Lifeboat Foundation

The most anticipated electric car of the decade is finally going to hit the tarmac in August later this year, and I can’t wait already. Yes, the iconic DMC DeLorean sports car that defined the pop culture of the 1980s and spilled far beyond just a couple of decades of fame is going to now be resurrected as an EV model. Earlier in the year, the gull-winged silhouette of the upcoming DeLorean excited all automotive fans, and now they’ve dropped a very clear half shot of the car’s rear, and a press release to keep all speculations alive. So, I can confidently say, the DeLorean is going to be back in the future!

The iconic car is in fact all set to hit the limelight on August 18, 2022, at the prestigious Awards Ramp at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance. From what we see in the teaser image, the EV is going to follow the norm with a modern silhouette and this concept gives our imagination wings. If we ignore the rear that looks more akin to the Bugatti Chiron, the EV could be pretty similar to what we see in these renders. A bold form factor with an intimidating front could be on the cards. The side profile has to be sharp and flowing with a supercar-like domineer but slightly bend towards the coupe persona too. As per Troy Beetz, CMO of DeLorean Motor Company Inc, 0 “Excitement is rising like the doors of our iconic sports car, and we are revealing the next generation prototype 3 days earlier than planned on the most prestigious stage at Pebble beach.”

Designer: Recom Farmhouse, Kate Brown and Marvin Lübke.

Researchers used radiative cooling to generate enough to power LEDs or charge a cell phone.

NASA has agreed to test startup SpinLaunch’s kinetic launcher, a giant circular accelerator that aims to shoot 200 kilogram satellites into space.

The California-based SpinLaunch’s launcher is located at the Spaceport America facility in New Mexico where it will carry out a test flight with NASA later this year, according to the firm.

Continue reading “These Solar Cells Produce Electricity at Night” »

A new PV module makes electricity from thermal radiation. Imagine that.

The electromagnetic spectrum is comprised of thousands upon thousands of frequencies. Sound and light are all part of the spectrum, as are the frequencies that make radio and television broadcasts possible. Today’s solar panels harvest light waves from a small part of the EM spectrum and turn them into electricity, but there are many other frequencies like thermal radiation that could someday stimulate new kinds of photovoltaic cells to generate electricity as well.

Researchers at Stanford have recently published a study in the journal Applied Physics Letters that describes a new type of cell that converts thermal radiation into electricity. When the sun goes down, living organisms and physical structures like buildings, road, and sidewalks radiate heat back into the atmosphere. We call this radiational cooling and it is those electromagnetic waves the Stanford researchers say can be put to work making electricity.

Continue reading “New Photovoltaic Cell Makes Electricity From Thermal Radiation” »

China and Europe are driving most of the adoption, with North America a distant third source of sales. Up next: emerging markets.

2020 One of the heaviest known elements can be modified more than scientists thought — possibly opening the door to new ways of recycling nuclear fuel and enhanced long-term storage of radioactive elements — according to a recent study published in the journal Nature.

Squeezing heavy elements between diamonds might open doors for recycling nuclear waste.

Agricultural PV (or agrivoltaics) is the simultaneous use of land for both agriculture and solar power generation. This year‘s Intersolar Europe in Munich will put a major focus on this topic.

After a wild display of lights, music and futuristic technology, Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk kicked off the grand opening of the company’s new Texas gigafactory on Thursday.

The Austin plant — Tesla’s fourth globally — will manufacture the Model Y SUV and, next year, the highly-anticipated Cybertruck.

Continue reading “Tesla bull predicts between 5 to 10 new gigafactories in the next two years” »

About 750 million people in the world do not have access to electricity at night. Solar cells provide power during the day, but saving energy for later use requires substantial battery storage.

In Applied Physics Letters, researchers from Stanford University constructed a photovoltaic cell that harvests energy from the environment during the day and night, avoiding the need for batteries altogether. The device makes use of the heat leaking from Earth back into space—energy that is on the same order of magnitude as incoming solar radiation.

At night, solar cells radiate and lose heat to the sky, reaching temperatures a few degrees below the ambient air. The device under development uses a thermoelectric module to generate voltage and current from the temperature gradient between the cell and the air. This process depends on the thermal design of the system, which includes a hot side and a cold side.

Elon Musk tweeted Tesla may get into the lithium mining and refining business directly and at scale because the cost of the metal, a key component in manufacturing batteries, has gotten so high.

“Price of lithium has gone to insane levels,” Musk tweeted. “There is no shortage of the element itself, as lithium is almost everywhere on Earth, but pace of extraction/refinement is slow.”

The Tesla and SpaceX tech boss was responding to a tweet showing the average price of lithium per tonne in the last two decades, which showed a massive increase in prices since 2021. According to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, the cost of the metal has gone up more than 480% in the last year.