Vox Sentences: Why 180,000 people preordered a car that won’t be available for 21 months

Tesla hits the mass market; two big victories for the Fight for $15 movement; the UN's big sexual abuse problem.

Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.

TOP NEWS

Tesla, turbocharged

Tesla.

• Electric car manufacturer Tesla unveiled its Model 3 today — its first car priced for the mass market. Within 24 hours, it's received 180,000 preorders.

  [Wall Street Journal / John D. Stoll]

• The Model 3 (which costs about $35,000) won't be available until late 2017. (But if you can't wait until then, here's a firsthand account from The Verge's Chris Ziegler.)

  [The Verge / Chris Ziegler]

• Right now demand and supply for electric cars are still small — and heavily government-subsidized. (One big reason for the rush to preorder Model 3s is that people who buy Teslas now are eligible for a big tax credit, which the company will be too big to qualify for by 2017.)

  [Vox / Brad Plumer]

• But Tesla founder Elon Musk is hoping the Model 3 will be the thing that finally, irrefutably ensures electric cars are the future of personal transit.

  [Wired / Alex Davies]

• Musk's motivation is partly environmental — he thinks widespread adoption of electric cars is an important step to avert global climate disaster.

  [Grist / Melissa Cronin]

• How green electric cars are depends on what's powering the grid. For a third of America, the answer to that is coal (though that's improving).

  [Gizmodo / Alissa Walker]

• But even with fossil fuels powering some electric cars indirectly, one European study from 2012 found their contribution to global climate change was between 10 and 24 percent lower than their gasoline-powered peers.

  [Journalist's Resource / Leighton Walter Kille]

• What's even greener than an electric car, of course, is a share of an electric car — which several car-sharing services provide.

  [Gizmodo / Bryan Lufkin]

Is the US ready for a $15 minimum wage?

Anadolu Agency / Cem Ozdel

• California's legislature approved a bill to raise the state's minimum wage to $15 an hour this week. Gov. Jerry Brown will sign it Monday.

  [LA Times / Liam Dillon and Patrick McGreevy]

• Meanwhile, New York's state government has cut a deal to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour in New York City over three years, and set up a raise to that level for the rest of the state afterward.

  [Reuters ]

• These are two huge victories for the union-backed Fight for $15 movement — which, as Bloomberg's Josh Eidelson explains, sees the push for a $15 minimum wage as a study in how to build worker power outside traditional union structures.

  [Bloomberg / Josh Eidelson]

• But while some areas (like New York) can probably handle a $15 wage floor, even liberal economists aren't sure that the whole state of California can do it without losing jobs.

  [Vox / Timothy Lee]

• So after a month where the US added 213,000 jobs, continuing frustratingly slow but steady job growth, it's hard to know whether this is a good time for more states to test the effects of wage hikes.

  [Vox / Timothy Lee and Soo Oh]

• England, which just enacted a new National Living Wage of £7.20 ($10.25) an hour, is testing one alternative solution as well: The city of Sheffield is offering tax cuts to businesses that pay their workers at or above a certain wage.

  [BBC / Emma Simpson]

• Postscript: It's worth remembering "minimum wage" doesn't always mean minimum. A loophole allows US employers to pay disabled employees less.

  [Vox / Ari Ne'eman]

When the peacekeepers are the problem

AFP / Fabrice Coffrini

• On Thursday, the United Nations acknowledged it was investigating a new wave of sexual abuse allegations against its peacekeepers in the Central African Republic in 2014 — including one prefecture where more than 100 girls may have been abused.

  [NYT / Rick Gladstone]

• UN and independent human rights investigators have been turning up cases of sexual abuse in the CAR for several months, frequently involving French units. In one case, a 7-year-old girl was forced to perform oral sex on French soldiers in exchange for water.

  [AP]

• An independent report published in December assailed the UN's initial response to the incidents — the UN appears to have been more concerned about news of them leaking to government officials from the countries involved than it was about preventing child rape.

  [The Guardian / Owen Bowcott]

• In response, the UN passed a resolution a few weeks ago giving the secretary general more powers to remove peacekeeping units from the field when their members are accused of misconduct.

  [United Nations ]

• The problem is that the UN can't prosecute peacekeepers itself. That responsibility falls to the country sending the peacekeepers. And often, the home country has no incentive to prosecute.

  [Time / Aryn Baker]

• One intriguing possibility: The United States could apply some third-party pressure, using a 1997 law that allows the government to cut off training aid to units accused of human rights violations.

  [Foreign Affairs / Ryan McCarrel]

MISCELLANEOUS

How a 31-year-old named Andres Sepulveda hacked public opinion in Mexico, and rigged its presidential election, for the low sum of $600,000 (or so he claims). [Bloomberg Businessweek / Jordan Robertson, Michael Riley, and Andrew Willis]

• It is now legal for a same-sex couple to adopt a child anywhere in the United States, after a judge struck down Mississippi's ban Friday.

  [NPR / Bill Chappell]

• Alanis Morissette writes a weekly advice column for the Guardian. Do people know this? I (Dara) didn't know this.

  [The Guardian / Alanis Morissette]

• Something new to be terrified of: primary progressive aphasia, a degenerative disease that robs you of the ability to speak or write words but keeps your cognition totally intact.

  [The Atlantic / Ed Yong]

• An interactive feature that shows you why police body cameras aren't as useful in resolving controversies as you might think.

  [NYT / Timothy Williams, James Thomas, Samuel Jacoby, and Damien Cave]

VERBATIM

"Thanks to his virility, Pyros may be the only bear anywhere with his own groupies." [Wall Street Journal / Matt Moffett]

• "This is your mother, calling again with your Tinder replies."

  [Clay Skipper's mother to GQ / Clay Skipper]

• "Depending on the jurisdiction, between 60 and 90 percent of the roughly 745,000 inmates in county jail at any given time are pretrial detainees who can’t make bail."

  [Next City / Christopher Moraff]

• "A Russian man who resembled Gérard Depardieu exclaimed, 'I escaped Chernobyl for this!'"

  [NYT Magazine / Nathaniel Rich]

• "April 1st is the moment when the brands come to life and speak as humans, like the animals on Christmas."

  [Track Changes / Paul Ford]

WATCH THIS

When the BBC won April Fools' Day in 1957 [YouTube / Vox]

Vox / Carlos Waters and Phil Edwards

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