>> you are watching bloomberg technology. lets get a check on your first word news. bloomberg news has learned republican senator marco rubio will support a compromise tax overhaul package. an aide and rubio got to yes at the congressional leaders agreed to expand the child tax credit. another former holdout gop senator, bob corker, says he is also on board. maine senator susan collins says she is still waiting to read the bill. calling himself a true friend and loyal champion to police, president trump today addressed law-enforcement graduates at the fbi national academy in quantico. the president says he plans to rebuild the bureau.

he also he also referred to messages from fbi officials criticizing him as disgraceful. female members of the he also referred to messages from fbi officials criticizing him as disgraceful. female members of the congressional black caucus want gop leaders to allow doug jones to join the senate immediately ♪ ♪

emily: i'm emily chang and this is "bloomberg technology." federal investigators confirm at least one criminal probe into uber. we'll talk about what it means for the world's most valuable startup. plus, the world's largest futures exchange will begin allowing bets on the world's biggest cryptocurrency. whether we can whether we ca plus, another firr spacex. elon musk's other company since a recycled rocket and recycled representing a former security analyst detailing some business operations.

this may be a key piece of evidence. the letter was supposed to be unsealed at noon local time. it has not happened yet but it could happen at any moment. joining us is j it could happen at any moment.o. our guest host for the hour -- bloomberg contributor david kirkpatrick. thank you for joining us. what do we believe is in this letter and why is it important? joel: we know a lot about the letter because jacobs testified in court, and a lot of the letter was read into courtroom testimony. we know that it alleges that uber engaged -- it makes a wide array of allegations, some of which he walked back, so we should be careful with that. we know at the very least -- it alleges surveillance on competitors, on other riders, for example, and we know they

engaged in some web scraping of competitors, peeling information from foreign competitors off the web. he has walked back very significantly the trade secrets claims. he alleges there was a group within uber designed and built to steal trade secrets. this comes from the lawsuit in waymo alleged uber to have stolen trade secrets. pressed in court, jacobs walked that back and said he did not really know for sure on first-hand knowledge that trade secrets were stolen by this group. it is kind of ironic because that may prove actually useless, this letter, but it exposes all these kinds of problems, some of which are true. emily: how does this play into emily: how does this play into the criminal investigation? there are a lot of investigations.

joel: i think bloomberg has reported as many as five. this comes from a criminal investigation. stolen trade secrets. pressed in court, jacobs walked one of the criminal investigations we know of is of possible trade secrets, but we do not know that this letter is actually related to that particular investigation. we do not know that. >> another important point to consider is there are about 1000 people working security at uber, so the idea that one person would have access to all these different projects and would know about them with firsthand knowledge is also coming into question, the idea that jacobs would know about market analytics but also surveillance efforts based on government is questionable, so there's a lot of back-and-forth on how much he knew, how much he would have had first-hand knowledge of as opposed to just overhearing things in the office and maybe taking them out of context.

emily: uber 2.0 -- new uber has said over and over they have new leadership, changing the way they do things and will be more transparent, but how much do these old skeletons in the closet hurt the uber of today? >> clearly, the waymo lawsuit continues to hurt the uber of today, but if there's multiple lawsuits, probably more than we even know about. there's a macro question, which is how much the old culture, even if it is now dispensed with, will hurt the future uber, and my guess is it will hurt the future uber considerably, despite the fact that current leadership seems to be far more responsible in the way they run the company. emily: how much will this letter hurt uber versus help waymo?

joel: i think it hurts uber a lot more than it helps waymo for the reason david was talking about. you can see uber trying to clean house and clean up these lawsuits and the litigation, but it's like every time this another skeleton in the closet that reveals on the problems. it is important to point out that the competitors that the letter alleges surveillance of are foreign competitors. we're not talking about lyft. we will see how much turns out to be true, but we are talking about trying to get into foreign about trying to get into foreign markets. their problems in london, for example. just as they are trying to make inroads and are desperate to do that, those countries are now learning about these practices of their companies based in those countries. emily: integrity again coming into question. i know you have been on the phone all day long. how do people feel about this

within the company? how disruptive has this been? olivia: people close to uber feel devastated by this because they feel their job was to protect employees, to do everything they could to protect uber from other companies they say were spying on them and that that was their intention and that this is being taken out of context, but violating a law is violating a law, whether you did it for benevolent reasons or to protect your own employees, so i think they will have to do with a lot of questions. there'll be a lot of questions about what they have been doing behind the curtain in secrecy that may or may not have been illegal or ethical. emily: you have covered silicon valley technology for many years. i'm curious how uber fits into the pantheon of silicon valley shakespearean dramas. every day, there seems to be a new chapter that makes the whole tale more dramatic.

does it cap them all? david: sadly, i would have to say that uber appears to be just david: sadly, i would have to say that uber appears to be just about the most unethical large company we have seen in silicon valley in its former incarnation. it is clearly reforming, and i admire that, but the uber that existed under travis kalanick was apparently a lawbreaking organization or certainly an unethical organization that took the risk of breaking the law very readily and did not abide by normal standards that we would consider what any company ought to abide by. i think because of that there are a lot of skeletons, as i said before, likely to continue coming out of this closet, which is tragic because it's a great company in terms of the service it provides. emily: right. well, i know you all will keep us posted. joel, you will be watching for

that letter coming out any minute. thank you so much. david kirkpatrick, my guest host for the hour, you are sticking with us. tencent has agreed to buy a 5% stake in a chinese superstore costing about $39 million following alibaba's $2.5 million purchase of a stake in a chinese grocery retailer. it's chinese fourth hypermarket operator and already has a tech example. just as they are trying to make industry investor. coming up, bitcoin closes at a new record right before futures start trading. we will talk about the continued crypto craze next. and "bloomberg tech" is live streaming on twitter. check us out at 5:00 p.m. in new york and 2:00 p.m. san francisco on weekdays. this is bloomberg. ♪

industry investor.

emily: bitcoin continues to be in the spotlight, closing out the week at $17,630. and the world's largest futures exchange is launching its own competing bitcoin product on sunday. competing bitcoin product on sunday. what should we expect? joining us in the studio is adam white, formerly the vice president of business development at coin base. us is mywith u is mand still wh guest host david kirkpatrick. how do you see the week that was? adam: it has been an exciting week. our headquarters is in san francisco. we have had teams working 2/47. we think this is a really momentous kind of weak

indication for this space and we are focused on keeping our exchange of and stable. emily: what are you expecting with the cme? adam: more and more institutional interest. what is exciting watching the maturation of the space is it's really driving in a whole new level of customers for us. we are moving beyond retail traders, the smaller crypto hedge funds and we are seeing mainstream wall street firms like hedge funds, market makers entering the space and entering very quickly. emily: has the institutional interest, the institutional action on bitcoin over the last couple of weeks increased your belief in the legitimacy of bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general and the future of it? david: i would say certainly it makes me more confident there is some kind of future. i never questioned the legitimacy of any of it, but why this particular asset should have this particular value strikes me as hard to answer. i would actually love to ask

adam if i could, given that it seems to be sort of perceived -- bitcoin, that is -- as a store value and speculative investment and a new kind of commodity, is it in your opinion likely that could remain the case even as bitcoin still has relatively little utility outside of the tradable asset world? adam: i think it's a great question. i would push back and say i think we are seeing everyday greater and greater utility in this asset class. thek we are seeing everydaybitf dozens, if not hundreds of assets out there. right now, most people are using it as a store of value, in this a lot of speculative value based inside of that as people look at it as a way to send value to anyone anywhere in the world just like sending an email. that, to me, is incredible and powerful, but you are right -- we are in the early days. we are seeing a lot of developer interest. we are seeing more and more use cases. we are not quite there yet, but

we are heading in the right direction. this interestf does affect coin base. at one point, you guys with the biggest cryptocurrency exchange out there. how does this hurt you versus help? adam: i think we have a long-term macro view on the space. market share numbers are going to change. what is important to us is we are offering a safe and trusted platform to really attract the professional trader. earlier this week, we were the largest exchange in the world and we did $4 billion in trading in one span, which is a huge compliment. we want to be trading in the tens of billions before we can start to say we made it. emily: give us numbers on the growth you are seeing on your platform. adam: we talked about trading volume and seen that grow by orders of magnitude. we have also seen our user count increase by tens of thousands of customers, but we are also watching the activity, right? the bitcoin network itself, which is not a part of coin base, but the larger ecosystem,

continues to see more daily throughput, more transactions, so not only is our company growing with the industry, but so is the technology itself. emily: the head of facebook messenger, formerly head of paypal, has joined your board. what does he bring? adam: he brings a lot of expertise and strategic vision. just coming out of a meeting today of which he was a part, he's a fantastic resource for us to call on. he has been through hyper growth and scaling. he is really helping us make sure we know what we are doing and heading in the right direction. emily: what do you make of the market position? is it cap into acceptance by facebook? >> absolutely, yes would be my answer to the latter question. not only is he someone who has experienced hypergrowth and did a great job creating and building companies in the past, but he is explicitly a digital transactions and digital

currency kind of expert and his original startup that took him into paypal was a mobile money platform, a mobile payments platform. running paypal gives him a lot of relevant background. the board of coin base is super impressive with the addition of marcus to fred wilson and chris dickson, i have to say, and others. that is a great, great board. can i just ask -- who are buying bitcoin? i still don't get it. i'm sorry. i do want to let you go without knowing who are these people that are paying these prices? are they just hoping it will go up, or are they really rational, thinking, knowledgeable investors? adam: i really think they are the latter. we see growth from both sides of the table. we see institutions beginning to look at this as an asset class. the example of crypto derivatives, the legitimacy that brings and the need to trade on the stock market is driving a lot of this growth, but we are

seeing the average retail individual say this looks like an incredible new technology. what is the easiest way to get started, by buying or selling maybe just $50 of digital currency? they are coming to us and doing that and we are tying to make it easy and safe for them to do so. emily: thanks so much for stopping by. it's a long couple of blocks it takes you to get here. i really appreciate it. david kirkpatrick, you're sticking with us. coming up, blasting off into outer space thanks to jeff bezos and elon musk. we look at what the billionaires are sending into the great beyond next. this is bloomberg. ♪ bloomberg. ♪

a launchpad. it will be reused for a future flight. not to be outdone, elon musk's 17th spacex rocket launch had its own milestone. spacex sent a previously used rocket and recycled cargo capsule on a mission into the great beyond for the first time. the mission took place at cape canaveral air force station in florida. the payload -- 5000 pounds of research, supplies and hardware for the crew at the international space station. max from "bloomberg businessweek" joins us now. along with david kirkpatrick. why was this launch in particular so significant? max: for spacex, any launch that

goes well is significant, but this one is sort of a big deal because it proves the idea that elon musk has been working on for the last decade and a half, which is that rockets and spacecraft can be reused successfully. not only were they able to land this thing, but this was a used rocket and a used spaceship, which is now making its way into the international space station. it is the first time for that. that suggests that not only can they land these things, but they can use them again and again, so it is a big milestone in terms of trying to get the cost of launch down, which is a big part of spacex's business, a key part of their profitability or hopeful profitability -- we do not have much information about their finances. and as far as elon musk is concerned, proof we can get to mars or have manned space travel in the future. emily: exactly, that's my next question. this is a very ambitious plan here in this is just one step.

what is the next thing that spacex needs to prove? max: they need to show they can do this over and over again. that is a big part of aerospace in general. the next big launch is this new rocket, the falcon heavy, which is a rocket big enough to theoretically take people to the moon, and we also have additional tests of the current rocket we saw with people in them. there was a report earlier this year that they were going to try to have a couple of space tours go into the end of next year. again, with rockets and stuff, deadlines are a little bit fungible because it is somewhat dependent on conditions and stuff like that and also, elon musk has a tendency to set ambitious timelines. we will see when those things actually happen, but that is what is coming down the pike.

emily: i know you're very impressed by these launches and this one in particular. why you go ? david: not only was it used rocket and used capsule, but it then landed back on earth successfully so it could be used again. clearly, this is going to radically reduce the price of spaceflight which enables things we previously were unable to do because it just was not affordable. to me, this is another feather in the many-feathered cap of elon musk. to change the metaphor, the halo around this guy continues to grow and iand his companies continue to do the impossible again and again, and i continue to be amazed. emily: we do not know much about spacex's financials. the name was floated as an upcoming ipo candidate, when we

would learn more if such a thing happened. what is the likelihood of that? max: there were rumors earlier in the year that spacex quickly beat back. i have said is nothing in the cards immediately, but that said, the general consensus is the economics from this company are pretty good. when you look at the market share of the launch businesses from the kind of launches they are doing, it's pretty good. unlike tesla, which is really just getting its economic engine into production now, spacex has had a pretty good business, and every time they have one of into production now, spacex has these launches that work, it is further evidence that they are making progress. i think really the one barrier to them going public is probably elon musk not wanting to run a public company -- wanting to put that off as long as possible. emily: for good reason.

thank you, as always, for stopping by. david kirkpatrick, our contributing editor, you are sticking with me. we are going to talk about the future of tech in 2018 coming up. this is bloomberg. ♪

alisa: you are watching bloomberg technology. let's start with a check of your first word news. the ap reports a federal judge has ordered the trump administration not to enforce rules that can limit female access to free birth control. the house in human services policy would allow businesses to opt out of providing free contraception by objecting of religious or moral grounds. rex tillerson has backed out of options of unconditional talks with north korea. he also demanded russia and china cut off their lifeline to north korea. meantime at the un security

council, antonio guterres gave this blunt assessment on north korea. >> the situation on the korean peninsula is the most dense and dangerous piece of security issue in the world today. i am deeply concerned by the risk of military confrontation including as a result of any escalation of miscalculation. alisa: french authorities have raised the death toll to five children from thursday's horrific accident. a regional train slammed into a inool bus in southern france a crossing close to the spanish border. 18 other children and the bus driver were injured. german chancellor angela merkel and french president emmanuel macron held a joint conference. bloc'sclaimed the commitment to fighting against illegal migration but warned

against selective solitary. >> we are not quite in agreement on inner solidarity. or not to the same extent when it comes to external immigration. here, we must continue our work because it cannot be that we had solidarity in europe on certain matters and not on others. alisa: turkey's president says muslim nations will ask for an annulment of president trump's decision to recognize jerusalem as israel's capital. erdogan said the initiative would start at the security council. israeli police questioned prime minister benjamin netanyahu. the associated press said he is suspected of being involved in bribery, fraud and breach of trust. the prime minister has already been interviewed six times regarding gifts he received from hollywood and business figures. global news, 24 hours a day, powered by more than 2700 journalists and analysts in more

than 120 countries. i'm alisa parenti, this is bloomberg. we will have more of "bloomberg technology" with emily chang straight ahead. keep it here. ♪ ♪ emily: this is "bloomberg technology." i'm emily chang. as the year winds down, analysts are making predictions. they are warning that the large cap tech rally which lifted the markets in 2017 will go flat in 2018. for more reaction, we are joined by our editor at large. still with us is david kirkpatrick. cory, i will start with you. which is it? go flat, increase, go down? cory: i got paid more than i get paid now. i will not do that.

i think there are some interesting drivers that may govern what happens to these companies. i can't predict that a company that blows free cash flow like a tire fire, tesla is going to have a great reaction in theinty govern what happens to these companies. i can't predict that a company stock market. an interesting development could come in the coming year. one of them we will hear about from congress is all the from congress is all the discussion right now. that is the tax bill. i think the lowering of from congress is all the discussion right now. that is the tax bill. i think the lowering of corporate tax rate will certainly in the buybacks take care of the shareholders and executives take of themselves. when companies spend on themselves in rmb, they will do enterprise with software and hardware. companies like cisco, companies like vmware and companies like oracle to get a great benefit from all sorts of companies looking to spend money on i.t.

emily: so, david, facebook, amazon, google led the rally this year. next year, which one of those companies will have the most interesting story? david: i think facebook will have the most interesting story, but it is an extraordinarily complex one. the pressure on them to own up to some of their social impact will get greater and greater. that is going to be interesting. meanwhile, i expect the ads will continue pouring in and money and revenue will continue to do fine. probably the stock as well. there is a little question whether the regulatory push back that i see as inevitable against all three of the companies you mentioned could have a financial impact on wall street. so far, we haven't seen it but i think it is inevitable. it is an matter of when. i will add salesforce and microsoft as companies that will be beneficiaries.

a turn towards technologies across the economy. the tax bill will give companies more money to spend. that should benefit investors in industry after industry even beyond the ones we have mentioned. cory: we have had a nasdaq of 29% this year. if you bought stocks in this times, on the nasdaq index this time in 2008 when the world was coming apart at the seams, the depths of the financial crisis, this brand-new obama administration with a rookie president trying to figure out what to do to save this economy. we had a 337% return in nasdaq in tech heavy -- cliche alert. the notion that you could have more than tripled your money on that date in the short period of

time is simply amazing. emily: i do want to talk about net neutrality. we have been hitting this hard all week. net neutrality repealed yesterday. david, there was a strongly visceral reaction to this. yet, you don't think it is as big a deal necessarily as some people do. why not? david: first of all, i think it was the wrong decision and i think the rules should have been kept. a very smart ceo of a tech company recently made the point to me that he was opposed to imposing the rules in the first place and now he is opposed to removing them. his point was there has never been serious infractions of network neutrality by the isps prior to 2015 when the rules were imposed. having the title ii telecommunications regulations held in reserve in case you needed to use it was a good thing. but once you put it in, even though you didn't need it, you couldn't -- it wouldn't be smart to remove it because that sends

a huge signal that malfeasance or abuse might be more readily accepted. i do think we do not have the risks that a lot of the alarmists are talking about. near-term dish russian of the internet. it is really like the end of the world rhetoric that you have disruption of the internet. it is really like the end of the world rhetoric that you have been hearing, which i find significantly overinflated. emily: all right. david kirkpatrick. david, you are sticking with me. cory, thank you. a story we continue to watch. samsung debuting its next smartphone in january. the tech giant plans to introduce the galaxy s9 and s9 plus as early as february. the new phones will be similar to current galaxy models but it could have upgraded camera

systems. the debut will be samsung's first major phone introduction since the note eight was released in september. coming up, what happens next after disney's massive deal to buy 21st century fox assets. what is the likelihood of antitrust hurdles? we hear from a major investor in fox. we will bring you all of our best interviews from the week. including the cofounders of bitcoin exchange gemini, discussing the cryptocurrency as soared thanks to the dramatic rise in bitcoin. tune in saturday for the best of bloomberg tech. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: the gop tax bill could be about to clear its final hurdle. the revised version was revealed

today. another bit of good fortune term fortune for republicans two key holdouts, , bob corker and marco rubio have said they will vote yes. anna, what are the highlights? anna: there are a few things we were looking at in this bill that reconciles the bill of the senate and the bill of the house. there are a few things that mostly with the direction of the senate bill including the individual brackets for income tax. we had seven brackets instead of the four that were in the house bill. those rate cuts will expire before the 10 year budget window. they will expire in 2025. the corporate rate cut will be 21% instead of the 20% in the house and senate bill. we are also looking at things like the child tax credit that marco rubio wanted a more generous tax credit.

he was able to plus that up a little bit. there are a lot of compromises but ultimately it looks like a bill that will be able to make it over the final hurdles in the house and senate. emily: so tell us what is next. anna: it looks like they are pretty much on their way politically. they have all the support they need in the senate after bob corker and marco rubio decided to get on board. in the house, they are in pretty good shape as well. the only thing we are looking for now is the test to pass the senate budget rules. this bill is moving through a process that is called reconciliation that allows it to get around the filibuster in the senate. so, under those rules there are certain restrictions on what the bill can look like. there will be one more scrub of this bill. emily: when will we see the actual effects of this legislation, assuming it's emily: when will we see the hurries that republicans had to get through this process. passed? anna: that is one of the big they wanted to make sure this

bill would be signed by president trump president trump this year and be enacted on january 1, 2018. they wanted to make sure the they wanted to make sure the effects of the tax cut, any economic growth that would come from this would already be in place before the midterms in 2018. emily: so, talk to me then about the significance of this being potentially a major policy victory for president trump. anna: you really cannot downplay how important this is for republicans and the president. their failure to repeal and replace obamacare was a huge, almost humiliating moment. it was one of their campaign promises they were not able to deliver on. on these tax cuts, regardless of whether or not you think this is good economic policy, it is a great political win for them. it will give a lot of energy to their other legislative priorities such as speaker

reforming of entitlements. looking for ways to shrink the social safety net so that more people are in the workforce and less people are relying on government handouts. emily: how does this position the embattled administration going into next year and what do you think will be the big policy things on the agenda in 2018? anna: it puts much-needed winds in the sails of the republican party. it also gives them an example of how good it feels to work together. you see that in the house of representatives. the house of representatives was a desperate group of different factions, different caucuses. the freedom caucus, the tuesday group, and more moderate members. they were able to hold out for their own legislative priorities. with the tax bill, they have all been able to get on board.

realize how important this is for their political survival. they have found out that it feels good to work together. they are going to try to pass more republican only legislation if they can. they are looking at their spending bill that they need to pass before december 22. they will try to do that in the house with only republican votes as well and that is something that would have been unthinkable last spring before they have the energy for this tax bill. emily: all right, thank you so much, anna. startupp, an 18-person thed beat elon musk to trucking company. we will introduce you to the company and ceo next. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: facebook's value and impact on society has been hotly debated this week and for much of the year. today, the company wrote a blog

post saying that facebook itself has attempted to answer the question is spending time on social media bad for us? this comes on the heels of comments criticizing the social network. friday, he took to facebook to clarify his remarks. clarify his remarks. so what does david kirkpatrick so sarah frier -- interesting this comment coming from a research director and scientist talking about the psychologist they have on staff and talking about the research that social media can be bad for us. but also countering with some of theirfrom a research director ae good for us. before we start, i want to read a quote from this where they say we were going to make facebook more about social interaction and less about spending time. this is the first time they're saying we too are thinking about this. sarah: you can read the post and think facebook is caring about its users. you can also read the post and think facebook is coming to a

self-serving conclusion. maybe facebook is bad for us if we use it passively but if we use it actively for sharing, organizing events, it can be good for us. that is what facebook wants out of its products. the more data they get out of you, the more engaged you are, the more the app is integrated into your daily life. so, you have seen the props at the top of your newsfeed. i got one the other day telling me that me and selina wang have 10 likes between us. it was a celebration for us. they want us to celebrate our friendships. maybe it's an academic look, but maybe it is something facebook wants to convince us is good for us. emily: interestingly, there were some controversial remarks at a conference in stanford a few weeks ago where he says he feels

tremendous guilt about some of the things he created. facebook wrote back, tearing down his remarks. he has written another post, meant to start another conversation. i think we should discuss how we use the tools and what we should expect of them. and most importantly, how we empower younger generations to use them responsibly. david, what is your take on all of this? david: it is about time that social media -- that facebook could have some kind of effects. i think it is very healthy step in the right direction. they need to take many more steps to engage with an awful lot of concerns that have emerged in society, particularly in the last year about the degree to which they control the social dialogue. and the degree to which in the view of many are addicted to these types of services. i agree. facebook has problems and

challenges. it also creates many positive benefits for society. it makes it a hard thing to rationalize and figure out what to do next. emily: sarah, do these celebrations of friendship that you are seeing on facebook -- does it make you concerned about how engagement on the platform is actually faring? sarah: the company is always concerned about their growth. they have more than half of the interne internet connected population using facebook right now. they need to keep increasing those engagement numbers. one point i will make about this overall discussion is we are seeing that companies in silicon valley do not know how to talk about their power. facebook today with their blog post is trying to present themselves as responsible, caring about users. still does not understand it's a conversation about its power in society. emily: incredible power.

society. emily: incredible power. sarah frier, thank you so much. david kirkpatrick who wrote the book on facebook. our guest house for today. david, thank you so much for joining us. finally, a los angeles startup wants to beat tesla to market with electronic semi trucks. they are slated to hit the road in 2019 and meant for short calls. bloomberg ashlee vance spoke with the ceo. >> thor is one of a handful of companies trying to bring electric drivetrains to really big vehicles. >> we set out to solve the issue that fleets are having right now with diesel vehicles. a lot of it surrounds compliance, cost of fuel, cost of energy. we are trying to solve a lot of those problems. >> in november, elon musk unveiled this sucker in l.a. the tesla semi rig will cost $180,000. it will go 500 miles in a single charge. recharge in 30 minutes. it will arrive at the end of 2019.

i came to visit thor to see what an electric semi can do today. it got started in a warehouse when dakota brought a diesel truck and hired a team to convert it. they replaced the engine with an electric motor and built some battery packs. they slapped a giant screen in the cab. the cab. >> tell me about the logo. it looks like tesla meets "transformers." >> part of what we are trying to do is exude the power. when you think about ev's, particularly when you are talking about commercial vehicles, people think they are weak. it is tough. it is a brand that people come to be known as the tough ev brand. >> tom agreed to take me out for a spin. >> when i first looked at the

truck, i thought, i don't quite know that's going to work. >> electric trucks are going to cost more than diesel rigs, have shorter driver ranges, and require a charging infrastructure to be built. but, tom thinks they have a know that's going to work. chance. >> the way this thing pulls is really unbelievable. >> so you were surprised? >> oh yeah. i was shocked. >> if nothing else, the truck is good at getting attention. >> this is a thor truck. it is electric. >> thor expects this truck to 300 miles of for range when it goes in sale in 2019. they are quiet, clean and have amazing pickup. >> the power in this thing is unbelievable the way it takes off and handles. it speaks for itself.

>> thor has 18 employees including a handful with deep electric vehicle expertise. the startup bills itself as an electric vehicle lab. it will make all kinds of vehicles including things like delivery and garbage trucks. thor will have a hell of a time going up against tesla and chrysler since they have actual factories and experience. but l.a. has long been home to high risk custom auto projects. tesla's early operations did not look much different than these. emily: bloomberg's ashlee vance there. that does it for friday's edition of "bloomberg technology." we are live streaming on twitter. check us out 5 p.m. in new york, 2 p.m. in san francisco. that is all for now. have a wonderful weekend, everybody. we will see you on monday. this is bloomberg. ♪

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