With ambitious goals of being a leader in sustainable mobility, Porsche has joined forces with Frauscher Shipyard in Austria to engineer an electric yacht that is also intended to set standards on the water with its typical Porsche E-Performance. The vehicle is called the Frauscher x Porsche 850 Fantom Air highlighting the collaboration that made it possible.
Porsche.
This is according to a press release by the carmaker published on Saturday.
The rapid development of wearable electronics requires its energy supply part to be flexible, wearable, integratable and sustainable. However, some of the energy supply units cannot meet these requirements at the same time, and there is also a capacity limitation of the energy storage units, and the development of sustainable wearable self-charging power supplies is crucial. Here, we report a wearable sustainable energy harvesting-storage hybrid self-charging power textile. The power textile consists of a coaxial fiber-shaped polylactic acid/reduced graphene oxide/polypyrrole (PLA-rGO-PPy) triboelectric nanogenerator (fiber-TENG) that can harvest low-frequency and irregular energy during human motion as a power generation unit, and a novel coaxial fiber-shaped supercapacitor (fiber-SC) prepared by functionalized loading of a wet-spinning graphene oxide fiber as an energy storage unit. The fiber-TENG is flexible, knittable, wearable and adaptable for integration with various portable electronics. The coaxial fiber-SC has high volumetric energy density and good cycling stability. The fiber-TENG and fiber-SC are flexible yarn structures for wearable continuous human movement energy harvesting and storage as on-body self-charging power systems, with light-weight, ease of preparation, great portability and wide applicability. The integrated power textile can provide an efficient route for sustainable working of wearable electronics.
Perovskite solar cells designed by a team of scientists from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have attained a world record efficiency of 24.35% with an active area of 1 cm2. This achievement paves the way for cheaper, more efficient and durable solar cells.
To facilitate consistent comparisons and benchmarking of different solar cell technologies, the photovoltaic (PV) community uses a standard size of at least 1 cm2 to report the efficiency of one-sun solar cells in the “Solar cell efficiency tables.” Prior to the record-breaking feat by the NUS team, the best 1 cm2 perovskite solar cell recorded a power conversion efficiency of 23.7%. This ground-breaking achievement in maximizing power generation from next-generation renewable energy sources will be crucial to securing the world’s energy future.
Perovskites are a class of materials that exhibit high light absorption efficiency and ease of fabrication, making them promising for solar cell applications. In the past decade, perovskite solar cell technology has achieved several breakthroughs, and the technology continues to evolve.
Significantly improved electric vehicle (EV) batteries could be a step closer thanks to a new study led by University of Oxford researchers, published today in Nature. Using advanced imaging techniques, this revealed mechanisms which cause lithium metal solid-state batteries (Li-SSBs) to fail. If these can be overcome, solid-state batteries using lithium metal anodes could deliver a step-change improvement in EV battery range, safety and performance, and help advance electrically powered aviation.
One of the co-lead authors of the study Dominic Melvin, a PhD student in the University of Oxford’s Department of Materials, said: ‘Progressing solid-state batteries with lithium metal anodes is one of the most important challenges facing the advancement of battery technologies. While lithium-ion batteries of today will continue to improve, research into solid-state batteries has the potential to be high-reward and a gamechanger technology.’
Li-SSBs are distinct from other batteries because they replace the flammable liquid electrolyte in conventional batteries with a solid electrolyte and use lithium metal as the anode (negative electrode). The use of the solid electrolyte improves the safety, and the use of lithium metal means more energy can be stored. A critical challenge with Li-SSBs, however, is that they are prone to short circuit when charging due to the growth of ‘dendrites’: filaments of lithium metal that crack through the ceramic electrolyte. As part of the Faraday Institution’s SOLBAT project, researchers from the University of Oxford’s Departments of Materials, Chemistry and Engineering Science, have led a series of in-depth investigations to understand more about how this short-circuiting happens.
Water and carbon make a quantum couple: the flow of water on a carbon surface is governed by an unusual phenomenon dubbed quantum friction. A new work published in Nature Nanotechnology experimentally demonstrates this phenomenon—which was predicted in a previous theoretical study—at the interface between liquid water and graphene, a single layer of carbon atoms. Advanced ultrafast techniques were used to perform this study. These results could lead to applications in water purification and desalination processes and maybe even to liquid-based computers.
For the last 20 years, scientists have been puzzled by how water behaves near carbon surfaces. It may flow much faster than expected from conventional flow theories or form strange arrangements such as square ice. Now, an international team of researchers from the Max Plank Institute for Polymer Research of Mainz (Germany), the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2, Spain), and the University of Manchester (England), reports in the study published in Nature Nanotechnology on June 22, 2023, that water can interact directly with the carbon’s electrons—a quantum phenomenon that is very unusual in fluid dynamics.
A liquid, such as water, is made up of small molecules that randomly move and constantly collide with each other. A solid, in contrast, is made of neatly arranged atoms that bathe in a cloud of electrons. The solid and the liquid worlds are assumed to interact only through collisions of the liquid molecules with the solid’s atoms—the liquid molecules do not “see” the solid’s electrons. Nevertheless, just over a year ago, a paradigm-shifting theoretical study proposed that at the water-carbon interface, the liquid’s molecules and the solid’s electrons push and pull on each other, slowing down the liquid flow: this new effect was called quantum friction. However, the theoretical proposal lacked experimental verification.
The most American-made cars sold in the US all come from Tesla, but the car in the number six spot is a bit of a surprise.
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.