A fascinating eVTOL project is about to come out of stealth, showcasing a “breakthrough HyperDrive propulsion technology” that MagLev Aero claims is “dramatically more quiet, efficient, safe, sustainable and emotionally appealing to the mass market.”
Representatives from the Boston-based company have made their way to the Paris Air Show, where they’re preparing to reveal a very different approach to electric vertical lift aircraft, drawing on the magnetic levitation technology used in high-speed trains.
What we appear to have here is an annular lift fan arrangement. The aircraft’s cabin appears to be surrounded by a huge ring-shaped duct, into which at least one large-diameter, many-bladed fan is mounted.
Tesla is an interested buyer of a small Germany-based wireless charging startup following the automaker’s indications that it might launch its own EV wireless charger.
Several companies have been working on wireless charging for electric vehicles in recent years, but the technology has never taken off.
There are several issues with it. For example, it’s not as efficient as charging with a cable – though the technology has been closing the gap in recent years. It’s also more expensive, as you generally have to embed a charging pad securely in the ground instead of just mounting a charger on the wall.
The United Nations Secretary General, António Guterres, recently sounded an ominous alarm bell. The Sustainable Development Goals, which aim to significantly reduce poverty around the world and create a better quality of life for all, are off track, he warned.
And so French President Emmanuel Macron called a global conference in Paris this month to address getting the 2030 SDG targets back on course. As world leaders from Barbados to Kenya to Germany gather, there are seven things they must focus on. This blueprint for prosperity is too important to let slide.
Tesla Inc. has something new to boast about. The electric vehicle maker swept the top four spots on Cars.com’s annual ranking of most made-in-America vehicles.
The four Tesla models — in order of how they rank, Tesla Model Y, Tesla Model 3, Tesla Model X and Tesla Model S — are all made at the company’s gigafactory in Fremont. Tesla, which is based in Austin, Texas but has its engineering headquarters in Palo Alto, also manufacturers the models at factories in Texas and Nevada.
Tesla announced it produced 10 million 4,680 battery cells at Gigafactory Texas. It is a good sign for the automaker’s production ramp-up, which relies heavily on the new cell.
The 4,680 battery cell format has taken the industry by storm since Tesla unveiled its own cell strategy at Battery Day in 2020.
The automaker claimed the potential to reduce battery cost by over 50% with the new design; it has been trying to bring it to volume production since, but it has run into some bottlenecks.
CB Insights has unveiled the winners of the seventh annual AI 100 — a list of the 100 most promising private AI companies across the globe.
Around one-third of this year’s winners are focused on AI applications across specific industries — such as visual dubbing for the media & entertainment sector or textile recycling for fashion & retail. A total of 40 vendors are focused on cross-industry solutions, like AI assistants & human-machine interfaces (HMIs), digital twins, climate tech, and smell tech.
Additionally, 27 companies in this cohort are developing tools like vector database tech and synthetic datasets to support AI development.
An international research group has engineered a new energy-generating device by combining piezoelectric composites with carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP), a commonly used material that is both light and strong. The new device transforms vibrations from the surrounding environment into electricity, providing an efficient and reliable means for self-powered sensors.
Details of the group’s research were published in the journal Nano Energy on June 13, 2023.
Energy harvesting involves converting energy from the environment into usable electrical energy and is something crucial for ensuring a sustainable future.
The idea of solar energy being transmitted from space is not a new one. In 1968, a NASA engineer named Peter Glaser produced the first concept design for a solar-powered satellite. But only now, 55 years later, does it appear scientists have actually carried out a successful experiment. A team of researchers from Caltech announced on Thursday that their space-borne prototype, called the Space Solar Power Demonstrator (SSPD-1), had collected sunlight, converted it into electricity and beamed it to microwave receivers installed on a rooftop on Caltech’s Pasadena campus. The experiment also proves that the setup, which launched on January 3, is capable of surviving the trip to space, along with the harsh environment of space itself.
“To the best of our knowledge, no one has ever demonstrated wireless energy transfer in space even with expensive rigid structures. We are doing it with flexible lightweight structures and with our own integrated circuits. This is a first,” said Ali Hajimiri, professor of electrical engineering and medical engineering and co-director of Caltech’s Space Solar Power Project (SSPP), in a press release published on Thursday.
A team of researchers successfully constructed nanofiltration membranes with superior quality using the mussel-inspired deposition methods. Such was achieved via a two-part approach to fabricate the thin-film composite (TFC) nanofiltration membranes. Firstly, the substrate surface was coated through fast and novel deposition to form a dense, robust, and functional selective layer. Then, the structure controllability of the selective layer was enhanced by optimizing the interfacial polymerization (IP) process. As a result, the properties of nanofiltration membranes produced are with high durability and added functionality. When put into a bigger perspective, these high-performance TFC nanofiltration membranes are potential solutions to a number of fields, including water softening, wastewater treatment, and pharmaceutical purification. Hence, there is a need to further explore and expand the application in an industrial scale instead of being bound within the walls of the laboratories.
Membrane-based technologies, especially enhanced nanofiltration systems, have been highly explored due to their myriad of distinct properties, primarily for their high efficiency, mild operation, and strong adaptability. Among these, the TFC nanofiltration membranes are favoured for their smaller molecular weight cutoff, and narrower pore size distribution which lead to higher divalent and multivalent ion rejection ability. Moreover, these membranes show better designability owing to their thin selective layer make-up and porous support with different chemical compositions. However, the interfacial polymerization (IP) rate of reaction is known to affect the permeability and selectivity of the TFC nanofiltration membranes by weakening the controllability of the selective layer structure. Therefore, this study was designed to improve the structural quality of the TFC nanofiltration membranes through surface and interface engineering, and subsequently, increase the functionality.
