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Vote counting begins today in the historic effort to unionize Amazon’s Bessemer, Alabama fulfillment center. The warehouse — which opened exactly a year ago to meet ramping up demand as COVID-19 bore down on the U.S. — has become ground zero for one of the most import labor efforts in modern American history.

Voting began by mail on February 8, after Amazon repeatedly attempted to delay the vote or force workers to submit ballots in-person, in spite of pandemic restrictions. Things have gotten predictably heated in the days and weeks leading up to yesterday’s official deadline. Though even by the standards of Amazon’s aggressive public relations strategy, thing went surprisingly far.

In particular, the e-commerce giant leveraged Twitter feeds as part of an aggressive anti-union strategy. The company simultaneously sought to bolster its image of existing working conditions while confronting progressive/leftist politicians like Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who played a key role in pushing the company toward the $15/hour warehouse minimum wage it now celebrates.

According to reports, the company’s scorched-earth approach against Sanders and fellow New England Senator Elizabeth Warren were spurred on from the top. Founder Jeff Bezos — who will abdicate his CEO position later this year — was said to have encouraged the offensive. Employees at the companies were said to have flagged the offending tweets internally for suspicious activity. Those tickets were reportedly closed.

After antagonist tweets and denying widespread and longstanding reports about Amazon workers peeing in bottles over fears of falling behind on quotas, the Amazon News Twitter reverted to a more positive approach. It has however, continued activity around the vote, including a bid to install video cameras for monitoring boxes carrying ballots — a bid the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has since rejected.

While the vote counting kicks off today, don’t expect immediate results. The process is a methodical and deliberate one. Among other things, there are processes in place for either side to object. It’s clear from Amazon’s recent behavior that the company is well aware that this is far more consequential than the 6,000 or so workers currently employed by the Bessemer location. If the company prevails, it will position the decision as validation of its working conditions. If workers vote to unionize, meanwhile, this could well start a chain reaction across the company.

BIRMINGHAM, AL – MARCH 05: A truck passes as Congressional delegates visit the Amazon Fulfillment Center after meeting with workers and organizers involved in the Amazon BHM1 facility unionization effort, represented by the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union on March 5, 2021 in Birmingham, Alabama. Workers at Amazon facility currently make $15 an hour, however they feel that their requests for less strict work mandates are not being heard by management. (Photo by Megan Varner/Getty Images)

This week, workers at Amazon’s Germany facilities are going on strike for four days, following a similar move in Italy last week.

“It’s not just workers in Alabama, it’s workers everywhere who are saying to Jeff Bezos that enough is enough. No matter what language they speak, Amazon workers around the globe will not stand for the working conditions they’ve been forced to endure for too long,” Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) President Stuart Applebaum said in a statement.

The NLRB oversees the vote counting. If workers vote to unionize, Bessemer workers will join the RWDSU. The organization has also seen its share of pushback from Amazon. As the company told TechCrunch last week:

Stuart Appelbaum, Chief Disinformation Officer of RWDSU, in an attempt to save his long declining union, is taking alternative facts to a whole new level. But our employees are smart and know the truth—starting wages of $15 or more, health care from day one, and a safe and inclusive workplace. We encourage all of our employees to vote.

Ballots have been sent to the NLRB’s Birmingham offices. There are a number of grounds on which either side can contest the results. These include everything from signatures to whether the person who cast a vote is, in fact, an eligible employee of Amazon. Even after votes are counted, things are likely to drag on. Court battles seem a likely outcome, moving forward. From there, things could ultimately stretch on for weeks or months.

The battle is a high stakes one that has made unusual political allies from opposite sides of the aisle. There aren’t too many events that have united politicians ranging from Marco Rubio on one side and Sanders, Warren and Joe Biden on the other. That goes double for something as traditionally divisive as labor unions.

“This campaign has already been a victory in many ways,” Appelbaum said in a statement issued late last week. “Even though we don’t know how the vote will turn out, we believe we have opened the door to more organizing around the country.”

Automaker Volkswagen wants you to know it’s serious about electric vehicles — so serious, in fact, that it’s officially rebranding around a pun in the U.S. The company revealed in a press release that it’s changing its name from “Volkswagen of America” to “Voltswagen of America” in a press release today. News this could happen leaked late Monday, but many speculated it might be an April Fool’s joke that got out a bit early, but the automaker seems serious about switching the official brand from May 2021 onwards given the official release on its newsroom.

Voltswagen (neé Volkswagen) says that the reason behind the change is to firmly demonstrate its commitment “future-forward investment in e-mobility,” which said more simply, implies that it’s super serious about its electric drivetrain plans. In a more literal sense, ‘Volkswagen’ is actually from the German for ‘the people’s car,’ which suggests that Voltswagen is a car for… volts?

Sort of, but not really, says VW (hey that still works!):

“We have said, from the beginning of our shift to an electric future, that we will build EVs for the millions, not just millionaires,” explained VW CEO and President Scott Keogh in the release announcing the swap. “This name change signifies a nod to our past as the peoples’ car and our firm belief that our future is in being the peoples’ electric car.”

This announcement comes just as Volkswagen has begun shipping its all-electric SUV, the ID.4, in the U.S. It ha a price tag of $33,995, before either federal and tax incentives, so that is indeed on the more affordable side of the existing U.S. electric vehicle market, with even more options set to come for cost-conscious consumers in future as the company spurs uses its commitments of lowering emissions by achieving one million global EV sales by 2025, and playing host to a lineup of mover 70 models across VW and its subrands worldwide by 2029.

Voltswagen branding will include use of a higher blue tone on the VW logo for all-electric vehicles, while gas cars will retain the more traditional dark blue look. The actual word ‘Voltswagen’ will be used on EVs in addition to the initials logo, with the icon graphic itself will be the sole branding on gas cars in the U.S. going forward.

Cameo, the celebrity video site you’re probably familiar with if you’ve celebrated a birthday in the last three years, announced this morning that it’s raised a $100M Series C. The round, which was led by Jonathan Turner with e.ventures, puts the site’s value at just north of $1 billion.

Cameo has been building a good deal of steam in recent years, but the service is among those that managed to get a major boost amid the pandemic, as celebrities and normals alike suddenly found themselves with a lot more time on their hands.

“The pandemic put extra stress on the already unstable business models supporting talent across sports and entertainment ecosystems,” CEO Steven Galanis said in a Medium post tied to the news. “It catalyzed a massive shift in awareness and widespread adoption of direct-to-fan models, which has, in turn, created a new foundation for fan engagement. We exist in an entirely different world today — one in which talent actually want to connect more deeply with their fans, and fans expect unprecedented access to the talent they admire most. This funding will help us create the access and connections that will define the future of the ‘connection economy’ on a global scale.”

This latest round more than doubles the service’s total funding, bringing it up to $165 million. Google Ventures, Amazon Alexa Fund, UTA, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Valor Equity Partners and Counterpoint Global (Morgan Stanley) join existing investors, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Kleiner Perkins, The Chernin Group, Origin Venture and Spark Capital. There are also some “talent investors” on board, as well, including skateboarding legend, Tony Hawk. Because, you know, Cameo.

Cameo says some 80% of its standard video requests are booked as gifts, to celebrate things like birthdays. In total, around two million videos have been created through the offering. But the site is looking to grow into additional categories. Last year it added the ability to book celebrities as guests for Zoom video chats (a very pandemic-focused offering).

Some of the funding will go toward ramping up Cameo for Business (C4B), which brings celebrity videos to events and conferences, as well as ads and sales. Effectively, the service works as a pipeline between businesses and famous people. The company will also be expending its international offering, growing beyond the approximately 20% of videos currently purchased outside the U.S.

Slice, the online ordering platform for independent pizzerias, announced two new offerings this morning — a point-of-sale system designed specifically for those businesses, as well as a rewards program for diners.

The launch of the new Slice Register builds on last year’s acquisition of point-of-sale company Instore, and the appointment of its CEO Matt Niehaus as Slice’s senior vice president for payments.

Pizzerias might seem to be a narrow focus for a point-of-sale system, particularly given all the other POS products out there, but Niehaus suggested that many of the 15,000 pizzerias in Slice’s network are still relying on cash registers and pen-and-paper: “If you run a pizzeria, you are certainly great at making pizza, but you are typically less comfortable with the accounting side.”

He also said that existing POS systems aren’t really designed for the needs and workflows of a pizzeria. Slice founder and CEO Ilir Sela added that most of them were designed for offline ordering first, with online support added later. And Niehaus suggested that the average local pizzeria is only seeing 19% of their orders coming from online sources (compared to 75% for the average Domino’s location), that’s a real problem.

“Domino’s is really the competition, not the POS companies,” he said.

Image Credits: Slice

So the Slice Register is a combined software and hardware (including an iPad) solution. Naturally, it integrates with Slice’s online ordering and also includes support for email and mobile marketing, as well as a consolidated view of each customer. Niehaus said that among other things, it’s designed to “grab those customers on one platform and nudge them online.”

Slice Register is available to pizzerias at no initial charge for the hardware or software. The only fee in 2021 will be for payment processing, with additional pricing announced coming next year.

As for the new Slice Rewards program, diners who order pizzas through Slice will get a free large cheese pizza for every eight orders of $15 or more. (Slice, not the restaurant, is paying for the free pizza.) Sela described this as a “very Domino’s-like program,” except that it works across independent pizzerias.

“What we’re learning the local consumer has up to four local favorites, and they love all of these locations equally,” he said. “What we think is really cool is, you’re going to get rewarded for buying at all four of your local favorites.”

Motional will integrate its driverless technology into Hyundai’s new all-electric SUV to create the company’s first robotaxi. At the start of 2023, customers in certain markets will be able to book the fully electric, fully autonomous taxi through the Lyft app.

The Hyundai IONIQ 5, which was revealed in February with a consumer release date expected later this year, will be fully integrated with Motional’s driverless system. The vehicles will be equipped with the hardware and software needed for Level 4 autonomous driving capabilities, including LiDAR, radar and cameras to provide the vehicle’s sensing system with 360 degrees of vision, and the ability to see up to 300 meters away. This level of driverless technology means a human will not be required to take over driving.

The interior living space will be similar to the consumer model, but additionally equipped with features needed for robotaxi operation, according to a Motional spokesperson. Motional did not reveal whether or not the vehicle would still have a steering wheel, and images of the robotaxi aren’t yet available.

Motional’s IONIQ 5 robotaxis have already begun testing on public roads and closed courses, and they’ll be put through more months of testing and real-world experience before being deployed on Lyft’s platform. The company says it’ll complete testing only once it’s confident that the taxis are safer than a human driver.

Motional, the Aptiv-Hyundai $4 billion joint venture aimed at commercializing driverless cars, announced its partnership with Lyft in December, signaling the ride-hailing company’s primary involvement in Motional’s plans. The company recently announced that it began testing its driverless tech on public roads in Las Vegas. Hyundai’s IONIQ 5 is Motional’s second platform to go driverless on public roads.