A guy built a DIY, one-off electric car that’s fully powered by solar panels and can offer ‘unlimited range’ — and took the vehicle on the road
The SunRise Building, a residential complex in Alberta, Canada, has established a Guinness World Record for the largest solar panel mural.
The installation combines art with building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV), contributing to the building’s energy supply. This project measures 34,500 square feet and provides 267 kW of solar capacity, powering the building’s common areas.
A team of McGill University researchers, working with colleagues in the United States and South Korea, has developed a new way to make high-performance lithium-ion battery materials that could help phase out expensive and/or difficult-to-source metals like nickel and cobalt.
The team’s breakthrough lies in creating a better method of producing “disordered rock-salt” (DRX) cathode particles, an alternative battery material. Until now, manufacturers struggled to control the size and quality of DRX particles, which made them unstable and hard to use in manufacturing settings. The researchers addressed that problem by developing a method to produce uniformly sized, highly crystalline particles with no grinding or post-processing required.
“Our method enables mass production of DRX cathodes with consistent quality, which is essential for their adoption in electric vehicles and renewable energy storage,” said Jinhyuk Lee, the paper’s corresponding author and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mining and Materials Engineering.
Efficiently capturing and storing excess heat, particularly below 200°C, is paramount to achieving a carbon-neutral society. Every year, factories and homes produce excess heat, much of which gets wasted. Likewise, as the world gets more reliant on renewable energy sources, the need to capture and store heat grows.
A collaboration between Tohoku University and the Japan Atomic Energy Agency has made significant strides in this regard, developing nanosheets of layered manganese dioxide (MnO2) that can store heat even below 100°C.
Details of the study were published in the journal Communications Chemistry.
As the push for sustainable transportation intensifies globally, a new study from the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) reveals that battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) in Europe are becoming significantly cleaner at a pace faster than previously anticipated. This development comes as the continent’s electricity mix transitions toward more renewable sources, providing a profound climate advantage over traditional internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles.
Key Findings of the Study
Released on Wednesday, the ICCT study highlights that BEVs sold in Europe today produce 73 percent fewer life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions compared to ICE vehicles. This figure marks a noteworthy 24-percent improvement from the organization’s prior estimates in 2021, emphasizing the rapid progress of BEVs as Europe enhances its renewable energy initiatives.