. What Ferrari's engineers have done, along with intensifying the power, is to tweak the F8 so that it's aerodynamic stability encourages the driver to dig into the extra oomph. 

It's a neat trick. A reality-distortion field, even. How can the car be smoothing out and settling down, even as I compress the throttle more and more and more and watch the tach move closer to that 8,000 rpm redline? Whistling turbos, screaming exhaust, that sacred wild Ferrari sound, and yet the speed and noise induce a focused trace rather than a fearful desire to rein in the car.

To be honest, in the context of a mid-engine Ferrari, the calm is unsettling, at least initially. One can ruffle it, often considerably, simply by flicking the manettino to the "Race" setting, breaking out the foot of lead, and unleashing hell. But the metaphor of an iceberg occurred to me: I was seeing but a small piece of what the F8 had to offer. I could tell that there was much, much more.

This is the ever-present problem that manifests when 710 horsepower and Ferrari technology take to roads where the posted speed limit is something of an insult to the vehicle. Fortunately, the F8 is a pleasure to cruise in, ramping up and down the torque curve and savoring the visceral thrills of that stonking V8, the blabs and burbles of the exhaust, the whiz of the turbos, the decisive yet never technocratic nature of the transmission when paddle-shifting the gears.

The convertible makes the whole experience all the more satisfying, especially if you have a medium-warm, early summer sunsplashed day and some winding country roads to wend and wind around, finessing the F8's power and engaging the quick yet solid steering, safe in the knowledge that the superb brakes and fat sticky tires will keep you out of trouble.

A few hours of this and I found myself able to — I kid you not — meditate on the machine. "F8... F8... F8," became my mantra. I explored subtle subtexts. Delved into the magical balance of monumental horsepower and punishing torque with beauty and Italian verve. With the wind whipping through my straw hat. 

In the end, the F8 Spider was almost too good for its own good. I expect Ferrari sports cars to be more challenging. I crave it. Even if I can't tap the fully wild, I want that shivering glimpse. This time around, however, I was more soothed than intimidated. This was more a function of the F8 Spider being constrained by normality than any evasion of its nature. And I knew at any time I could throw a switch and summon mad urges.

But for hundreds of miles, in a Ferrari supercar, I was utterly at peace.

Welcome to Wall Street Insider, where we take you behind the scenes of the finance team's biggest scoops and deep dives from the past week. 

If you aren't yet a subscriber to Wall Street Insider, you can sign up here.

Dealmaking activity has fallen off a cliff this year, as executives focus on steering their existing businesses through the havoc caused by the coronavirus crisis instead of seeking out new deals. Data from Refinitiv released this week showed that the drop in activity was more pronounced for bigger M&A transactions, with the overall value of deals worth more than $5 billion down 53% year-on-year.

As Alex Morrell reports, the fading memories of the megadeals of the last few years are hitting boutique banks. Independent investment bank Perella Weinberg Partners was ramping up its footprint after an explosive start in 2016, landing one of the largest mergers in history — AT&T's $100 billion deal for Time Warner. 

But since then, deals have been scarce for Perella's media and telecom team, and the group has been gutted by departures in 2020. Alex dives into how experienced media and telecom bankers have been laid off, quietly asked to leave, or departed for other firms.

Read the full story here: 

After flashy hires and a big buildout, Perella Weinberg's media and telecom team has been gutted. We tracked the exodus — and what it says about the landscape for blockbuster M&A deals.

Over in the world of real estate, big office deals are stalling as banks grow cautious about extending debt over concerns about the future of the workplace. Dan Geiger reports on how this is especially perilous for real estate investors who have pledged hundreds of millions of dollars to enter into contracts for buildings like the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco. 

Despite the uncertainty of when or how people will occupy spaces like they did in the pre-pandemic era, there are real estate players looking far into the future. As Dan reports, a Las Vegas landlord, which owns some of the strip's biggest casino resorts like Caesars Palace, is plotting the city's next mega-project. Recruiting for executives to lead new projects is also picking up, reports Alex Nicoll, who spoke to four recruiters on the roles they're looking to fill.

Keep reading for a look at how private equity and hedge fund firms are ramping up their efforts in impact investing; some due diligence drama between Anthony Scaramucci and Merrill Lynch Wealth Management; and the story behind a JPMorgan trading team's hot streak. 

Have a great holiday weekend, 

Michelle Abrego

(Meredith is on vacation and will be back next week.)

PE goes ESG

The coronavirus pandemic and the ongoing reckoning of racial justice and equity in the workplace have put ESG investing at the forefront of the conversations in the asset management business.

As Casey Sullivan and Bradley Saacks report, some private-equity firms and activist hedge funds are committing resources and capital to ESG and impact investing.

Read the full story here: 

Big investors like Apollo and Carlyle are clamoring for a piece of the $30 trillion ESG space. We spoke to 15 insiders about how they're ramping up hires, raising money, and striking data-driven deals.

The Mooch vs. Merrill 

SkyBridge founder Anthony Scaramucci sent a 6-page, strongly-worded memo to Andy Sieg, the president of Merrill Lynch Wealth Management, on Thursday after the company downgraded its flagship fund, Meghan Morris reveals. 

In a leaked memo seen by Business Insider, Scaramucci said Merrill Lynch published an inaccurate due diligence report. He called the firms' relationship "yet another casualty of the pandemic," writing that the report "reflects a breakdown in communication" between the firms – one he didn't think would happen if executives had met in person.

Read the full story here:

LEAKED MEMO: Anthony Scaramucci mourns his relationship with $2.2 trillion Merrill Lynch after it downgraded SkyBridge's main fund

Victorious volatility trades

Markets have produced bizarre and historic results in the first half of 2020, creating stark swings and diverging fortunes for traders.

As Alex Morrell reports, that's especially true in the world of equity derivatives and the traders that bet on volatility, where some investment funds have flamed out spectacularly while many Wall Street banks have minted hundreds of millions in revenues.

Read the full story here: 

JPMorgan volatility traders raked in $700 million through June — 3 times what they brought in for all of 2019. Here's how they outpaced Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley on the hottest trade of the year.

Hackers are targeting private equity firms 

Cyberattacks have been on the rise in 2020 due to the pandemic, with financial services targeted the most.

Private equity, in particular, has been viewed as a viable new opportunity for cybercriminals as they have deep pockets and wire large sums of money, reports Dan DeFrancesco. While bigger PE firms have the resources to dedicate to cybersecurity, the process at small to mid-size shops remains a work in progress.

Read the full story here:

Cyberattacks against financial firms are up 238%. Experts explain why deep-pocketed private equity firms are most at risk.

The future of fintech is infrastructure  

As Shannen Balogh reports, fintechs are looking for ways to reimagine and disrupt core banking services that have been long dominated by infrastructure giants like FIS and Fiserv.

"They are all, as it currently stands, very good businesses with large customer bases who trust them, but the fact of the matter is they've fallen behind on technology," Tripp Shriner, partner at Point72 Ventures told Shannen.

Shriner isn't alone in his prediction. Goldman's investment banking head of fintech also says that the next trend to watch in fintech is players that focus on banks' core, often dated, infrastructure. 

Read more:

Business Insider events

One-click checkout startup Fast raised its $20 million Series A from investors including Index Ventures and buzzy fintech Stripe in May as it looks to take on Apple Pay to solve pain-points around password management and online checkout.

Join Business Insider reporter Shannen Balogh on Tuesday, July 14 at 1:30 p.m ET when she will speak with Domm Holland, Fast's co-founder and CEO, and Jan Hammer, general partner at Index Venture. They'll discuss how Holland came up with the idea for Fast, how to build a pitch deck, and what it takes to win over investors.

If you're a Business Insider subscriber, you can sign up here.

You can also join Business Insider on July 8 at 12 p.m. ET for "Planning for the Future in Uncertain Times," a free digital event and part of the Master Your Money series. Presented by Fidelity, it will explore components of a strong financial plan and how to adjust it given recent events. 

Click here to register for the Master your Money event.

Real estate

• Vacancy rates are soaring above 15% in Washington DC's normally recession-proof office market. Here's why some industry players are still optimistic.
• Meet Material Bank, a Bain-backed logistics startup disrupting the architecture industry. Here's a look at its vision for becoming the Amazon of design.

Careers

• How a Bank of America exec is partnering with a non-profit training program to tap into a diverse and underserved talent pool for Wall Street tech jobs

Wealth management & fintech

• Morgan Stanley financial advisers are starting to head back to offices around the country. Here's what they can expect when they return.

• An app helping families save for college used this pitch deck to raise $9 million from investors like Anthos Capital and NBA all-star Baron Davis

Going public

• A 179-year-old data shop just raised $1.7 billion in an IPO. Dun & Bradstreet's president walked us through its quick return to public markets and why the company's in high demand.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Here's what it's like to travel during the coronavirus outbreak

Digital transformation has just begun.

Not a single industry is safe from the unstoppable wave of digitization that is sweeping through finance, retail, healthcare, and more.

In 2020, we expect to see even more transformative developments that will change our businesses, careers, and lives.

To help you stay ahead of the curve, Business Insider Intelligence has put together a list of 30 Big Tech Predictions for 2020 across Banking, Connectivity & Tech, Digital Media, Payments & Commerce, Fintech, and Digital Health.

This exclusive report can be yours for FREE today.

Join the conversation about this story »

• Elon Musk on Saturday denied that the late convicted sex offender and multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein was given a tour of a SpaceX facility. 
• A photo showed Musk with Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's alleged co-conspirator who was arrested on Thursday, raising questions about his relationship to Musk. 
• In a statement to Vanity Fair last year, Musk distanced himself from Epstein, who he said was "obviously a creep."  
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Elon Musk refuted rumors Saturday that the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein toured his Space X facilities as a photo of Musk and Epstein's alleged co-conspirator — the recently arrested Ghislaine Maxwell— continues to re-circulate on social media.

"To the best our knowledge, he never toured SpaceX," Musk, the founder and CEO of SpaceX, tweeted Saturday. "Don't know where that comes from."

In response to the viral photo, which users have been sending to him on Twitter, the Tesla CEO said he did not know Maxwell and that he attended the party, which was hosted by Vanity Fair in 2014, with his then-wife.

"Real question is why did VF invite her?" Musk tweeted.

"Ghislaine simply inserted herself behind him in a photo he was posing for without his knowledge," a spokesperson told Business Insider about the photo in 2019 prior to its re-circulation as a result of her arrest. Photos of Maxwell and prominent figures — including President Donald Trump and former President Bill Clinton— have been widely shared amid her arrest.

On Thursday, the US Justice Department announced Maxwell was charged with enticing a minor to travel to engage in illegal sex acts, conspiracy to entice a minor to travel to engage in illegal sex acts, transporting a minor with the intent to engage in criminal sexual activity, conspiracy to transport a minor with the intent to engage in criminal sexual activity, and two counts of perjury. 

As Business Insider previously reported in January, two sources said that Epstein introduced Kimbal Musk — Elon Musk's brother — to a woman in his entourage reportedly in an effort to grow favor with Musk and gain access to his companies, including Tesla and SpaceX. 

"It almost seemed a little more transactional. The rumor has always been that Epstein facilitated introductions to beautiful women, looking for deal flow or access to capital," one source familiar with the couple told Business Insider.

According to the report, the efforts were at least somewhat successful as Epstein and "members of his entourage" were granted a private tour of Elon Musk's SpaceX facility in Hawthorne, California, in 2012, which Musk has now denied. As Business Insider reported, the tour had been organized by Musk's brother and it is unclear whether either Elon or Kimbal Musk were present when it reportedly occurred.

In a statement last year to Vanity Fair, Musk distanced himself from Musk, denying accusations he introduced Epstein to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and said he was at Epstein's Manhattan home for just a half-hour with his ex-wife, actress Talulah Riley. Musk said his ex-wife was interested in Epstein for a "novel she was writing." 

"We did not see anything inappropriate at all, apart from weird art," he said last year. "He tried repeatedly to get me to visit his island. I declined."

Read more: 

Nikola's CEO gives the biggest reason why businesses should buy the Nikola Two instead of Tesla's Semi truck

These Yale students built an app that makes it super simple for people to communicate with incarcerated loved ones for free

Rahul Narang's tech fund has gotten top marks for risk-adjusted returns for 2 years running. He's done it in part by focusing on stocks that other investors won't touch.

Why an early exec quit unicorn food delivery startup Deliveroo to launch a food business in the middle of a pandemic

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Inside London during COVID-19 lockdown

• There's a debate raging over whether in-game loot boxes encourage kids to gamble.
• In the UK, the House of Lords this week recommended the legal reclassification of loot boxes in video games as gambling.
• Loot boxes are a mechanic where a player pays either with in-game currency or real money for a randomized in-game item. These items can sometimes be traded amongst players for real money as well.
• Experts are divided over whether paying for loot boxes has a causal link to gambling and one told Business Insider it could be "apocalyptically stupid" to regulate loot boxes like gambling without doing more research.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The video game industry might have a fight on its hands as the UK looks poised to reclassify a popular game mechanic as gambling.

On Thursday the House of Lords published a report on the harms of gambling, which found that in the UK there are 55,000 problem gamblers aged between 11 and 15.

Included in the report's findings on problem gambling was the recommendation that so-called "loot boxes" in video games be immediately reclassified by the government to fall under the remit of 2005 Gambling Act.

Loot boxes have become a common feature in games, although they are far from beloved by many gamers.

Exactly how they work varies from game to game, but generally they work like this: you buy a loot box using either in-game currency or real money, and it churns out a randomized reward. These rewards normally give players something superficial, a new item of clothing they can give their game character for example, and don't give them any actual edge over other players in the game.

Loot boxes can be found in mainstream games such as "Fortnite," "Overwatch" and the "FIFA" franchise.

Research from the University of York found in 2019 that 71% of the top games on Steam, a popular platform where people download games, contained loot boxes.

In some games, players are able to trade the rewards they get from loot boxes with each other for real money. Loot boxes and this accompanying practice of trading items are collectively known as "microtransactions." In 2018 a report from analysts at Juniper Research found microtransactions generated $30 billion in sales for gaming firms or apps, and projected that the industry could be worth $50 billion by 2022.

The UK committee that published this week's report took evidence from Dr David Zendle, a lecturer in computer science at the University of York.

Dr Zendle's research has shown there is a correlation between spending money on loot boxes and problem gambling.

In written evidence submitted to the committee, Dr Zendle said spending money on loot boxes could be a "gateway" to gambling.

Correlation versus causation

In his evidence to the committee, Zendle said it may not be that loot boxes are a leading people to gambling, but rather people who enjoy gambling already are more likely to be drawn to loot boxes.

"Problem gambling is characterized by uncontrolled excessive spending on gambling. Loot boxes share many similarities with gambling. It therefore makes sense that this uncontrolled spending may transfer to loot boxes too," he wrote.

For some researchers, the data simply isn't there to justify new laws.

"We're really only in the early phases of gathering scientific research evidence about the nature of loot box effects," Professor Pete Etchells, a psychologist specializing in video games at Bath Spa University, told Business Insider. "What we really need is a clearer and stronger evidence base before legislation is changed,"

"Trying to crack a nut with this sledgehammer"

Professor Andrew Przybylski of the Oxford Internet Institute agreed that more research would need to be done to properly regulate loot boxes, and warned that jumping to regulate loot boxes like gambling is putting the cart before the horse.

"If loot boxes are bad I want to know why they're bad," Przybylski told Business Insider, adding that jumping to regulate loot boxes could distract from meaningful legislation to actually counteract problem gambling.

"I want harmful things in games to be identified and removed. But I just get a sense people are going to pat themselves on the back, say 'job done,' and a decade from now there'll be more than 55,000 problem gamblers between the ages of 11 and 16."

Przybylski also said that blanket regulation of video games with loot box mechanics as gambling would be "apocalyptically stupid," as this would essentially mean slapping an 18+ label on a wide range of games aimed at children, such as "Fortnite" and "FIFA."

He compared the call for immediate regulation with the UK's ill-fated age-verification porn block law, which was proposed in 2017 and was eventually scrapped in 2019 after concerns over whether it could be enforced eventually tanked the project.

"Trying to crack a nut with this sledgehammer [...] five years from now we'll see how stupid it is," he said.

Although the evidence on whether there's a causal link between loot boxes and gambling is equivocal, Dr Zendle told Business Insider that the video game industry brought this on itself.

"Loot boxes have been prevalent for more than half a decade," he said. "Rather than help to discover whether there are potential negative consequences from this widespread in-game feature, industry representatives have instead engaged in what I perceive as a system of obfuscation and non-cooperation."

"Industry actions have muddied the waters to the extent that the specific harms emerging from loot boxes will likely not be known for many years. This leaves regulators and policymakers few options when it comes to protecting the people they are responsible for," he added.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: What makes 'Parasite' so shocking is the twist that happens in a 10-minute sequence

• Lordstown Motors has unveiled its flagship electric pickup truck, the Endurance.
• The electric pickup truck is will soon be saturated with both startups like Lordstown Motors, and veteran automakers such as Ford and Tesla.
• According to Lordstown Motors, the Endurance will be the first electric pickup truck to market in the US.
• The single-motor rear-wheel-drive Cybertruck and the Endurance have several similar specs, such as the towing capacities and range.
• Here is the Cybertruck and Endurance, compared.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The electric pickup truck market is quickly becoming saturated with both startups and veteran automakers, and the latest company to officially debut its electric pickup is Lordstown Motors and its Endurance truck.

The official Endurance reveal on June 25 at the Lordstown Motors factory in Ohio, while not as wildly hyped as the first-ever electric pickup truck debut by Tesla, saw guests like Vice President Mike Pence and US Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette. 

Although Tesla held its unveiling event seven months before Lordstown Motors, the Endurance is set to beat the controversial Cybertruck to the market. According to Lordstown, the Endurance will be the first fully electric pickup truck in the US with plans to begin deliveries in the late summer of 2021.

This may be sooner than Tesla, which will begin production of the Cybertruck in late 2021 with its single-motor rear-wheel-drive variant beginning production in late 2022, according to Tesla's website.

Despite the electrified characteristics of each of the rival vehicles, the Endurance and the Cybertruck's three variants (single-motor rear-wheel-drive, dual-motor all-wheel-rive, and tri-motor all-wheel-drive) all have differences in specs like top speed and seating capacity, although there are some specific performance similarities between the Endurance and Cybertruck's single-motor vehicle.

Here's how the Endurance compares to the Cybertruck:

SEE ALSO: Lordstown Motors has unveiled its $52,500 Endurance truck that's set to be the first electric pickup to market

Price

The Endurance starts at $52,500, which falls in between the different Cybertruck models. The single-motor rear-wheel-rive Cybertruck starts at $39,900, the dual-motor all-wheel-drive at $49,900, and the tri-motor all-wheel-drive starts at $69,900. 

Cybertruck prices don't include self-driving features, which are an additional $8,000.

The Endurance and Cybertrucks can now both be pre-ordered with a $100 deposit.

Range

The Endurance and single-motor rear-wheel-drive Cybertruck both have the same range: around 250 miles. 

However, the dual-motor and tri-motor Cybertrucks have a range of 300 and 500 miles, respectively.

Seating

The Endurance can accommodate five passengers, which is one less than the Cybertruck.

Towing

Both the Endurance and single-motor Cybertruck both have a towing capacity of over 7,500 pounds. 

However, dual-motor Cybertruck has a towing capacity of over 10,000 pounds, while the tri-motor has a more than 14,000-pound capability.

Top speed

The Endurance can reach top speeds of 80 mph.

While Tesla hasn't announced the official top speeds for the Cybertruck on its website yet, Car and Driver states that the single-motor can hit 110 miles-per-hour, while the dual-motor can reach 120 miles-per-hour and the tri-motor can reach 130 miles-per-hour.

Bed size

The bed on a standard Endurance is 5.5 feet long, Lordstown Motors told Business Insider in an email, while the length of the Cybertruck and the long bed Endurance are both 6.5 feet long.

Drivetrain

The Endurance has four hub electric motors, while the Cybertruck has single, double, and triple motors.

• Tesla surpassed Toyota in market capitalization last week, making the electric-car company the world's most financially valuable automaker.
• Tesla had already surpassed General Motors, Ford, and Fiat Chrysler to become the most valuable carmaker in the US.
• But is Tesla really worth more than Toyota?
• Of course not. Toyota has been extremely valuable for decades, while Tesla has only recently been deemed exceptionally valuable by investors. Tesla must remain valuable for decades to genuinely surpass Toyota's achievement.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Tesla is worth $206 billion. Toyota is worth $203 billion.

But in 2019, Toyota sold just under 11 million vehicles, while Tesla sold ... less than 300,000.

What gives?

It's all about the future. Investors are betting, big time, that Tesla will vindicate a $1,208-per-share price (the price at which company shares closed on Thursday, July 2) in the future, by growing and growing and growing some more, offering an enviable profit margin to go along with rising revenue.

Toyota, meanwhile, is mature. Huge, but old. Its growth days could be over.

Still, is Tesla really worth more than Toyota? 

Nope. Here's why:

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TIME. Toyota has been worth a lot for a long time. Forgetting about the critical difference between Toyota's value as a business and its stock-market value, the company has been a a tremendous store of value for decades. Tesla has been considered a similar store for much, much less time.

EXECUTION. Toyota's profit margins are less than 10%, and given the state of the global auto market, it can't look forward to tremendous growth. Investors value Toyota based on its ability to execute year in and year out.

GROWTH. Tesla's surging value is a big bet that a sustainable energy and transportation company could be highly profitable in the future. Toyota's investors also expect future profits, but in the context of a predictable, steady business.

VOLATILITY. As with any public company, Toyota's stock price moved up and down over the decades. But since the recovery from the financial crisis began, the carmaker has been stable — a sort of safe haven.

VOLATILITY, PART DEUX. Tesla has been anything but stable, stock-wise. A year ago, it was trading at around $400. Year-to-date, it's shot up above $1,200. It hasn't done anything more significant than sell more cars. So much of its speculative value is actually getting more expensive based on little more than achieving the basics.

INSTITUTIONAL OWNERSHIP. Tesla CEO Elon Musk owns over 20% of Tesla and never sells stock. Most of the rest of the company is owned by big, institutional investors, leaving retail investors to fight over the limited amount of what's left. This can create a significant supply-demand imbalance.

SHORT-SELLERS. Tesla has been a heavily shorted stock, for obvious reasons. Big rallies are often followed by big swoons. But when those rallies are on, some shorts have to throw in the towel, covering losing positions and driving the price even higher.

DELUSIONAL MOMENTUM. Tesla has become one of those "FOMO" stocks — it's up almost 200% year-to-date, so shame on naysayers! But invariably, speculation outruns fundamentals. Even if Tesla is profitable through all of 2020, it can only make so much money selling about 400,000 vehicles.

REVENUE. Tesla has done a good job of growing revenue over the past few years, as it has increased production and sales. But Toyota has been bringing in over $200 billion annually for 20 years.

SEGMENTATION. Tesla needs to grow into market segments that Toyota is already in and has been in for decades. Tesla also needs to displace gas-powered vehicles from those segments. This is going to be extremely expensive to do.

PRE-EXISTING INVESTMENT. Toyota built itself up a post-war colossus — at post-war prices. Inflation has greatly increased the value of the investment, by lowering it as an operational cost over time. And making it costly for Tesla to expand, given that it has to pay 2020 prices to grow.

INNOVATION. Tesla is a technical innovator, while Toyota is a process innovator. The Toyota Production System revolutionized manufacturing in the 1980s. Tesla's type of innovation tends to be overvalued in the short term and undervalued in the long term.

INDUSTRIAL POLICY. Toyota benefited from Japan's centrally organized approach to developing its post-war economy. Tesla has benefited from entrepreneurship, but has begun to lose US support for electric vehicles, in the form of tax credits that are now expiring.

ENTERPRISE VALUE. Toyota's is more than $300 billion, while Tesla's is less than $200 billion.

DEBT. Toyota has a little over $90 billion in total debt, while Tesla has $13 billion. For Tesla, that isn't bad, and the cash-to-debt ratios are similar (Toyota has $54 billion on hand, while Tesla has $8.5 billion). But Toyota's is designed for long-term management, while Tesla's has been packed on at a time when it's still trying to be steadily profitable.

THE GREAT MAN. Tesla is synonymous with CEO Elon Musk and his vision of a sustainable-energy company. If he left tomorrow, the stock price would collapse. Akio Toyoda is the president of Toyota — and the grandson of the founder — but his retirement would affect the company's value little, if at all.

EXTERNAL COSTS. Tesla is building an electric-car ecosystem and has invested billions in a global fast-charging infrastructure. Toyota's value was built on a gas-fueling system that cost it effectively nothing.

LEAPS. All of Tesla's leaps forward have involved fundamentals, such as building and selling more cars. Toyota's leaps have been legitimately game-changing, such as the introduction of the Prius hybrid in the early 2000s.

PEERS. Tesla has surpassed every other US automaker in value — Ford, General Motors, and FCA — but those carmakers, like Toyota, have been very valuable for many, many years.

ADDING IT ALL UP. The bottom line is that Toyota has been extremely valuable, financially and as an enterprise, for decades. Tesla has been exceptionally valuable for less than a year.

• The bank RBC runs its core banking applications on older mainframe computers.
• Now, it's working on updating its technology to more modern platforms, including private cloud.
• It's also working with IBM to build applications that allow developers to release code faster and easily access data stored on mainframes.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

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The 156-year-old bank RBC still uses mainframe computers for a significant amount of its work, including its core banking applications.

But over the last few years, RBC has been working on updating to more modern technology. 

"Those platforms no longer suffice the needs of the business and needs of the customer," Naim Kazmi, CIO and head of retail and payments technology at RBC, told Business Insider.

For example, its payments platform runs on a mix of mainframes and other platforms, but RBC is now in the process of moving to more modern platforms like the private cloud.

This has been especially crucial during the coronavirus pandemic, as more modern infrastructure allows customers to complete payments, transfers, and other transactions online. 

Mobile transactions have "been through the roof" these days, Kazmi said.  

The bank also changed its entire development process to "be faster and be more agile," as it continues to grow its digital and mobile capabilities, Kazmi says. RBC has reduced the duration of its development process by 30%, meaning that the time between starting a project to launching a product or feature is about a third faster than it used to be.

"That gives us flexibility, agility and optionality," Kazmi said. "We can move things around at a different level of pace and change things for customers really really fast."

RBC started working with IBM in 2018

RBC started working with IBM in late 2018 to improve its DevOps capabilities for its mainframes, meaning, its ability to release and monitor its code faster and more often. It's working to automate the development process so that the platform can take care of routine tasks like testing, managing, and releasing the code, while developers can focus on writing the code. 

Kazmi calls it "no application left behind."

"Things that take hours and hours and can be done in minutes as we move code through the various cycles," Kazmi said.

While building out this  system, RBC would give IBM real-time feedback on which parts of the process were working and which were not working. 

"While some of these things were already happening on a digital platform, our mainframe was not," Kazmi said. 

RBC also built a new API platform

In addition, RBC built a platform for application programming interfaces, or APIs, to help its mainframes communicate with the more modern platforms. Its core banking systems continue to run on mainframes, and its older platforms for loans, checking, and savings accounts use COBOL, a 61-year-old programming language that is mostly used for mainframes. These new APIs are built in Java, a popular programming language, and allow RBC to respond to customer needs much faster.

Read more: The governor of New Jersey is asking for urgent help with COBOL, a 61-year-old programming language. Here's why it's causing problems with unemployment systems, and why it's so hard to replace.

For example, if customers are trying to get banking information through their phones, these APIs help grab data that's stored on the mainframes in real-time. Today, most of its mainframe applications are using these types of tools and capabilities. 

RBC also started using GitHub to manage its code. While GitHub was not previously accessible via mainframes, IBM recently launched APIs and other DevOps tools specific that helped make it possible.

"IBM was open to adjusting their roadmap for adding features and capabilities as part of that process," Kazmi said. "It was a really good collaboration and partnership which resulted in outcomes for us to improve the developer experience."

Got a tip? Contact this reporter via email at rmchan@businessinsider.com, Signal at 646.376.6106, Telegram at @rosaliechan, or Twitter DM at @rosaliechan17. (PR pitches by email only, please.) Other types of secure messaging available upon request.

SEE ALSO: Students say that Holberton School, a coding bootcamp where students don't pay until they get a job, is more like 'Lord of the Flies' than the inclusive educational experience they were promised

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Pathologists debunk 13 coronavirus myths

• Business Insider asked venture capitalists — including from firms like Andreessen Horowitz and Kleiner Perkins— to name the top cloud infrastructure startups they expect to boom this year. 
• The VCs recommended 24 startups, from well-known companies like $12.4 billion Snowflake to lesser known up-and-comers.
• Find their choices below, as well as what each company does, and how much funding it's raised. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The shift to remote work has created a surge in cloud computing demand, and while the market is dominated by the likes of Amazon and Microsoft, the pandemic is creating opportunity for startups, too. 

Cloud infrastructure spending reached $31 billion in the first quarter of the year, according to an estimate from tech market researcher Canalys. The top four providers — Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and Alibaba Cloud — accounted for 62% of the cloud spend while the remaining 38% percent went to other providers, Canalys estimated.

We asked venture capitalists — including those from top firms like Kleiner Perkins and Andreeseen Horowitz — to name the top startups in cloud infrastructure, including those that provide services like storage, networking, security. 

Here are the 24 top cloud infrastructure startups, according to venture capitalists, including why they are expected to boom, and how much they've raised (data from PitchBook unless otherwise noted):

SEE ALSO: Commercial open source software startups will thrive during the coronavirus crisis, VCs say. Here are 31 they believe are poised for success

Vectorized

Startup: Vectorized

Total funding raised: Unknown 

What it does: Vectorized builds a streaming platform called Redpanda, which streams data for applications in real time.

Recommended by: Astasia Myers, Redpoint Ventures

Why it will boom: "There is increased demand for businesses to make decisions and provide services in real-time, so companies are leveraging streaming systems to move faster."

MontyCloud

Startup: MontyCloud

Total funding raised: $2.85 million

What it does: MontyCloud develops a platform aimed tat simplifying the management and governance of cloud infrastructure, applications, and services.

Recommended by: Madrona Venture Group (investor)

Why it will boom: "MontyCloud has taken a fresh look at the growing complexity and offers a way to ensure that IT departments can manage all of their cloud environments in a consistent way," Ted Kummert, a Madrona venture partner, said in announcing the firm's investment last year. "This is a growing issue for any modern enterprise and the early customer traction has been impressive."

Env0

Startup: Env0

Total funding raised: $3.36 million

What it does: Env0 helps organizations to manage their cloud applications and apply a company's policies for cost management, security, and compliance. 

Recommended by: Ed Sim, BOLDstart Ventures (investor)

Why it will boom: "For developers, testers, support, and sales struggling on the never-ending race towards increased velocity, Env0 allows [them] to self-manage environments through an easy to use UI, relieving their dependency on DevOps and releasing a significant organizational bottleneck."

Replicated

Startup: Replicated

Total funding raised: $5 million

What it does: Replicated provides tools for customers to run and scale applications on the open-source cloud computing project Kubernetes. 

Recommended by: Ed Sim, BOLDstart Ventures (investor)

Why it will boom: "Over the last few years, Kubernetes has become the go-to solution for modern, internal application development and deployment."

Stackery

Startup: Stackery

Total funding raised: $7.47 million

What it does: Stackery builds a platform for app development on sever-less infrastructure.

Recommended by: James Newell, Voyager Capital (investor)

Why it will boom: "Any team that is building on AWS Lambda should be using Stackery to manage their app design, build, and test processes," Newell said. "They have emerged as the thought leaders in the space."

Skyflow

Startup: Skyflow

Total funding raised: $7.5 million

What it does: Skyflow helps protect sensitive customer and personally identifiable information (PII) across different applications on the cloud.

Recommended by: Ashu Garg, Foundation Capital (investor)

Why it will boom: "Protecting PII data is one of the foremost challenges of the coming decade, and Skyflow's approach enables every company to have Google and Apple like security and access controls for their PII data."

Spectro Cloud

Startup: Spectro Cloud

Total funding raised: $7.5 million

What it does: Spectro Cloud makes it easy for developers to use the cloud computing software Kubernetes to manage their apps in the cloud or private data centers.

Recommended by: Ed Sim, BOLDstart Ventures (investor)

Why it will boom: "Kubernetes is fast becoming the default management and orchestration platform. Despite this growth, we've heard from many Fortune 500 CIO/CTOs, that there is still not a single solution that meets their needs and gives them the ability to 'roll their own' [Kubernetes] solution without the headaches of managing it or being dependent on one cloud provider. Spectro Cloud is a cloud-native infrastructure company that makes Kubernetes manageable at scale for enterprises that need superior control and flexibility."

Solo.io

Startup: Solo.io

Total funding raised: $13.85 million

What it does: Solo.io offers products that help "glue" together various services when building apps. It also helps manage application program interfaces (APIs), which allow apps to communicate with services from other apps.

Recommended by: Astasia Myers, Redpoint Ventures (investor)

Why it will boom: Myers says many companies are evaluating the use of service mesh, which Solo.io offers to help customers connect, monitor, and secure the services they're using for their apps. This is "a strong catalyst for Solo," Myers said. 

Pulumi

Startup: Pulumi

Total funding raised: $20 million

What it does: Pulumi builds an "infrastructure-as-code" platform that lets developers use familiar programming languages for cloud infrastructure. 

Recommended by: Madrona Venture Group (investor)

Why it will boom: The startup says the technology eliminates silos between developers and infrastructure operators, and helps companies create and manage cloud applications more effectively. It's already attracted the attention of customers including Tableau and Mercedes Benz.

Vercel

Startup: Vercel

Total funding raised: $20.99 million

What it does: Vercel allows developers to build, scale, and host web apps for the cloud without having to set up servers. 

Recommended by: Aaron Jacobson, New Enterprise Associates (no relationship)

Why it will boom: "JAMStack, which is a new, modern way of building website and apps, has reached a tipping point.  Vercel is a pioneer of this movement and has developed an easy-to-use, all-in-one JAMStack solution for developers to deploy static and dynamic websites at global scale."

Fortanix

Startup: Fortanix

Total funding raised: $31.07 million

What it does: Fortanix provides data security across public and private data centers, and it can process and work with encrypted data. 

Recommended by: Ashu Garg, Foundation Capital (investor)

Why it will boom: "While there are other platforms that can secure data at rest, only Fortanix secures data during run-time. Fortanix is on a path to becoming the single platform for data security for all enterprises."

Gravitational

Startup: Gravitational

Total funding raised: $32.17 million

What it does: Gravitational helps users simplify cloud software management. Engineers can use Gravitational to secure their infrastructure and launch their applications to remote or restricted environments.

Recommended by: Aaron Jacobson, New Enterprise Associates (no relationship)

Why it will boom: "Concerns about security, compliance, and lock-in have historically been key barriers of cloud adoption.  Gravitational's open-source solutions solve these challenges out-of-the box without adding additional complexity or operational overhead for developers."

Tigera

Startup: Tigera

Total funding raised: $53 million

What it does: Security company Tigera helps protect applications and networks that run either in the cloud or in on-premise data centers. 

Recommended by: Madrona Venture Group (investor)

Why it will boom: "Tigera is addressing a very important part of this complexity for enterprise customers by delivering a secure application connectivity solution in a cloud native world," Madrona managing director S. Somasegar said when the firm announced its investment in the company in 2018.

Fauna

Startup: Fauna 

Total funding raised: $56.5 million

What it does: Fauna builds an application program interface (API) that helps developers access data and develop web and mobile applications without having to manage servers, eliminating much of the manual grunt work developers usually have to go through to build a secure and scalable app.

Recommended by: Madrona Venture Group (investor)

Why it will boom: The startup just announced that it brought on Okta veteran Eric Berg as CEO and former Snowflake CEO Bob Muglia as executive chairman. "Fauna has correctly identified serverless as the next frontier, and has succeeded in building the database of choice for this new era," Madrona Managing Director S. Somasegar said in a statement.

NS1

Startup: NS1

Total funding raised: $84.8 million

What it does: NS1 builds a traffic management platform for a company's infrastructure, both in private data centers and on the cloud. 

Recommended by: Tyler Jewell, Dell Technologies Capital (investor)

Why it will boom: "NS1 built dynamic DNS – the foundation of Internet routing — to intelligently steer traffic across networks creating incredible user experiences, like those at Salesforce, LinkedIn, eBay and Dropbox."

Startup: Netlify

Total funding raised: $97.51 million

What it does: Netlify builds a web development tool and cloud hosting services for designing and hosting apps.

Recommended by: Bucky Moore, Kleiner Perkins (investor)

Why it will boom: "By replacing web servers with its global application delivery network, Netlify enables developers to deploy their apps closer to end users, resulting in substantial improvements in performance, and lower hosting costs," Moore told Business Insider in March.

Qubole

Startup: Qubole

Total funding raised: $122 million

What it does: Qubole builds a cloud-based platform that automatically manages and analyzes data.

Recommended by: Rama Sekhar, Norwest Venture Partners (investor)

Why it will boom: "Machine learning and analytics are in high demand. While data warehouses help businesses learn from the past, Qubole's Data Lake Platform helps them understand the present and predict the future. Built by the original Facebook big data team, Qubole is helping customers accelerate machine learning, streaming and ad hoc analytics workloads in the cloud."

Fivetran

Startup: Fivetran

Total funding raised: $163.12 million

What it does: Fivetran brings together, connects, and processes data to store in cloud warehouses. 

Recommended by: Martin Casado, Andreessen Horowitz (investor)

Why it will boom: "If data is the new oil, then Fivetran is the pipes that get it from the source to the refinery, all while bearing the burden of complex data sources without exposing it to the customer, which is why their customers love them!"

Cato Networks

Startup: Cato Networks

Total funding raised: $202 million

What it does: Cato Networks builds a cloud security platform.

Recommended by: Jerry Chen, Greylock Partners (investor)

Why it will boom: "Cofounded by Shlomo Kramer and Gur Shatz, the company helps securely connect enterprise office locations, remote workers, and cloud resources. This secure connectivity is even more important going forward."

Auth0

Startup: Auth0

Total funding raised: $213.47 million

What it does: Auth0 helps manages user authentication and secures the login pages for large consumer and enterprise businesses.

Recommended by: Chris DeVore, Founders' Co-op (investor)

Why it will boom: Cofounded and run by a 12-year veteran of Microsoft, Auth0 raised $103 million and doubled it valuation last year. The company was include in Forbes' recent Cloud 100 list and accounting firm Deloitte determined it was among the fastest-growing technology companies in the country.

JFrog

Startup: JFrog

Total funding raised: $228 million

What it does: JFrog builds a DevOps platform to allow companies to manage and release software updates automatically.

Recommended by: Raman Khanna, Dell Technologies Capital (investor)

Why it will boom: "JFrog has built an end-to-end DevOps and DevSecOps hybrid platform that makes software updates secure and seamless. With over 5,000 customers, JFrog has become the global standard for shipping high-quality software continuously and efficiently."

HashiCorp

Startup: HashiCorp

Total funding raised: $349.53 million

What it does: HashiCorp develops tools to help customers build apps and operate, run, and secure their cloud environments. With HashiCorp, customers can run multiple clouds.

Recommended by: Mary D'Onofrio and Byron Deeter, Bessemer Venture Partners (investors)

Why it will boom: "It drove its first wave of growth off of its security product Vault. We've seen its usage pick up in Terraform and Consul. It just did another round relatively recently. We think that company will continue to grow over time," D'Onofrio told Business Insider.

Cohesity

Startup: Cohesity

Total funding raised: $661 million

What it does: Cohesity builds a storage and backup system for customers' data and allows them to protect and manage it across multiple clouds.

Recommended by: Ashu Garg, Foundation Capital (investor)

Why it will boom: "'Data has gravity' and therefore compute will move to where the data is. With 2000+ customers, Cohesity is poised to become the most important infrastructure software company since VMware."

Snowflake

Startup: Snowflake

Total funding raised: $1.4 billion

What it does: Snowflake builds a data warehousing platform for businesses to store, secure, access, and analyze their data for the cloud. 

Recommended by: Byron Deeter, Bessemer Venture Partners (no relationship)

Why it will boom: Deeter believes that Snowflake will become one of the "iconic infrastructure companies of this next decade," adding that it's "establishing platforms that have the potential to be on the scale of VMware or EMC type businesses and make a meaningful run at the Amazon Web Services stack."

• Jai Das of Sapphire Ventures has watched Netskope, Auth0, Box, and Square flourish while other companies have failed. 
• Das says an economic downturn "accelerates what happens with startups," and the good ones will address current problems. 
• Das lists Uptycs, Splashtop, and Hopin as promising companies that could find great success in the current climate. 
• Trends to emerge from this year could include remote performance management, identity authorization, and hybrid conferences that are both online and in-person, he believes.   
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Jai Das, president and managing director at Sapphire Ventures, is an expert at spotting tech companies with big potential during tough times. 

His firm invested in several companies that are booming in the COVID-19 era, including Netskope, the cloud-security startup that has reached a $3 billion valuation, and Auth0, the identity-security startup that doubled its valuation to $1 billion. Das previously invested in Box and Square, and is a member of the board of AI startup DataRobot. Eleven of his investments have become publicly traded companies and 9 have been acquired.

"An economic downturn accelerates what happens with startups," he says. "That means the good ones can pop. We look for companies taking a different approach – maybe the founders come from a different field and experienced a problem as a user. When they pursue a problem with real urgency and don't worry too much about the money, you know you're onto something. They call you in the middle of the night on Saturday night because they're working on something. Those are the ones you want." 

In a conversation with Business Insider, Das identified five startups he believes have big potential to break out during this erratic economy, and named three trends he believes could also emerge. 

Uptycs: Security for dispersed companies

"Cloud security is going to be extremely, extremely critical right now," Das says. "Protecting the new way of working is quite valuable." Uptycs allows companies to get data and check security across different operating systems and devices. The Boston startup raised a $30 million B series round a few weeks ago led by Das, who joined its board. Its valuation is not available. 

Splashtop: Accessing computer desktops from anywhere 

Splashtop is an app that provides remote access to apps and data from any device, anywhere. "Splashtop has skyrocketed because of the need for remote work, collaborative work, and project management. People working separately need access and update project management documents much more," Das says. The Silicon Valley startup, also a Das investment, has raised $49 million to date with a valuation of $127 million.   

JFrog: Helping developers push software updates 

JFrog, which helps developers to continuously release software updates, is "booming right now during remote work because engineers must continue to work," Das says. It's currently used by millions of developers and over 5,600 customers, including giants like Netflix, Google, Amazon Web Services, Facebook, and Cisco. Its valuation has been reported at $1.5 billion, and an IPO may happen this year, the company told Business Insider. 

Hopin: Online conference startup blowing up

London-based Hopin has raised a $40 million Series A from IVP, Salesforce Ventures and Accel, but is not a Sapphire investment. Just  a year old, it has attracted frenzied interest from backers as the coronavirus disrupts conferences and live events. Das says the demand for virtual conferences will continue after quarantine lifts. 

Monday.com: Remote project management 

Monday has raised $234 million, including $150 million last July in a series D round led by Sappphire that brought the Tel Aviv startup's valuation to $1.9 billion. Das says Monday, an online project-management platform, will benefit from a hybrid workforce that needs to stay connected. 

Das also pointed out several trends he sees developing during this quarantine period. 

Online performance management

"Every company is struggling with how to manage people without surveilling them or pinging them to death," Das says. "When you can't see them, how can you evaluate their performance?  Do you look at how much time they are spending on Zoom, or look at their calendars?" Das says companies with employees in different locations will need to focus on establishing key performance indicators that are accurate and understood. "You have to define those and then give people a chance to make sense of them." 

Identity-authorization security

"The digital transformation of security has to be done now, and it probably should have been done a long time ago," Das says, of the business revolution centered around cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and automation. "When things are working, nobody wants to address tough problems. That's where we were last year with passwords, then COVID hit, and we all had to play catch up. One of the ways things are changing quickly is with the adoption of identity-based authorization instead of passwords. That's one of the main things that will come out of this period." 

Conferences that mix digital and on-premises attendees 

"Like anything else right now, I think these will develop into a hybrid model. A lot of them will go online. Some people will want to be there, for networking and the personal aspect. But a lot more people will watch online, and that will change how conferences and events are organized. People will learn to network better online. Every aspect of our lives will be affected by the quarantine, and hopefully we'll learn how to appreciate the real-life aspects more." 

SEE ALSO: Companies are hiring IBM's elite hacking team to target workers in their homes — and 3 other ways experts suggest tackling remote workers' bad cybersecurity habits

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Why thoroughbred horse semen is the world's most expensive liquid

• Farmbot is an open-source, 3D printed robotic farm machine.
• Users plan out a farm digitally, almost like a video game. 
• It can be used for small-scale home gardens, education, or larger projects.  
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

FarmBot is a way for people to grow vegetables in almost any backyard, but it's also like a video game. After introducing it's two largest kits ever, FarmBot says it has been used by thousands of children, families, and scientists.

The idea is a high-tech garden or small farm that can monitor just about every aspect of plants while controlling them like a game. A 3D printed robot arm plants vegetables, waters them, monitors soil conditions, and captures images. Meanwhile, the farmer can control all the tools from a web app with a virtual garden that functions a bit like if  the farm simulator video game "Stardew Valley" had a real-life companion. 

All FarmBot products are also completely open source, with explicit encouragement for buyers to 3D print their own pieces or make any other modifications they can think of.

Here's how it works. 

SEE ALSO: This company is building a road that charges electric vehicles wirelessly while they drive on it — here's how it works

Farmbot comes in several different sizes and use cases.

There are two different lines, the Farmbot Express and Farmbot Genesis, each with three size options.

The bot arm itself and attachments are 3D printed.

FarmBot Express kits are the cheaper and easier to use models, according to the company.

The kits come 95% assembled, and must be mounted in a planter bed with soil.

The smallest FarmBot Express comes in a 40 pound box, and covers an area of about 32 square feet.

On the more affordable FarmBots, a 3-in-1 tool head combines watering, seeding, and weed suppression.

The FarmBot Genesis line is more advanced, and more expensive.

With more advanced hardware, they come with several interchangeable pieces used for the plants.

The seed injector is powered by a vacuum pump and plants properly spaced seeds with accuracy down to the millimeter.

The soil sensor measures the moisture content of each plant's location, which then informs how the plants are watered.

It also measures temperature, which can tell the farmer if a plant failed to germinate.

The watering nozzle precisely waters plants. Owners can also create custom water patterns by 3D printing an attachable piece.

The weeding tool comes with blades and spikes to take out weeds before they become a problem for the garden.

A waterproof camera takes photos of plants to monitor progress and detect weeds.

Eventually, the camera might also be advanced enough to detect pests and produce ripeness.

All of these attachments work by sliding back and forth over the garden on tracks, which they're attached too.

Then, owners can control their farm from a computer or phone using FarmBot's web app.

Set up the the FarmBot garden to match the real garden outside.

All the different tools and settings are also added.

See and control the garden almost like a video game, "Stardew Valley" style.

The view from above should be the same between the app and the actual plants, making it easy to control digitally.

FarmBot is powered by electricity and comes with an extension cord that must be plugged into an outlet.

FarmBot emits about 30% less CO2 than standard methods of growing vegetables, according to the company's estimates based on average electricity emissions.

Source: FarmBot

The company also estimates it costs about $16 in electricity per year to run FarmBot.

With the right equipment, it's possible to power FarmBot through solar power.

In fact, FarmBot is made to be tinkered with and modified, and the company encourages it.

For places that get cold enough to end the growing season for part of the year, FarmBot recommends an inexpensive greenhouse setup.

Each of the more advanced Genesis kits are intentionally made as DIY platforms.

Owners are encouraged to modify their tools using original 3D printing designs or get ideas through the FarmBot forums.

All FarmBot designs are also completely open-source, so anyone can look at CAD models or code to change them for a custom garden.

They run on Raspberry Pis, small computers often used to teach coding.

For water, like electricity, the FarmBot needs a hookup to a house or other building with utilities.

Of course, WiFi is also crucial so the farmer can control all the tools and read the sensors.

Yield depends on climate and other conditions, but FarmBot says that the XL models can produce enough fruits and vegetables for a family of four or five every day.

The FarmBot Express version one is the most affordable model, selling for $1,495 and shipping every two weeks.

More expensive FarmBot Genesis models are available for preorder in late 2020, selling for up to $5,495.

They all ship free in the US.

• Smart office company Autonomous designed an individual outdoor work pod.
• The pod is about 68 square feet, with room for a chair, desk, and bookshelf. 
• It's releasing the structure in several rounds, priced between $5,400 and $15,000.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The coronavirus has sent many workers home for the indefinite future, leading to haphazard home office setups and working from couches. Autonomous, a company that makes home office furniture, is releasing a tiny office pod.

The Zen Work Pod is available for preorder through the end of August at different prices depending on how many have already been sold. The first ten pods are priced at $5,400, up to $14,900 for later buyers. The "monastically inspired design," as described by Autonomous, has just enough room for a one person office setup, with a desk and chair. 

Autonomous says that working from the minimalist pod will eliminate distractions and be "your own private working realm." For now, preorders are only being accepted in the continental US.

Here's what it's like. 

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The pod is made from sustainable oak and walnut, aluminum, and tempered glass.

The space is small and enclosed for privacy while working, but nearly ten foot tall ceilings and a glass wall make it feel open.

Autonomous will deliver and set up the Zen Pod, which needs about 250 square feet of space for the foundation.

It will be delivered in a 20-foot container.

Once shipped, the pod should come in under four days, with only 72 hours of assembly.

Autonomous suggests the the pod only be occupied by one person.

Inside, there's room for a desk, chair, and a built-in bookshelf; just the essentials for working an office job at home.

The pod comes already furnished with a smart desk and chair from Autonomous, and the ability to add air conditioning or heat.

With slightly different decor, the pod could be used for anything, like as a yoga studio.

Autonomous says the Zen Pod can be powered through a wire connection to the owner's home or other power source.

The coronavirus pandemic has sparked a public health crisis, the effects of which are now rippling throughout the global economy.

Cities have been shut down, travel is limited, and major central banks have begun to intervene in financial markets at levels unseen since the 2008 recession.

To find out how industry leaders think COVID-19 and related containment efforts will impact their companies and the economy as a whole, we surveyed executive decision makers from around the world.

Simply enter your email for a FREE download of our executive survey results.

Join the conversation about this story »

• I've driven the Tesla Model 3 in several different versions. I've also sampled an updated version of the Nissan Leaf.
• The Leaf has been in the electric-vehicle market for longer, but the Model 3 is among the best cars I've ever driven. 
• Last year, I tested a new, longer-range version of the Leaf: the Leaf SL Plus. 
• You can buy the Model 3 and the Leaf Plus for around $40,000 (the mid-range Leaf SV Plus starts at $39,750).
• The Tesla Model 3 is better, but the Leaf Plus has a lot going for it.
  
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Nissan beat Tesla to market with a practical, all-electric vehicle when in 2010 it launched the Leaf.

Tesla caught up, but with the expensive Model S sedan.

The arrival of the Model 3 in 2017 signaled a new era. Now, consumers could choose between the proven Leaf and the stunning new Model 3; the Model 3 had better performance and longer range, but the Leaf was a known quantity.

I recently tested a longer-range version of the Leaf: the 2019 Leaf SL Plus — and was impressed. A 2020 Leaf SL Plus can be had for about $45,000 right now. So I thought I'd compare it with the Model 3. The version I drove was the cheapest; a single-motor rear-wheel-drive Model 3 that can now be had for about $40,000.

Here's how the cars match up:

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Here's the Nissan Leaf SL Plus! Looking sharp in "Deep Pearl Blue."

Read our review from 2019.

Pretty much the same Deep Pearl Blue as the Leaf that was a Business Insider Car of the Year finalist in 2018. That car had a single electric motor, producing 147 horsepower, a 40-kWh battery pack, and delivered 151 miles of range on a full charge.

The SL Plus trim level has a 62 kilowatt-hour battery. The larger pack adds roughly 70 miles of range compared to the standard Leaf's 150-mile battery.

The Leaf is the top-selling EV globally, which makes sense as the car has been around since 2010. More than 400,000 have been sold.

The SL trim level is the top-of-the-line version. That's why my test car cost $44,000. The base Leaf, with a smaller battery and less range, starts at around $30,000.

The goal when the Leaf was launched was for the Japanese automaker to embrace a "zero emission" future. It hasn't quite worked out that way, but the company is making progress, and Leaf is still with us.

Hatchback silhouettes aren't typically associated with automotive aggression, and EVs tend to project a mostly virtuous vibe. But the Leaf's fascia is rather bold.

This second-generation Leaf is much sleeker than the first generation that was in production from 2010 to 2017. However, we're talking about a practical hatchback here, so let's not get too excited.

Aerodynamics play a role in increasing EV range, so while the hatch design favors utility, the Leaf's front end has been engineered for airflow: the car has a 0.28 drag coefficient.

The LED headlights are a standout feature.

Overall, the Leaf projects a fairly European identity. That perhaps has turned off some US customers, who have basically abandoned small vehicles in favor of large SUVs and pickups.

The Leaf's "Light Gray" interior was pleasant, if a bit shy of premium. The seats were comfy, and there was a reasonable amount of space to stow small items.

The back seat was about average, space-wise, for the segment.

The Leaf has always received criticism for its "tweener" nature. It's not a luxury car, but it's also not bare-bones. I've always thought it hits a sweet spot for customers who aren't wealthy but who have the means to invest in an EV.

The Leaf's eight-inch color infotainment display looks good, but we aren't the biggest fans of the system's layout. It is easy to use, and Bluetooth device-pairing is a snap. You also have available Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.

The toggle-button shifter has a slight learning curve. And storage could be better, although there's the usual pair of cupholders between the seats.

An unassuming rear hatch for the most part, but you're quickly informed of this EV's nonpolluting pedigree.

The Leaf's cargo area is an excellent 24 cubic feet, expandable to 30 with the rear seats dropped. The hatch's opening is a tad awkward, with a sort of oval shape.

Charging is unchanged from the Leaf we tested last year, at least as far as the ports go. There are two, one for 240V "Level 2" charging and one for fast DC charging.

Our Leaf SL Plus had a 160-kilowatt electric motor, making a juicy 214 horsepower with 250 pound-feet of torque.

The Leaf also has regenerative braking. And when the e-Pedal feature is engaged, it's possible to drive the car using motor braking almost alone, putting power back into the battery. 

There's also an onboard charge cable for "trickle" top-offs using a regular wall outlet for 120V power. Using 240V, the Leaf Plus is back to 100% in 11.5 hours. Fast DC charging, however, can achieve 80% in 45 minutes.

We used the ChargePoint network and did fine with two rounds of 240V charging over the course of a week. It's also possible to install your own 240V ChargePoint unit at home; one can be purchased for about $500, with installation handled by a qualified electrician.

We also used the Nissan Connect iPhone app to monitor charging and to manage climate control and vehicle diagnostics.

So how does the Nissan Leaf Plus stack up?

If you can afford the payments — which come in at about $670 a month, on a 72-month loan — you'll spend around $54 a month on electricity, according to Nissan, the US Department of Transportation, and the EPA (the cost is based on 15,000 miles of annual driving). Gas could cost you more than twice as much for a comparable petrol-burning machine.

The Leaf Plus is also still eligible for the $7,500 federal tax credit, as well as various state incentives. 

And you don't have to buy the top-spec SL trim, like our tester — you could opt for the $38,200 Leaf Plus and still get a 62-kilowatt-hour battery pack.

OK, you won't feel compelled to buy the Leaf Plus if your budget is more Nissan Versa, a $14,730 sedan that runs on gas (but not much gas) and could be had for less than $260 a month.

Electric cars, of course, aren't cheap (although you can pick up a used Leaf from the previous generation for around $10,000). But if you have the means and are serious about making the transition from fossil fuels to EEE-lec-tricity for propulsion, the Leaf Plus' 215 miles of range could flip your switch.

The 6.5-second 0-to-60 mph should also flip your switch. That's darn quick, for a car that outwardly resembles something you'd find parked on the streets of Paris and used mainly for baguette runs. My beef with the Leaf, compared to other EVs is that it felt solid yet sluggish. Against the Bolt, the shorter-range Leaf seemed to lack snap. 

Not so anymore. The larger battery and more peppy motors have made the Leaf Plus feel downright sporty. My test car also included a suite of driver-assistance features (Nissan's ProPilot, for example, which can handle steering assist), so the Leaf has become a rather complete package that, for $45,000 as tested, was genuinely packed with content.

Now let's check out the Model 3!

I drove what was at the time a $57,500 Model 3 and raved about it in my review.

We also named it a runner-up for Business Insider's 2018 Car of the Year.

The Model 3 in "Standard Range Plus" trim with rear-wheel-drive and the "Partial Premium Interior" is the least expensive version available on Tesla configurator. It's about $40,000.

I also briefly sampled the $78,000 Performance version of the Model 3 when it first came out. The white interior is really something special — I can see why it's popular.

I spent a week with my test car, running it through its paces.

Read the review.

The Model 3 is a sharp set of wheels, designed by Tesla's Franz von Holzhausen to embody forward thinking without taking any wild and crazy chances.

The Model 3 is sleek, not overly curvaceous, and something of a hybrid of midsize and full-size sedan. No grille because ... there's no gas engine to feed air!

The roof is a continuous curve of glass, with a fastback rear hatch/trunk culminating in a crisp spoiler. The recessed door handles and the window trim are the only significant chrome on the Model 3.

The Model 3 is unadorned except for the Tesla badge. By the way, fit and finish on my test car were superb.

The Model 3 has plenty of trunk space — and an offbeat hatch design to enable that continuous glass roof.

With its "frunk," the Model 3 offers an ample 15 cubic feet of space. This gives the Model 3, a sedan, versatility on par with SUVs.

You have to be a minimalist to love the Model 3's interior. The leatherette upholstery is animal-free, and the flash is ... well, there isn't any.

Tesla makes its own seats. The Model 3's are quite comfy and supportive for more spirited driving, and the front seats are heated. There was decent legroom in back.

The Model 3 has no key fob. Instead, that duty is handled by a Tesla smartphone app ...

With a credit-card-size valet key as a backup.

In this configuration, the Model 3 can dash from 0 to 60 mph in about five seconds.

That's speedy enough for anybody, and the quality of that speed is very Tesla and very electric-car. EVs have 100% of their torque available immediately, which means potentially neck-snapping velocity.

A Model S P100D with Ludicrous Mode engaged can do zero to 60 mph in less than 2.3 seconds. That's jarring acceleration. The Model 3 is calmer. But not too calm. You are rewarded when you punch it.

The Model 3 also has regenerative braking, which can be customized to be heavy or light. Heavy acts almost like an engine brake and permits the driver to actively brake much less frequently than with a gas vehicle, while recharging the battery. Light mitigates the sense that the Model 3 is tugging when coasting.

For what it's worth, the Model 3 I tested lacked a Ludicrous or Insane mode — the default is quick acceleration. But you can switch that to Chill Mode, which dials it back. And I did. Chill is considerably easier to live with.

The showstopper for the Model 3 has always been the dashboard, beginning with the steering wheel. Unlike nearly every other steering wheel on the planet, the Model 3's has almost no knobs or buttons.

The large, central touchscreen handles almost all vehicle functions. The left side is reserved for the readouts you'd normally find on an instrument cluster.

Navigation is the standout feature, but the voice-recognition system is about the best I've ever used in a modern vehicle. The Tesla-designed audio system is superb, and connectivity with devices is a breeze.

I recharged my tester Model 3 at a Supercharger location near my home. But most owners will charge overnight using a "Level 2" setup at 240 volts. It's also possible to trickle charge using the onboard cable and a standard wall outlet.

Free supercharging for life used to be a great perk of Tesla ownership. But as ownership has grown, Tesla has adjusted the deal.

The company also discourages owners from using Superchargers for casual daily fill-ups, preferring they plug into slower charging options at home and save supercharging for longer trips.

A Supercharger will recharge a Model 3 Long Range from zero to full in about an hour. Using 240-volt power will get the job done overnight, and a basic wall outlet will get you a mile an hour in an emergency.

Unlike a quick gas-n-go, you do have to cultivate some patience with Tesla's recharging process.

In case you're wondering about Autopilot: I've reviewed the technology before and consider it very advanced cruise control. I strongly recommend against ever going hands-free with it.

The Model 3 is engineered to someday have full self-driving capability. That day hasn't come yet. But it will surely add value if it does.

I used Autopilot with the Model 3 during my longest test, and it performed as it always has for me in other Tesla vehicles. But the truth is that I liked driving the Model 3 so darn much that I didn't flip Autopilot on very often. I can't be the only person who feels this way.

Teslas are a blast to drive — that ever-present temptation, to be honest, undermines Autopilot. I enjoy driving. For what it is, Autopilot is an excellent technology.

So what's the verdict?

The Model 3 takes it!

But it was closer that you might think. The Model 3 has longer range, is faster from 0 to 60 mph, has a cooler infotainment system and more forward-thinking interior design, exudes exterior styling mojo, offers better recharging options, and is reasonably well put together.

The Leaf Plus comes in second in all of those areas except build quality. But the Leaf Plus is certainly the nicest EV that Nissan has thus far created, and it's much easier to simply go down to your local Nissan dealership, pick one up, and drive it home.

In fact, the closeness of the Leaf to the Model 3 is a somewhat uncomfortable reminder than the Model 3, while impressive, is more of a high-mid-market to low-end-premium vehicle. The Leaf is electric motoring for the masses, more or less, and so is the Model 3. But the Model 3's current customer set is being asked to accept a more bare-bones car than they'd get from, say, Jaguar with the I-Pace or Audi with its e-Tron. 

If I had to choose, I'd buy the Tesla. But I could also easily be happy with the Leaf. And if I bought the Leaf, I wouldn't be eyeing allegedly nicer vehicles from luxury brands, whereas with the Model 3 I might not.

That all said, this comparison did make me recollect the Model 3's general brilliance. It genuinely is a staggering achievement. While the Leaf Plus definitely gets the job done, the Model 3 demonstrates why Tesla is investing in making electrified transportation more than an A-to-B proposition, powered by something that isn't a fossil fuel. As I've said before, the Model 3 appeals to the automotive philosopher in me: It's crammed with ideas.

And the Model 3 by its nature makes you feel better about yourself. It is intellectually stimulating, a mood-improvement machine. I perked up every time I slipped behind the wheel, and most days I had to deal with rainy Northeast gloom. Gray skies weren't going to clear up, but it didn't matter, because the Model 3 helped me put on a happy face.

It can blast to 60 mph in five seconds, it can drive itself with your supervision under some conditions, and it has a five-star safety rating from the government. What's more, it's a California-made, all-electric car from the first new American car company in decades.

But the truly astounding thing is that Tesla, in only about five years of seriously manufacturing automobiles, could build a car this good.

If you're debating between the roughly $40,000 Nissan Leaf SL Plus or a slightly cheaper Leaf trim level and the approximately $40,000 base Tesla Model 3, the decision isn't hard. You won't be unhappy with the Leaf, but with the Model 3, you will follow some serious bliss.

• Stick-shifts are disappearing from the automotive landscape.
• But one can still option a manual on some performance cars and pickup trucks.
• Here's a ranking of my favorites, with appearances from MINI, Mazda, and Jaguar.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Time was when many vehicles offered a manual option, either because customers wanted performance, or because they wanted better fuel-economy — or because they just wanted a cheap option.

While one can still find manual transmissions on vehicles in Europe and South America, automatics are the rule in the US.

Even some performance cars have dropped the manual options, most notably Ferrari. Most people no longer learn to drive on a stick-shift, and for the most part, automatics yield good fuel economy and can be had on inexpensive cars.

So the stick-shift is dying out. But one can still find it on a decent number of cars. And I hope it never goes away completely!

Here's a rundown of some of my favorites, ranked from most satisfying to least:

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1. The MINI John Cooper Works is a savage little beast of a car. I just love the thing, but it absolutely terrified me.

Read the review.

It has a very crisp-shifting six-speed manual that's my all-time favorite.

2. The MINI Cooper S Countryman ALL4 that I tested a while back is a performance version of MINI's anti-SUV.

Read the review.

It also featured a solid six-speed manual.

3. My beloved Mazda MX-5 Miata! The ultimate roadster is about as much fun as it's possible to have on four wheels.

Read the review.

I also drove the RF version, which offers a folding hardtop.

Read the review.

Both cars can be optioned with a superb, short-throw six-speed.

4. The Jaguar F-Type hadn't impressed me until I drove a 380-horsepower V6 version ...

Read the review.

... complete with an incredibly smooth six-speed manual.

Watch me give a stick-shift tutorial in this $80,000 car.

5. The Chevy SS. It's a rebadged Holden Commodore with a 415-horsepower, small-block V8, mated to ...

Read the review.

... a six-speed manual. Sadly, this stonking four-door has been discontinued.

6. Now we get into the more challenging sticks. The Ford Focus RS, now also discontinued, is an absolute track weapon.

Read the review.

But its six-speed has a learning curve. The clutch is so firm and edgy that it's quite easy to stall the car, until you get a feel for it. On the plus side, shifts are incredibly brisk.

7. The Civic Type R is in theory a similar kind of affordable track-rat mobile, but ...

Read the review.

The six-speed is a little too loose and easy for my taste, and the clutch is spongy.

8. The C7 Corvette Stingray has been supplanted by the mid-engine C8, but I drove the C7 back in 2014 and sort of enjoyed the seven-speed manual.

Read the review.

Problem is, one could slip from 4th gear to 7th when trying to get to 5th (there was no lockout). I got the hang of it after a while, but it was annoying.

9. The Nissan 370Z Nismo Tech. I love this V6 dinosaur, and for $46,000, what's not to love?

Read the review.

Well, the six-speed manual, which while satisfying isn't exactly thrilling.

10. OK, finally we have the Toyota Tacoma TRD Sport. One of the most basic pickups I've ever tested.

Read the review.

It had a six-speed manual, but it could have been five. It was like managing a farming vehicle. But that's a testament to the Tacoma's legendary ruggedness.

With speeds up to 100 times faster than 4G, and latency up to 120 times lower, 5G is poised to revolutionize the tech industry.

Telecoms in 18 countries will roll out 5G networks by the end of 2019, which means the race to secure global 5G leadership is officially underway. Winning would allow the opportunity to shape the future of the telecommunications industry, and could come with more than a decade of competitive advantages.

As the biggest mobile market in the world, China is at the front of the pack of global 5G development. China is projected to have 460 million 5G connections by 2025, which would make it the largest 5G market worldwide. After largely missing the opportunity of the 3G and 4G eras, 5G leadership is a top priority for China.

In the 5G Snapshot: China report, Business Insider Intelligence breaks down the key components and advantages of China's 5G mission, and provides summaries of the country's 3 largest wireless operators.

This exclusive report can be yours for FREE today.

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• This is a preview of The Internet of Things 2020 research report from Business Insider Intelligence.
• Purchase this report.
• Business Insider Intelligence offers even more technology coverage with Connectivity & Tech Pro. Subscribe today to receive industry-changing connectivity news and analysis to your inbox.

IoT systems and solutions are iterating rapidly, and providers are coming to meet more and more of companies' and consumers' needs.

Emerging tools and technologies like smart speakers, machine learning, and 5G are enabling huge gains to efficiency and more control at home and in the workplace.

The continued growth of the IoT industry is going to be a transformative force across all organizations. By integrating all of our modern day devices with internet connectivity, the IoT market is on pace to grow to over $2.4 trillion annually by 2027.

To give companies insight into who's using IoT solutions, who isn't, and key trends in the development and deployment of IoT projects, Business Insider Intelligence conducted its fourth annual Global IoT Executive Survey.

The annual survey, combined with past iterations of the study, offers a longitudinal look at adoption of the IoT generally, anticipated trends and their realization, and the evolution of decision-making processes alongside other points of interest in the wider space. Our survey includes over 400 responses from key executives around the world, including C-suite and director-level respondents.

Through this exclusive study and broad-based research into the field, Business Insider Intelligence details the components that make up the IoT ecosystem. We size the IoT market and use exclusive data to identify key trends in the connected devices sector. And we profile the enterprise, governmental, and consumer IoT segments individually, drilling down into the drivers and characteristics that are shaping each market.

Here are some key takeaways from the report:

• We project that there will be more than 41 billion IoT devices by 2027, up from about 8 billion in 2019.
• 5G networks will figure into many companies' IoT projects before the year is out, with 39% of respondents to our survey saying they plan to support 5G in IoT products and services before 2021.
• AI and machine learning are critical systems that are continually evolving to provide IoT users with the tools they need to parse mountains of data and quickly discern usable insights, while edge computing solutions are growing more central to IoT discussions and increasingly sophisticated as companies seek to reduce data transmission costs and lower latency.
• The report highlights the opinions and experiences of IoT decision-makers on topics that include: drivers of adoption, major challenges and barriers, investment plans, and the types of solutions they're employing thus far.

In full, the report:

• Provides a primer on the basics of the IoT ecosystem.
• Offers forecasts for the IoT moving forward, and highlights areas of interest in the coming years.
• Looks at who is and is not adopting the IoT, and why.
• Highlights drivers and challenges facing companies that are implementing IoT solutions.

Companies mentioned in this report include: Alibaba, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, AT&T, Attest, Audi, AWS, Baidu, Blink, Carbon Black, China, Mobile, China UnionPay, Cisco, Cimcon, Deutsche Telekom, eero, enSilo, Ericsson, Etisalat, Foninet, Goldman Sachs, Google, Google Cloud, Honeywell, Honeywell Connected Enterprise, Huawei, Internet of Things Consortium, Intersection, Jacuzzi, Michelin, Microsoft, NEC, Nest, NXP Semiconductors, Oracle, Orange, Particle, Qualcomm, Ring, Salesforce, Sidewalk Labs, Sigfox, Singtel, SoftBank, Software AG, Sprint, STMicroelectronics, T-Systems, Telefonica, Telstra, Tenable, Tencent, Tolaga Research, Verizon, VMWare, Z-Wave, ZigBee.

Interested in getting the full report? Here's how to get access:

1. Purchase & download the full report from our research store. >> Purchase & Download Now
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• Uber is set to acquire the food-delivery startup Postmates in a $2.6 billion all-stock deal, both The New York Times and Bloomberg reported Sunday.
• Postmates was founded by Bastian Lehmann, Sam Street, and Sean Plaice in 2011 and says it has grown to include 600,000 merchants across all 50 states.
• Last month, Uber lost out to the European food-delivery service Just Eat Takeaway in a deal to buy the US-based Grubhub for $7.3 billion. According to CNBC, Uber may have pulled out of the deal over antitrust concerns.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Uber is set to acquire the food-delivery startup Postmates in a $2.6 billion deal, The New York Times and Bloomberg reported Sunday.

People familiar with the matter told Bloomberg and The Times that the all-stock deal could be announced as soon as Monday. According to The Times, Uber is expected to merge Postmates with its popular homegrown food-delivery app Uber Eats.

Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty, the vice president of Uber Eats, is expected to run the combined delivery business, according to both The Times and Bloomberg.

Postmates was founded by Bastian Lehmann, Sam Street, and Sean Plaice in 2011 and says it has grown to include 600,000 merchants across all 50 states.

Last month, Uber lost out to the European food-delivery service Just Eat Takeaway in a deal to buy the US-based Grubhub for $7.3 billion. According to CNBC, Uber may have pulled out of the deal over antitrust concerns.

CNBC cited data from the analytics firm Second Measure indicating that Postmates made up about 10% of food-delivery sales in 2019, while Grubhub accounted for 32%. UberEats made up 20% of sales, while DoorDash led the market with 33%.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Inside London during COVID-19 lockdown

Apple is at a tipping point.

The tech giant’s fiscal Q1 2019 represented the first time in more than a decade the company saw declines in both revenue and profit during a holiday season.

Apple’s peripheral segments — 'Services' and 'Wearables, Home, and Accessories' — were two bright spots for the company.

And Apple’s latest event marked a shift in the company’s approach, with a focus on news, games, videos, and other content.

Business Insider Intelligence has outlined the road ahead for the tech giant in The Future of Apple.

To get your copy of this exclusive report absolutely FREE, simply click here.

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