Circa 2017
This bubbly concept car protects more than the driver; its next-generation rubber exterior can save pedestrians, too.
Continue reading “The Shapeshifting Car Of The Future Has Airbags On The Outside” »
Scattered across the world are a number of bewildering ‘mystery spots’ that appear to defy gravity — places where cars seem to drift uphill, and cyclists struggle to push themselves downhill.
Also known as gravity hills, these bizarre natural phenomena can be found in places like Confusion Hill in California and Magnetic Hill in Canada, and while they’ve inspired rumours of witchcraft and giant magnets buried in the countryside, the actual scientific explanation will have you questioning every slope you encounter from here on out.
Car buyers in Europe can now get their hands on a brand-new electric vehicle for less than the typical cost of a mobile-phone contract. Thanks to newly generous subsidies, some are even free.
Shoppers have swarmed virtual showrooms in Germany and France — the region’s two largest passenger car markets — after their national governments boosted electric-vehicle incentives to stimulate demand. Their purchase subsidies are now among the most favorable in the world.
The state support is allowing Autohaus Koenig, a dealership chain with more than 50 locations across Germany, to advertise a lease for the battery-powered Renault Zoe that is entirely covered by subsidies. In the 20 days since it put the offer online, roughly 3,000 people have inquired and about 300 have signed contracts.
Choi and other researchers have also tried to use lithium-ion battery electrodes to pull lithium directly from seawater and brines without the need for first evaporating the water. Those electrodes consist of sandwichlike layered materials designed to trap and hold lithium ions as a battery charges. In seawater, a negative electrical voltage applied to a lithium-grabbing electrode pulls lithium ions into the electrode. But it also pulls in sodium, a chemically similar element that is about 100,000 times more abundant in seawater than lithium. If the two elements push their way into the electrode at the same rate, sodium almost completely crowds out the lithium.
Lithium is prized for rechargeables because it stores more energy by weight than other battery materials. Manufacturers use more than 160,000 tons of the material every year, a number expected to grow nearly 10-fold over the next decade. But lithium supplies are limited and concentrated in a handful of countries, where the metal is either mined or extracted from briny water.
Lithium’s scarcity has raised concerns that future shortages could cause battery prices to skyrocket and stymie the growth of electric vehicles and other lithium-dependent technologies such as Tesla Powerwalls, stationary batteries often used to store rooftop solar power.
Continue reading “Seawater could provide nearly unlimited amounts of critical battery material” »
A second fan on the rear then pushes air behind the craft, driving it forward. Rudders behind this thrust fan turn the craft. It may be a hovercraft at its core, but like regular cars on the street, it has got headlights, navigation lamps, cockpit lights, as well as a flux capacitor — that’s the coloured lights around the perimeter. The hovercraft took a total of four-and-a-half years to build.
So, piloting the hovercraft feels like driving a car that’s constantly sliding around on ice. You got your foot pedal and steering wheel and it feels like you’re in a car, but you are just sliding around every way with no friction.
Franky Zapata abandoned a previous attempt after failing to land on a refuelling platform and falling into the sea.
Franky Zapata stands on his jet-powered “flyboard” prior to land on St. Margaret’s Bay in Dover on Sunday. GLYN KIRK / AFP — Getty Images.
The Indian army is keen to procure RQ-11 UAV Raven – unmanned aerial vehicle from the US besides Israeli Spike Firefly “loitering” munition to support its ground soldiers, reports the HindustanTimes.
Rafale jets dodge all radars, air defence systems; bombs Turkish facilities in Libya
Tesla is scrapping plans for a bargain Model Y SUV because of its short range on a single charge, CEO Elon Musk said in a tweet over the weekend.
Earlier this year, the electric car maker began producing its pricier, dual-motor all-wheel drive version of the Model Y, which starts at $49,000.
Tesla had planned to roll out a cheaper version of the Model Y — expected to be priced under $40,000 — with a single engine, rear-wheel drive and smaller battery. But Musk tweeted that the range on that vehicle would have been “unacceptably low” at less than 250 miles on a single charge.
Japanese start-up SkyDrive is preparing to fly its electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) test aircraft in public for the first time in August, as it sets its sights on building a thriving air taxi and urban air mobility market in the country on the back the developmental battery-powered design.
SkyDrive says it began flight testing a proof of concept model at its test centre in Toyota in December 2019, and the aircraft” completed its technical verification phase” in March.
Panasonic has begun testing robotic mobility devices at the newly constructed Takanawa Gateway train station in Tokyo.
The effort is art of a plan to bring a series of automated services to the airport and surrounding facilities that are part of a massive redevelopment project in the surrounding Shinagawa business district.
Three mobility devices, essentially intelligent electric wheelchairs, will be used as a single group in the trial. The experiment will focus on ensuring the safety of passengers with mobility issues as they are transported throughout the huge facilities.
