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The New York Times.

Continue reading “A Plane in Utah Lets the Fish Fly” »

Circa 2014

India looks like the future. Even as China and other Asian nations contract, economically or otherwise, India continues to expand, with…

The world’s largest contract chip maker said it expects the chip shortage that has hampered car makers to start easing in the next few months after it ramped up its production of auto chips.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world’s largest contract chip maker, said it expects the chip shortage that has hampered car makers to start easing in the next few months after it ramped up its production of auto chips.

The company is on track to increase output of microcontrollers used in cars by about 60% this year compared with last, Chief Executive C.C. Wei said in an earnings call on Thursday. However, he said, the broader semiconductor shortage could persist until 2022.

Continue reading “TSMC Expects Auto-Chip Shortage to Abate This Quarter” »

Elon Musk confirmed that Tesla currently has a Powerwall backlog of 80000 orders, which is worth over $500 million, but it can’t ramp up production to meet that due to the global chip shortage.

Tesla has been production constrained with the Powerwall for a long time.

The demand has been strong in several markets, like the US and Australia, but production hasn’t been to catch up despite significant ramp-ups.

United Airlines and one of its regional carriers each plan to buy up to 100 small electric planes that could be used on short-haul United flights.

SMRs are cheaper and quicker to build than traditional reactors, and can also be deployed in remote regions and on ships and aircraft. Their “modular” format means they can be shipped by container from the factory and installed relatively quickly on any proposed site.

SHANGHAI, July 13 (Reuters) — China has started construction of the first commercial onshore nuclear project using its homegrown “Linglong One” small modular reactor (SMR) design, the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) said on Tuesday, about four years later than planned.

CNNC originally aimed to start building the project at the Changjiang nuclear reactor complex on the island province of Hainan in 2017, but it has been subject to regulatory delays.

Continue reading “China launches first commercial onshore small reactor project” »

We hear about EV battery breakthroughs all the time, but they don’t seem to pan out. Perhaps Tesla’s new lithium extraction method will be the exception.

DARPA announced the selection of four research teams to drive it home with no headlights on our Invisible Headlights program, which seeks to determine if it’s possible for autonomous vehicles to navigate in complete darkness using only passive sensors:

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DARPA has selected four industry and university research teams for the Invisible Headlights program, which seeks to determine if it’s possible for autonomous vehicles to navigate in complete darkness using only passive sensors.

China currently has one of the most expansive and impressive high-speed rail networks on Earth, and they aren’t showing signs of slowing. As their network reaches the far corners of their nation, Beijing could be setting its eyes on what lies beyond – far, far beyond.

According to reports, China wishes to build a high-speed, 13000-kilometer (8078-mile) train that travels from mainland China, up through Siberia in Eastern Russia, under the sea through the Bering Strait into Alaska, across the rocky peaks of Canada’s Yukon and British Columbia, and into the USA. Once constructed, they have could further extend their international bullet train into every corner of the US.

The price of such an outlandish proposal? A cool $200 billion. A price tag so high, even the likes of Jeff Bezos probably couldn’t reach it.