By Abhirup Roy

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) -Electric vehicle maker Rivian said on Tuesday it will adopt Tesla’s charging standard, giving Rivian customers access to the biggest U.S. charging network and adding momentum to Tesla’s bid to set the industry standard.

Rivian said its customers will be able to access 12,000 Tesla Superchargers with adapters in the United States and Canada as early as spring 2024. The company, which has its own small network of fast chargers, will also make a Tesla-style charging port standard on its vehicles starting in 2025.

“We prefer the Tesla connector, which is more compact, and we also see it as an opportunity to leverage the charging infrastructure that they built,” Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe told Reuters in an interview.

The decision, first reported by Reuters, is one of a series of wins for Tesla. On Tuesday alone, BTC Power said it will add Tesla’s standard to its electric chargers, Texas said it will require state-backed charging stations to include Tesla’s plug, and Hyundai Motor said it will consider making its vehicles more compatible with Tesla’s standard.

Tesla has also struck recent deals with General Motors and Ford. While other automakers get access to Tesla’s charging network, Tesla stands to profit from selling power to a bigger group of EV drivers.

Shares of Irvine, California-based Rivian jumped, finishing 5.5% higher. Tesla shares closed up 5.3%, bringing gains since the Ford deal was announced in late May to a thumping 49%.

Rivian, which makes the R1T pickup truck and the R1S SUV, said it will continue to expand its own fast-charging network. In 2021, it outlined plans for more than 3,500 charging stations.

Scaringe said Rivian’s network will also adopt Tesla’s standard plugs, opening up a significant revenue stream from Tesla owners using Rivian chargers. “The network will actually become cash flow positive fairly quickly,” he said.

Tesla’s Superchargers account for about 60% of the total fast chargers available in the United States, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

While other electric car makers need access to reliable charging to allay customers’ fears of being stranded, most have stayed away from building networks as installing and maintaining them requires substantial investment for still-limited returns.

“That’s why I think you’re going to see more and more partnerships,” said Akshay Singh, a partner at consultancy firm PwC Strategy&.

Tesla’s recent deals represent major strides in displacing a rival standard known as the Combined Charging System (CCS) that earlier exclusively had the backing of President Joe Biden’s administration. The government is offering $7.5 billion in funding to speed the deployment of EV chargers in the United States.

Qualifying for some of that federal money had required Tesla to open up its network and the automaker has rebranded the technology as the North American Charging Standard (NACS).

“It’s great to see the industry coming together to adopt the North American Charging Standard,” Tesla’s senior director of charging infrastructure, Rebecca Tinucci, said in a statement.

Manufacturers and operators of CCS chargers such as ABB E-mobility North America, a unit of Swiss industrial firm ABB, Tritium DCFC, EVgo and FreeWire have raced to announce the addition of NACS plugs to their charging stations since the Ford and GM announcements.

Services and other revenue, which includes the fees for using Tesla’s Superchargers, made up just under 10% of Tesla’s revenue in the past quarter. The company does not break out charging revenue alone.

(Reporting by Abhirup Roy in San Francisco; Additional reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Kevin Krolicki, Stephen Coates and Edwina Gibbs)

By Harish Sridharan

(Reuters) -The Australian Competition Tribunal (ACT) upheld a decision to block an asset transfer deal between wireless internet firms Telstra Group and TPG Telecom, the companies said on Wednesday, in a ruling that sent TPG shares down 11%.

Under the deal announced in February 2022, Telstra would have bought spectrum – airwaves which carry wireless internet – and transmission towers from TPG, while TPG would have kept selling 4G and 5G coverage using Telstra infrastructure.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) had ruled against the plan in December, much to the delight of Optus, the country’s No. 2 wireless internet provider owned by Singapore Telecommunications.

The ACCC is the country’s competition regulator, while the ACT is a federal court body that typically reviews appeals of the regulator’s decisions.

The Tribunal noted that the proposed arrangements would give Telstra substantial benefits and increase its market strength on the retail and wholesale mobile markets, and would undermine Optus’ incentives to invest in 5G technology, ACCC said in a statement.

Over time, this would weaken the competitive constraint on Telstra, and lead to increased prices and margins, the regulator said.

TPG said it would review the tribunal’s decision before considering its options for further appeal, including a judicial review in the Federal Court.

Both TPG and Telstra expressed disappointment at the outcome. Telstra shares were up 0.7% in early trade, while TPG’s shares fell as much as 10.8%, the biggest intraday decline since August 2022.

“At the moment, we’re limited in the amount of spectrum we can buy at auction and, as today’s result shows, limited in the type of commercial arrangements we can put in place to improve services for our customers,” Telstra CEO Vicki Brady said.

Optus, which had previously opposed the deal on the grounds it would build Telstra’s market dominance, said it welcomed the tribunal’s decision.

“We are delighted that the tribunal has upheld the ACCC’s original decision to block this anti-competitive arrangement,” Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin said.

Commpete, an advocacy group largely consisting of regional internet providers, said it was also pleased with the ruling.

“The tribunal’s decision was a decisive move for competition in the sector,” Commpete Chair Michelle Lim said. “This deal would have handed a dominant provider control over mobile pricing, service availability and service standards in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis.”

(Reporting by Harish Sridharan in Bengaluru; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu, Jamie Freed and Sherry Jacob-Phillips)

(Reuters) – Hit television writer and producer Ryan Murphy is planning to leave Netflix to join Walt Disney, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter.

Murphy is known for his creation of hits from “Glee” to “9-1-1” and “American Horror Story” and serial-killer series “Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story,” which became one of Netflix’s most-watched series of all time.

He left Fox in 2018 to join Netflix in a five-year deal valued as high as $300 million to produce a new series and film exclusively for the online giant.

Competition has been intensifying between streaming companies as they invest in original content and try to stand out in a crowded market and attract subscribers to their platforms.

The TV show creator has been negotiating a new deal with Disney over the past year. Most of the details were ironed out before the writers’ strike began in May, the report added.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the group that votes on the Golden Globes, celebrated Murphy’s contributions to television with its fourth Carol Burnett Award earlier this year. Previous honorees were Burnett, Ellen DeGeneres and Norman Lear.

Disney and Netflix did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.

(Reporting by Samrhitha Arunasalam in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel)

BENGALURU (Reuters) -IndiGo, India’s largest airline, on Monday placed an order for 500 Airbus narrowbody jets, the largest ever plane deal by number of aircraft, overtaking an earlier deal by rival Air India that was firmed up on Tuesday.

Following are the biggest plane deals, by number of aircraft.

INDIGO – 500 JETS – 2023

IndiGo on Monday agreed to buy 500 single-aisle jets from Airbus, making it the single largest order of any aircraft. The order is expected to include the popular A320neo family of planes including the longer range A321XLRs which will help expand its network into Europe and deeper into Southeast Asia.

The airline hopes to take deliveries of the jets from 2030 to 2035.

AIR INDIA – 470 JETS – 2023

Air India on Tuesday finalised an order for 470 jetliners that includes 250 planes from Airbus and 220 from Boeing, with options for buying 70 more from the U.S. planemaker.

The Tata-owned airline’s order comprises 400 narrowbody and 70 widebody planes. Air India is expected to take delivery of the first few widebody Airbus A350 jets by the end of the year.

AMERICAN AIRLINES – 460 JETS – 2011

American Airlines in 2011 placed orders with Airbus and Boeing for a total of 460 airliners.

The airline placed an initial order for 260 Airbus A320 aircraft with an option to buy an additional 365 for a possible total order of 625. The airline also placed an initial order with Boeing for 200 of its 737-family of aircraft, with options to buy an additional 100.

INDIGO PARTNERS – 430 JETS – 2017

U.S. private equity firm Indigo Partners in 2017 placed an order for 430 Airbus A320neo jets for the four carriers in which airline pioneer Bill Franke’s investment firm has a stake – U.S.-based Frontier Airlines, Mexico’s Volaris, Chilean carrier JetSmart and Hungary’s Wizz.

INDIGO – 300 JETS – 2019

IndiGo in 2019 placed an order for 300 of Airbus’s A320neo family of planes.

INDIGO PARTNERS – 255 JETS – 2021

Franke’s Indigo Partners in 2021 placed an order for 255 Airbus A321neo jets in the first major fleet purchase since COVID-19, betting on a quick snapback in tourist travel after the pandemic.

INDIGO – 250 JETS – 2015

India’s biggest airline in 2015 finalised an order for 250 Airbus A320neo aircraft.

UNITED AIRLINES – 200 JETS – 2022

United Airlines in December said it was ordering 100 Boeing 787 Dreamliners and 100 737 MAXs in a push for post-pandemic growth, replacing older, less-efficient aircraft.

By Jarrett Renshaw and Hyunjoo Jin

(Reuters) -Tesla scored a series of victories for its charging technology on Tuesday, capped by Texas saying it would require electric vehicle charging companies to include both Tesla’s standard as well as the nationally recognized CCS if they want to be part of a state program to electrify highways using federal dollars.

Earlier in the day, Reuters was first to report both that electric pickup truck maker Rivian was backing Tesla and that charger maker BTC Power would support the standard. Those announcements follow decisions by GM and Ford to add Tesla charging technology, shunning efforts by the Biden administration to make the Combined Charging System (CCS) the dominant charging standard in the United States.

Texas – home to Tesla’s headquarters and a new car factory complex – is the first state that will mandate Tesla’s charging technology, giving a boost to CEO Elon Musk’s hope of making it the national charging standard.

“The decision by Ford, GM, and now Rivian to adopt NACS changed requirements for Phase 1” of the rollout, the Texas Department of Transportation said in an email to Reuters on Tuesday, adding that it would require direct current fast chargers to have one CCS and one North American Charging Standard (NACS) connector.

Texas’s decision will put a ton of pressure on other states to adopt Tesla’s NACS, said Lew Cox, director of business development at MD7, which helps companies deploy chargers.

“It’ll effectively make an NACS the new charging standard,” Cox said.

The U.S. Department of Transportation earlier this year said that charging companies must provide the CCS to be eligible for up to $7.5 billion in federal funding to build new, high-speed chargers on 7,500 miles (12,070 km) of the nation’s busiest highways.

The Federal Highway Administration on Tuesday acknowledged the industry was rapidly evolving.

The growth of the nation’s EV industry is a sign that public investments are paying dividends, but the policy is always under review, said a Federal Highway Administration spokesperson.

“Our technical experts are having active conversations with automakers, charger manufacturers, and standards setting bodies to ensure federal investment continues to support a reliable, convenient, and user-friendly charging experience for all drivers,” the spokesperson said.

The federal dollars are flowing through the states, which are empowered to tailor their own guidelines as long as they meet minimum federal standards. States are expected to award the first round of funding through the remainder of the year.

Since the Ford and GM announcements, top U.S. charging companies like ChargePoint and EVgo said they would look to add the same standard to their U.S. chargers.

Others states like California, Iowa and Michigan are reviewing the shifting charging market.

And at least one other state is considering giving applicants bonus points on applications if they include the Tesla charging ports.

Tesla shares rose 1.2% in extended trade, after closing up 5.3% on Tuesday.

Tesla said in the U.S. there are approximately 2,000 Supercharger locations and more than 21,000 Supercharger stalls, which represents approximately 60% of the fast-charging plugs operational in the country.

(Reporting by Jarrett Renshaw in Philadelphia and Hyunjoo Jin in San Francisco; Additional reporting by Abhirup Roy in San Francisco; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Sonali Paul)

By Leika Kihara

(Reuters) -Bank of Japan (BOJ) policymakers agreed to keep ultra-low interest rates at Governor Kazuo Ueda’s debut meeting but some saw the need to avoid being too late in raising interest rates, minutes of the April rate review showed on Wednesday.

While Japan was making progress toward achieving the BOJ’s 2% inflation target, the nine-member board saw the need to maintain ultra-loose policy given uncertainty over the global economy and the wage outlook, the minutes showed.

But one member said the BOJ must ensure its policy “does not fall behind the curve,” as wages and inflation were already showing signs of accelerating.

Another member said the BOJ must avoid a situation where it had to make abrupt changes to interest rates, as that would cause huge disruptions to businesses accustomed to extremely low interest rates.

“The BOJ must humbly monitor price and wage developments, and respond not too quickly, but also not too slowly” the second member said.

At the April meeting, the BOJ made no changes to its yield curve control (YCC) policy including the -0.1% short-term interest rate target and the implicit 0.5% cap for the 10-year bond yield.

Many members saw no need to tweak the operational conduct of YCC, arguing that distortions in the yield curve seen in the past had been on the mend, the minutes showed.

But one member said the BOJ could consider revising the conduct of YCC, as many market players were complaining that the functioning of Japanese government bond (JGB) market remained low, according to the minutes.

“On this basis, the member said that yield curve control seemed, in some aspects, to have hampered smooth financing and the bank could consider revising its conduct at this time. However, it was appropriate to wait and see a little longer in light of the situation in global financial markets,” it said.

The BOJ does not disclose the identity of the members who made the comments at the minutes. Earlier this year, however, board member Naoki Tamura publicly called for the need to assess the pros and cons of YCC.

(Reporting by Leika KiharaEditing by Shri Navaratnam)