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Category: sustainability – Page 414

Walnut Tech AKA Walnutt, the electric skateboard maker with a thing for tiny skateboards, has just announced the pre-sale of its third-generation Spectra X electric skateboard and it is, well, tiny. Despite the diminutive size, Spectra X promised to deliver “a perfect balance of portability and range.” It has almost “unlimited range” – thanks to the swappable batteries.

In theory, as long you load up with battery packs, you can go on indefinitely. We said in theory because, at $99 a pop, buying a bunch of the battery could make you broke. Also, I am pretty sure the dual hub motor will be crying for a break. Anyways, the battery, which is a Samsung 18650 battery, is seamlessly integrated to the underside of the board without marring the aesthetic.

Swapping out battery literally takes a second and with one hand. I find it odd that Walnutt felt the need to emphasize the one-hand part. Anywho… I guess it is cool to know that you can swap battery like a boss. Maybe? Still on the battery… each pack offers between 8 and 10 kilometers (5−6 miles) range and also, Walnutt said the battery is air-friendly, though it did not detail how so. One thing for sure is, Spectra X electric skateboard is more sustainable compared to its cohort since the skateboard need not to be disposed when the battery’s lifespan ends.

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Electric vehicle start-up Canoo unveiled a new delivery van Thursday ahead of its public debut on the Nasdaq next week.

The futuristic-looking van — known as a multi-purpose delivery vehicle, or MPDV, because of the ways it can be upfitted — is designed for everything from last-mile deliveries to food trucks, according to the California company. It is expected to start at around $33, 000.

“There are many use cases that this vehicle can do,” Canoo Chairman Tony Aquila, a major investor in the company, said during a video unveiling of the MPDV. “We wanted it to look very smart, very modern but at the same time be very affordable.”

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The Lightening SuperBike is the fastest production motorcycle in the world, clocking in at 218 MPH. (There are faster bikes, but none of them are street legal.) It recently won the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, beating all competitors, including gasoline-powered bikes. But don’t ask how many cylinders its engine has — this bike is solar powered. Well technically it’s battery-powered, but it charges the batteries with solar energy.

Image: SMA America

The SuperBike sports a liquid-cooled 125 kW electric motor, roughly equivalent to a 167 hp engine. At non-racing speeds, it offers a 100 mile range on the highway and 160 mile range in the city. Wondering why the mileage is higher in the city than on the highway? Two words: regenerative braking. How much will it cost to “fill the tank?” With its 370V 12 kWh battery bank and an electric rate of $0.12 per kWh, you can drive 160 city miles on $1.44 worth of charge, assuming you’re charging it from the grid. If you go solar, it’s free after you recover the investment in the solar panels and inverter.

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Kill a Watt

The reason why the price of energy storage is such an important automotive indicator is because the battery pack accounts for roughly a quarter of an EV’s total cost, making it the number one determinant of price.

It could be the electric car industry’s watershed moment: once dipping below the price of gasoline-powered engines, electric vehicles will look far more attractive to far more consumers.

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Electric cars and trucks may be the hottest topic in e-mobility, but quiet, clean-running electric drives have the ability to revolutionize all kinds of vehicles and machinery. We’ve seen it with the popularization and evolution of ebikes, and electric tech is slowly finding its way into more demanding powersports applications, like electric dirt bikes and snowmobiles. French startup MoonBikes Motors is carving some space between the e-snowmobile and e-dirt bike categories, creating a full-throttle electric snow bike meant to travel lightly and deliver sharp, explosive exhilaration on the snow.

It’s that time of year when experimental all-electric snow machines start rolling out from their high-altitude garages to carve their signatures into the Alpine snow and public consciousness. Last year it was the Austrian-built BobSla snow-kart motoring around its home turf at the Obergurgl-Hochgurgl ski area, and this year it’s the French-crafted MoonBike all-electric snow bike spraying snow in its own corner of the Alps.

Designed for both all-out snowy thrills and dutiful utility, the MoonBike features a snowmobile-like combination of rear track drive and front ski. A motor with 3 kW of continuous power pushes the bike to speeds up to 28 mph (45 km/h).

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“While astronauts in space need to get creative with their water supply, that’s not to suggest that people ought to start drinking pee to access clean water. Rather, Aquaporin, the company behind the new system, suggests that the same kind of technology could be used to clean up other types of wastewater or filter existing drinking water supplies to the point that they could be used.”

As Above

Roughly 2 billion people don’t have access to clean drinking water, according to CNN, and a system like Aquaporin could help remove pollution and plastics from the supply.

“It has an enormous potential,” Dines Thornberg, innovation manager at BIOFOS, Denmark’s largest state-owned wastewater facility, told CNN. “I think the Aquaporin system could lead the way in actually creating clean, affordable drinking water from wastewater in the future. I am really optimistic that we can meet the challenges of water scarcity in many parts of the world with technologies like this.”

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