Elon Musk said Tesla moved the horn to the center of its steering yoke, where some customers said it belonged all along.
Category: sustainability – Page 347
World’s Largest Hydrogen Plant Says It’s Going to Power SpaceX Launches
US startup company Green Hydrogen International announced plans for a a 60GW renewable H2 project that will be powered by wind and solar. It’ll also produce clean rocket fuel for SpaceX, which is helmed by billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk, according to a report published yesterday in Recharge.
“We see Hydrogen City becoming one of the largest H2 production centers in the world, supplying many different customers with 100% clean H2 fuel,” founder Brian Maxwell told the energy industry pub.
The image below from GHI’s website shows the process of converting renewable energy from wind and solar farms into ammonia and rocket fuel. The key to scaling up production, the company says, is the large salt storage capability found in underground salt domes.
California wants to use electric cars to back up the power grid
A collaboration between the automaker and the utility will test-drive using bidirectional charging to power homes during blackouts.
How a Vision for a Solar Car Sparked a Career―and MIT’s Solar Electric Vehicle Team
Engineering projects need goals, and James Worden ’89 set an especially engaging and enduring one for himself as a high school student in the early 1980s while pursuing his passion for homebuilt go-karts.
The MIT Alumni Association seeks to engage and inspire the MIT global community to make a better world. It provides a lifelong community for MIT graduates, a launching pad for students, and growing connection among MIT friends.
Startup aims to make waves with powerful long-range electric cruiser
Last year, a team of former SpaceX engineers launched Californian marine startup Arc with a plan to develop a luxury electric cruiser with “far superior range, acceleration and performance than any boat in its class.” Now a pre-production Arc One has spent a day of testing on Lake Arrowhead ahead of deliveries to the first customers later in the year.
The first boat out of the company’s factory in Los Angeles is being aimed squarely at the luxury end of the market, and will be produced in very limited numbers.
The spec sheet for the Arc One is actually pretty thin, but the development team has recently upped the power of the electric motor to 500 hp (373 kW) for a top speed of 40 mph (34 knots/64 km/h). The battery size has also been increased by 10 percent to 220 kWh – that’s “three times the capacity of a Tesla Model Y” and is reckoned big enough for users to stay out on the water for between three and five hours per charge, though high speeds will drain the battery quicker than cruising at lower speeds.
Ford and Purdue University Solved the Biggest Problem With Electric Vehicles
Ford and Purdue University researchers have developed a new, patent-pending charging system that solves one of the biggest problems with electric vehicles. Of course, we’re talking about the charging time it takes to top off a battery versus spending a few minutes at a gasoline pump.
Aside from range, charging time is one of the biggest problems for current electric vehicles. There’s plenty to love about EVs, but having to sit for 20–30 minutes and wait for the battery to recharge isn’t ideal, which is why Ford’s new cooling cables promise to recharge an electric vehicle in roughly 5-minutes.
Even with DC fast charging appearing at more Tesla stations, most vehicles with ideal battery, charger, and cable conditions still take upwards of at least 20 minutes. The video below explains how most Tesla systems can handle upwards of 520 amps of current, which is quite a lot. However, Ford and Purdue can deliver over 2,400 amps to their vehicles, resulting in drastically faster charging times.
“Power suits” for EVs promise an acceleration and 25% range boost
There is an exciting branch of battery research that involves combining the strength and durability of next-generation materials with their energy storage potential. This could see car panels double as their batteries, for example, and in a new example of what this could look like scientists have developed a “power suit” for electric vehicles that could not only extend their range, but give them a handy boost in acceleration at the same time.
Sometimes known as structural batteries, we’ve seen some interesting recent advances in this space from research groups and even big-name automakers. Back in 2013, Volvo demonstrated carbon fiber body panels with energy storage potential, and we’ve seen other teams show off similar concepts since. These projects sought to combine the high energy density of batteries with the ultra-fast discharge rates of supercapacitors, in materials strong enough to serve as a car’s exterior.
This new breakthrough continues this line of thinking, with scientists at University of Central Florida and NASA designing a new material featuring unique properties that allow for not just impressive energy storage potential, but also the strength needed to endure a car crash.
Pilot project producing gasoline from CO2 hydrogenation completes its trials
The world’s first demonstration device to produce 1,000 tons of gasoline per year from carbon dioxide (CO2) hydrogenation has completed its technology evaluation and trial operation.
Located in the Zoucheng Industrial Park, Shandong province, China, the project has been jointly developed by the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Zhuhai Futian Energy Technology company. The hydrogenation of CO2 into liquid fuels and chemicals can not only realize the resource utilization of CO2 but also facilitate the storage and transportation of renewable energy.
However, activation and selective conversion of CO2 are challenging. A technology that can selectively produce energy-dense, value-added hydrocarbon fuels will provide a new route to promote the clean, low-carbon energy revolution.