Toggle light / dark theme

Lucid Paints A Target On Tesla Model 3 And Model Y’s Backs

Lucid Motors is planning new, affordable models with which to take on the Tesla Model 3 and Model Y. The American automaker recently entered an agreement to supply Aston Martin with electric powertrain components, but company CEO Peter Rawlinson is already focused on what comes next. Speaking with Auto Express, Rawlinson shared some interesting tidbits about future models — including rivals to Tesla’s Model 3 and Model Y.

Once the all-new Gravity SUV arrives in the second half of 2025, Lucid intends to hit Tesla where it hurts. “After Gravity, we’re going to do Model 3 and Model Y competitors. We think around $50,000, maybe $48,000 — something like that. It’s too early to say, but that’s the vision.”

This would bring Lucid ownership within reach of customers who can’t afford the $87,500 required to purchase the Air luxury sedan. When questioned about manufacturing right-hand drive vehicles, Rawlinson said Lucid would love to cater to more markets but is currently focused on getting the Air Sapphire to market.

From Atoms to Materials: Algorithmic breakthrough unlocks path to sustainable technologies

New research by the University of Liverpool could signal a step change in the quest to design the new materials that are needed to meet the challenge of net zero and a sustainable future.

Published in the journal Nature, Liverpool researchers have shown that a mathematical algorithm can guarantee to predict the structure of any material just based on knowledge of the atoms that make it up.

Developed by an interdisciplinary team of researchers from the University of Liverpool’s Departments of Chemistry and Computer Science, the algorithm systematically evaluates entire sets of possible structures at once, rather than considering them one at a time, to accelerate identification of the correct solution.

Tesla’s record deliveries in Q2 were driven by price cuts and are already priced into its stock, short seller Jim Chanos says

Tesla delivered upwards of 466,000 vehicles in the second quarter — 20,000 more than Wall Street’s consensus forecast of about 446,000, it revealed on Sunday. Jim Chanos waved away the strong showing on Twitter, saying it was fueled by price cuts and firmly priced into Tesla’s current valuation.

“Again, ‘blown away’ is a 4% beat on deliveries with huge price cuts? The $800B valuation might just be discounting that…$TSLA,” he tweeted about Elon Musk’s electric-vehicle company.

“Is ‘massive’ 4% for a stock at 10x revenues…? Shouldn’t a company trading at that valuation always exceed expectations? $TSLA,” the short seller wrote in a second tweet.

Take A Look At This New $2.4 Billion Tesla Semi Truck Factory

By now, it should not be breaking news that Tesla is boldly entering the trucking industry with the semi-truck. Elon Musk wants to leave no stone unturned in his quest to up-end industries for the better.

He is not just doing that by producing more advanced and efficient vehicles for the future, he’s also doing it with the kind of factories he builds to produce those vehicles. A factory as big as 138 football fields combined. Boardwalk with hike and biking trail.

Ecological paradise with birds in the trees, butterflies, and fish in the stream. The semi-truck is nothing like what the industry has ever seen. And that’s not even the most interesting part. Why? We will fill you in on all the details in just a sec. Let’s get right into it.

World’s first offshore hydrogen production platform is now operational

Lhyfe announced that Sealhyfe, the world’s first offshore hydrogen production pilot, has started producing its first kilos of green hydrogen in the Atlantic Ocean, marking a decisive milestone for the future of the sector. The Sealhyfe was successfully towed 20 kilometers out into the Atlantic and connected with the SEM-REV power hub.

The progress in the project demonstrates Lhyfe’s ability to bring about concrete advances in the hydrogen industry and at great strides. In launching the world’s first offshore hydrogen production pilot, Lhyfe wanted to prove the technical feasibility of this kind of initiative and to gain operational experience to facilitate rapid scaling up.

The company has therefore made a bold decision to subject Sealhyfe to the toughest conditions. The platform will be tested under real conditions on a re-engineered floating structure connected to Central Nantes’ SEM-REV offshore testing hub, which is already linked with a floating wind turbine.

Rivian delivers first electric vans to Amazon in Europe

Amazon has begun rolling out its custom electric delivery vans from Rivian in Europe, the e-commerce giant said Monday. This will be Rivian’s first commercial shipment of vans outside the United States.

The first tranche of 300 vans will be seen on streets in Munich, Berlin and Dusseldorf in the coming weeks. Amazon already has a fleet of thousands of electric vans operating in Europe, including more than 1,000 e-vans in Germany, the company said. Amazon last year said it plans invest more than €1 billion to electrify its European transportation network.

“Amazon is committed to reaching net-zero carbon by 2040, and reducing our delivery-related emissions is a critical part of this goal,” said Rocco Bräuniger, country manager for Amazon, in a statement. “Last year we delivered more than 45 million packages in Germany with electric vans and e-cargo bikes, and these new additions from Rivian will help us deliver packages more sustainably and to more customers.”

Tesla extends blistering rally after quarterly deliveries beat

July 3 (Reuters) — Tesla (TSLA.O) shares jumped about 7% on Monday after better-than-expected quarterly deliveries showed that Chief Executive Elon Musk’s plan of boosting volumes through discounts was working.

The day’s gains lifted the top U.S. electric-vehicle manufacturer’s market capitalization by around $57 billion to $887 billion.

At $277, the stock has already more than doubled in value this year and risen far above price targets set by analysts, prompting caution from some brokerages that margins will suffer because of the aggressive discounting spree.

Robotic ‘Light Bender’ on the moon could help Artemis astronauts keep the lights on

“Part of what we’re doing is conceptually simple, reflecting sunlight to a solar panel located in the dark,” said Maxar Chief Robotics Architect and lead for Light Bender Sean Dougherty in a Maxar statement. “Where it gets complex is doing that without humans involved. We’re leveraging investments in autonomy to study how NASA can use robots to assemble and deploy a set of reflectors that keep sunlight focused on a solar panel operating in the shadows. It’s never been done before.”

Light Bender works by hoisting two 33-foot (10-meter) reflectors up a 65-foot (20-meter) telescoping mast. One mirror autonomously tracks the sun and reflects that light to the second mirror, which then reflects those rays towards the intended solar panels.

The Light Bender project is a collaboration between Maxar and NASA’s Langley Research Center, and is scheduled for its first terrestrial demonstration in 2025. The company was awarded the contract in May 2023, under NASA’s Announcement of Collaboration Opportunity Program. For their part, NASA’s team is responsible for Light Bender’s structural design, and Maxar is taking the lead on the robotics — an aptitude for which the company has demonstrated in the past.

Swiss Firm RigiTech Enables Drone Delivery—Without a Landing or Takeoff

Wind turbine maintenance is an important yet unheralded task. But drones have arrived to spice things up.

RigiTech is a Swiss drone manufacturer and operator boasting some of the most extensive beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) flight authorizations in the industry. And it just completed a landmark test of its Eiger delivery system, flying spare parts to the Anholt Offshore Wind Farm, located 20 sm (17 nm) off the coast of Denmark. But there’s a catch—the drones didn’t need to land.

The tests marked the rollout of RigiTech’s prototype precision dropping system, which autonomously releases cargo from a few feet in the air when it detects the drone has reached its destination. That’s a game-changer in the case of offshore wind turbines, which typically do not have landing pads.

/* */