Lifeboat Foundation

We have everything we need here Especially in Texas no one ever needs to freeze again if they come out of the Fossil Fuel stone age.

The idea is that when electric vehicles are not in use, the energy stored in their batteries is going to waste. If you make it possible for that energy to feed back into the grid, then it can help balance out dips in supply as renewables go offline, rather than relying on fossil-fuel plants to pick up the slack.

The technology that can make that happen is still in its infancy, though. When an electric vehicle is charged, the alternating current from the grid is converted to direct current that can be stored in its batteries. But most charging stations and cars don’t have the hardware to allow this process to run in reverse, meaning the power can’t be fed back into the grid.

Continue reading “A Small Dutch City Is Using Electric Cars to Feed the Grid” »

The aircraft can lift up to 2722 kg with unmatched performance in hot and high conditions.

Kaman Air Vehicles performed the maiden flight with the world’s first heavy-lift unmanned helicopter for the commercial market, the K-MAX TITAN, last month.

Kaman’s K-MAX helicopter has been flying unmanned cargo missions for US forces in Afghanistan for roughly a decade now. Now, the company is introducing a commercial version to the market.

Continue reading “K-MAX TITAN, the world’s first commercial heavy-lift unmanned helicopter” »

“Programmable matter” technique could enable product designers to churn out prototypes with ease.

When was the last time you repainted your car? Redesigned your coffee mug collection? Gave your shoes a colorful facelift?

You likely answered: never, never, and never. You might consider these arduous tasks not worth the effort. But a new color-shifting “programmable matter” system could change that with a zap of light.

Billy Hurley, Digital Editorial Manager.

Metal-air batteries are light, compact power sources with a high energy density, but they have had a major limitation: They corrode.

A new design from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology uses oil to reduce the corrosion and extend the shelf life of single-use metal-air batteries.

Japanese auto giant Toyota is working on a new-age hydrogen vehicle. When the words Toyota and Hydrogen are in the same sentence, the hydrogen-powered Toyota Mirai comes to mind. Still, the Mirai is a hydrogen-electric car or FCEV (fuel-cell electric vehicle). It uses hydrogen fuel to convert electricity and power an onboard electric motor. This time, Toyota came up with something different.

“At the end of last year, we built a prototype that provided that ‘car feeling’ that car lovers love, such as through sound and vibration, even though we were dealing with environmental technology, said Koji Sato, Chief Branding Officer, and Gazoo Racing Company President. ” It was only recently that I realized, as one thing led to another, that we could use technologies that we had on hand.”

It’s likely that safety drivers will remain in cabs for years to come as companies hone their sensor technology and train their software for every highway scenario. It’s expensive and painstaking work that can overwhelm even the best-run start-ups. The consensus within the industry is that three contestants stand the best chance to make it to the finish line: “It’s TuSimple, Aurora and Waymo,” says Grayson Brulte, co-founder of Brulte & Co., a consulting firm focused on transportation. TuSimple, a San Diego based-company that raised $1.35 billion in an initial public offering in April, is in the pole position, as Brulte sees it, because of its singular focus on trucking and its partnership, begun three years ago, with Navistar International to build autonomous trucks. “They’ve got the head start on it,” says Brulte.

These are the companies set to dominate the highways of tomorrow.

Continue reading “The Race to Build Self-Driving Trucks Has Four Horses and Three Jockeys” »

Thoughts?

Getting past the cult of Genius and the bleakness of capitalist futurism.

The California-based EV company has lofty dreams of using its new platform to convert droves classic vehicles.

Oshkosh can make 100% battery-electric delivery trucks for the U.S. Postal Service, likely dashing Workhorse’s hopes of reigniting the competition.

Oshkosh Truck Corp. (NYSE: OSK) can make 100% battery-electric delivery trucks for the U.S. Postal Service, undercutting an assertion by Workhorse Group (NASDAQ: WKHS) that its being passed over for the contract dooms the mail service to remaining a source of planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.

Continue reading “Oshkosh takes victory lap over Postal Service delivery truck contract” »