Tesla has brought an unspecified number of its unsupervised Model Y SUVs to Orlando and Tampa, just one day ahead of the company’s scheduled second-quarter earnings call. That marks the third city in Florida where Tesla is trialing its nascent robotaxi service, following a small launch in Miami a few weeks ago.

The two new cities appear to have fairly small operational areas, and Tesla did not offer any further details about the launch. As some fans have noticed, Tesla announced autonomous fleets in Dallas and Houston before its first-quarter earnings release but has yet to scale those operations. The company disbanded its press office years ago.

Tesla has taken a far slower approach to standing up a commercial robotaxi service than it has promised investors. CEO Elon Musk, for instance, said repeatedly that Tesla’s robotaxis would serve half the U.S. population by the end of 2025.

Musk offered more metered comments earlier this year on Tesla’s first-quarter call. But the company may get a big lift from the Trump administration, as last month the Department of Transportation proposed a rule change that would no longer require brake pedals be built into cars that are designed to be autonomous. If adopted, that could clear the way for Tesla to try and deploy the dozens of two-seater Cybercabs that it has been staging in cities across the country.

Data centers are expected to use one-fifth of the electricity generated in the U.S. by 2035, four times that of today, according to a new report from BloombergNEF.

A surge in AI compute will push data center capacity to nearly 200 gigawatts over the next decade, the report predicts. Nearly half of that capacity will be devoted to training and inference, and most of that will remain concentrated in the U.S. By 2033, the country will host 64% of AI chips by power demand.

Based on previous forecasts, those figures could be conservative.

BloombergNEF’s new estimate for electricity demand in 2035 is 83% higher than what the consultancy predicted in December. Other organizations have raised their forecasts, too. EPRI, an electrical industry nonprofit, has more than doubled its 2024 estimate, while S&P’s forecast rose by more than a third between October and April. The revisions reflect the fevered pace of data center development across the U.S.

In the coming decade, BloombergNEF expects the majority of new data centers to hit electrical grids that are already strained. The PJM Interconnection, which spans Virginia to Illinois, will see 34% of its electricity go to data centers, while ERCOT, which covers most of Texas, will have to devote 22% of its generating capacity. 

PJM, which already hosts a large number of the country’s data centers, has struggled to cope with connection requests from both large generators and large loads. It paused applications for new sources to connect to the grid for four years, putting it in a precarious position as demand continued to grow.

Though PJM reopened the queue to new generating sources in April, the situation has grown so dire that one utility, American Electric Power, has threatened to pull out of the interconnection. The supply-demand imbalance has pushed electricity prices up 76% over the past year.

Even with the congestion, data centers still want to connect to PJM — they represented 38% of charges in the grid manager’s most recent capacity auction.

Despite the U.S. claiming a majority of AI compute, data centers will continue to grow elsewhere. By 2033, if AI adoption continues along an aggressive trajectory, data centers will create 1,935 terawatt-hours of new electricity demand worldwide, nearly as much as India uses annually.

Apple is reportedly teaming up with deferred payment processor Klarna to launch a new lease-to-own program for its devices.

Bloomberg reported Tuesday that the program — dubbed Apple Upgrade — is set to launch next Tuesday, July 28. It will allow consumers to pay for their purchases over multi-year periods, including iPhones, iPads, Macs, and Apple Watches.

Bloomberg writes that the lease term for iPhones and Apple Watches will be up to 24 months, while leases for Macs and iPads will be up to 36 months. The devices can either be kept or returned at the end of the leasing period, while upgrades to new devices will also be available (hence the name of the program). The report notes vaguely that, in some cases, “transactions will incur an additional fee.”

Apple already has a similar program called iPhone Upgrade, although the company plans to stop allowing new customer sign-ups to instead build out the broader, more inclusive Apple Upgrade program, the report said.

A leasing program is an obvious strategy for Apple at this point. The iPhone maker has been battling supply chain issues wrought by “RAMageddon” — the industry-wide shortage of memory chips that is driving up the price of hardware. Those shortages have been driven largely by the AI industry, which is gobbling up so much memory that it’s not leaving much for the rest of us.

To deal with these issues, Apple recently announced that it would be raising prices, and Upgrade clearly seems designed to make those hiked prices more palatable to consumers.

TechCrunch reached out to Apple and Klarna for more information.

Overall, the new program seems like a shrewd move for Apple, which is currently facing a hectic transitional period. As new CEO John Ternus takes the reins, the company also entered into a legal battle with AI startup superstar OpenAI — suing the company for alleged trade theft.

In short: The company has its hands full, and anything that can shore up sales and keep the business headed in the right direction is worth trying.