iraqi city of mosul. 20,000-25,000 troops will be needed. u.s. advisers will be training the iraqi brigade. the cleveland browns general manager has apologized for texting at least one browns coach during the game. that's a violation of nfl rules about game communications. cleveland could even be docked a draft pick. intuit reports sales gains in the second quarter, but a wider loss of $66 million. meanwhile intuit says its sales of turbotax online is a 19% so far this tax season. desktop sales fell 7% after a price hike. now to the lead. it is apple versus a123 systems. they sued apple, claiming they illegally poached information. the case has been moved to a federal court in boston this week. how serious are the allegations? tim has all the details from the newsroom. this is really interesting area first, how serious are these allegations? just the notion these guys cannot take services, like lebron james, they move their talents to cupertino. >> access one of the beauties of silicon valley, the lack of a noncompete clause. this is something you see quite a bit in the automotive industry. it's not that unusual. what is interesting is the window into what apple is doing and it is the first concrete example they are trying to move into the auto space. cory: you broke the story -- they've got over a hundred people working on this project in cupertino. it's sort of shocking they have all these resources going after this. but i guess a123 knew. what's so important about the battery technology? >> the way to manage that power is the key to the electric car race in the future. gm has been working on it and the creation of the battery isn't the key thing. you can get suppliers to do that, but getting the computing power is one of the key ingredients to making one going forward. cory: it seems like they are cobbling together these pieces they would need to build a team to do what? i guess we have seen a van of some kind? >> it appears they are putting the pieces together to have a conversation about what the future of the automobile will look like in the u.s. we are looking at the emergence of a silicon valley auto industry. tesla has changed the dynamic. its success has shown silicon valley that the high barriers of entry may be not as high as people previously thought, so it opens up new doors. cory: thank you very much. for more context, we are really lucky. we've got one of the leading experts on the fight to build a better battery. steve levine has written this great book -- run out and buy it. i am so psyched to have you on today of all days. what does this mean? what is the advance from a123 -- it was backed by big federal government grants and president obama spoke at an a123 factory -- the company nearly went bankrupt and now they are back and suing? >> a123 in 2009 was the largest ipo of the year. it was the darling of the battery industry and it and it -- ended up failing in 2012 but it still has the technology. cory: it was the twitter of 2009. it was the hot ipo. >> there was a lot of buzz about it. it still has the stuff, it still has the battery it invented in the scientists who engineered it. that is the key there. it's one thing happening -- it's another thing being able to optimize it and stick it into a battery and scale it up in a way that works. apple will be looking for that. cory: when we compare the different cases -- tesla -- in your book, there's this tale and you would not think it's so fascinating -- but they end up fighting with each other. you explain gm's approach tesla's approach and apple's approach is all being quite different. >> gm sees itself as a market maker and it is seeking to make -- to buy and install a super battery that will be advanced. and be able to take its car 200 miles. cory: and something really innovative, unlike say tesla. >> tesla sells between $70,000 and $100,000. gm wants to be in the space of $25,000 to $85,000. -- $35,000. it wants to hit the mass market. irony has bet against the battery. elon musk thinks the battery scientists, the guys trying to create a super battery won't succeed, so they are using a battery straight off the shelf panasonic invented it. cory: i love this -- the idea i got from your book is that elon musk, greatly credited for being an innovator and forward anchor is adding against the -- betting against the advancement of technology and batteries. he says -- and i'm paraphrasing -- let's take some old pc batteries, strap them together in a new way and i'm not going to try to invent some type of innovative battery. gm is betting and failing in the the bet of innovation. >> it failed in its first try out. so there's a twist in the book in which the company on which it was relying for the super battery turned out to have been wildly exaggerating its claims. it had to pit it and make a -- it had to pit and make a left turn and got lg -- the chemistry gives it a 200 mile car in 2018. cory: that is the ultimate electric car -- to get a car that can go a great long-distance and have a great price. >> you have to be able to have the distance and while you are traveling that distance, your car cannot catch fire. cory: it can't catch fire? the bar keeps getting higher. you can't have a flaming car. it's interesting the technology is so difficult to come by. things get half the price and twice as powerful every year and we expect things like 3-d printers to do that and we expect batteries to do that. has battery technology changed much in the last 200 years? >> this is the thing. alessandro volta invented the architecture of the battery in 1799, and it has not changed much since then. much of that time, we were not trying to create a super battery. for the last few years, the question today is which way is apple going? is it going the gm route? will it try to create a super battery, or is it going to go the tesla route and go off the shelf? cory: the interesting thing about apple going into this business -- the business it typically has relied on is outsourced component manufacturing. taking the best other companies are making, the best chips from qualcomm or once upon a time ibm or motorola and assembling them together in a way where the software performs the magic. they've changed it a little with their own chip design. do you get a sense they are going to go for their own design and manufacture of a battery? >> the latter part, we don't know. the signs are that they are trying to in-house create and design the battery and the car around it is exciting because already i have been looking at the race between tesla and gm. the 200 mile car is the inflection point, the proving ground that brings the electric age. now you have apple coming in and this is critical mass. was gm really going to be able to match tesla? apple can. cory: i don't trade stocks now but when i did that for a living, i had to find some kind of crazy bet against them thing -- something that's not going to work. there's got to be a publicly traded battery company and i did a search on the bloomberg from every single one and found out we are short every single one and everyone was a pie in the sky promise. is that the nature of this battery business question mark -- business? that it's a pie in the sky dream? when you look at tesla upon car sales, you can see the limitations of the market. they are selling more cars than they ever have before, but it's not a big market. i wonder if this pursuit of better battery technology is never going to workout and it's always going to be a pie in the sky, like your patch or -- like perpetual motion. >> batteries have been a special province of exaggerators and hucksters. thomas edison said this back in the 1920's. 100 years later, it's the same. in the book, there's an inflection point where everyone is pursuing the race and at one point, everyone including me finds out someone has been deceiving everyone whole time. but i think there are real players in the race, tesla, gm and now apple -- it seems they have put their chips down on the battery, on the electric car and i think it shows that it is real. cory: a great, dramatic book. who would have thought? thank you for coming in. more "bloomberg west" right after this. ♪ cory: i'm cory johnson and this is "bloomberg west." germany leaving the door open for greece on a bailout option. they initially flat out rejected the greek proposal but now the greek official says germany regards it as a basis for negotiation. finance ministers are talking about this in brussels tomorrow. 23 house democrats are urging speaker john boehner to postpone prime minister benjamin netanyahu's speech to congress. democrats say it appears john boehner is using a foreign leader as a political tool against president obama. the white house has criticized the speech since it was not notified in advance of the notification. nestle says profits of 45% last year mainly due to sales of its stake in l'oreal, but sales dipped slightly due to currency fluctuations. philadelphia, home of the liberty bell, but maybe the last big technical -- technological innovation to come out of philadelphia with meat tenderizing by hand, until now. salesforce is applying for interesting technology, teaming up with salesforce in philadelphia, revamping what they call the 311 system. the goal is to make it easier for residents to get city services delivered, doing things like applying for building permits or requesting graffiti removal. all of this on the cloud could change the way city governments work. joining me now is the salesforce evp, joining me from new york. this is interesting because the way cities work fundamentally seems slow. the way they buy software is big, massive and slow. what's happening in philly? >> what's exciting about the city of philadelphia is they have recognized three big rings are going on. the first one is that companies like uber and airbnb have fundamentally reset expectations for the citizens on what they want their government to look like as far as interactions are concerned. second, there's a third wave of computing with mobile, social, cloud and now analytics, that is disrupting every business model, including the government. third and the most profound is political leaders are recognizing they need to create a more open, trends errand and participatory government. what they have been able to do with salesforce is engage citizens and shift power to create communities in the community cloud where citizens are self organizing and addressing the toughest problems the city has around crime and health care and education. cory: what is the push back like from cities not jumping to do it? i'm looking at a company in the bay area that is similarly trying to go around these issues of permitting at the county level and city level. it's a ground war to get these deals done, but the results from their success stories are fairly amazing about how much faster things are delivered. i don't understand what the pushback is from cities when you're trying to sell this thing. >> what you have is essentially the old guard, literally a set of vendors born in the 60's that continue to dominate government i.t. that's one of the reasons when you're dealing with the government, you have to wait a long line, hold on the phone or submit a three-part paper form. when you are dealing with the government, there's a form for that. when you are dealing with the could -- when you're dealing with the consumer web, there's an app for that. the city of philadelphia represents a shining example of where america comes in, makes technology a priority and cracks down on ways to keep spending. cory: what's the one service a city offers where you show the best benefit of doing something on the cloud, doing something online and fastest improve the delivery of that service? >> let's look at some of the challenges around the eastern seaboard on the snowstorm. being able to connect with your citizens and let them know where the snow plows are on a real-time basis, let you know if it's filling potholes on a real-time basis, whether they can forecast and predict these problems, getting ahead and welcoming the citizens and to a better future. the government has been going around responding to crisis instead of responding to the crisis these cities have. another big area is around entrepreneurship. why not demystify the process of permitting and licensing to be able to abstract the levels of government, whether it's federal, state or local? we are beginning to see this happen not just in the united states, but in japan, in australia, and in europe. that's why you are seeing this in terms of the acceleration and the technologies being adopted across the world. cory: interesting stuff. potholes are about as local as you can get. thank you very much. more "bloomberg west" right after this. ♪ cory: this is "bloomberg west." i'm cory johnson. mark zuckerberg is weighing in on vaccination. this comes after a measles outbreak started in disneyland. mark zuckerberg writes "my next book is "on immunity" -- vaccination is an important and timely product. -- topic. he writes, "the science is completely clear and vaccinations are working for the health of everyone in our community." zuckerberg also posted a video. listen to this. >> [speaking chinese] cory: why the strong interest in speaking in chinese? since 2009, facebook has been banned in the world's most populous country. it is a country that he has visited four times. he met with officials last october. will facebook try to get legal again in china? emily: your mandarin has gotten pretty good. what's the likelihood internet.org good help you get facebook back into china? mark: i don't know. that's not something we are focused on right now. right now, there are countries where they reach out to us and say connectivity is a national priority and a lot of people in our country use facebook and if there's a way to do that -- for example, in malaysia, i was reading with -- i was meeting with one of the leaders in the government there and making everyone connected is one of their top national priorities, similar in indonesia. there are lots of priorities around making sure everyone can get connected. it makes sense to prioritize countries that are reaching out proactively for this. cory: be sure to catch the entire conversation on "studio point -- studio 1.0" tonight. john says they killed it in q4. listen to what he had to say in just a little bit. ♪