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Archive for the ‘transportation’ category: Page 283

Aug 29, 2019

Startup offers ~$9,000 electric retrofits with Tesla batteries for fossil fuel-powered cars

Posted by in categories: energy, transportation

A French startup is trying to streamline electric conversion with Tesla batteries in order to offer a relatively cheap way to convert older fossil fuel-powered cars.

Therefs nothing new about electric conversions, but they are often really complicated, which also makes them really expensive.

Continue reading “Startup offers ~$9,000 electric retrofits with Tesla batteries for fossil fuel-powered cars” »

Aug 29, 2019

Tesla patents way to join solar roof tiles together for faster installation

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, life extension, sustainability, transportation

https://youtube.com/watch?v=videoseries

Tesla is planning to ramp up installation of its new solar roof, but it needs to figure out a way to reduce installation time.

Now a new patent shows a possible solution by producing and installing solar roof tiles in jointed groups.

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Aug 28, 2019

Kilopower: NASA’s Offworld Nuclear Reactor

Posted by in categories: nuclear energy, particle physics, sustainability, transportation

General Motors is the latest automaker reported to be working on solid-state lithium batteries, thanks to a $2 million grant from Uncle Sam.

The money is part of a larger grant to develop more fuel-efficient powertrains, CNET reported. The company is expected to use the rest of the money to develop a lighter-weight, more efficient engine for medium duty trucks, perhaps to replace the company’s 6.2-liter V-8.

Continue reading “Kilopower: NASA’s Offworld Nuclear Reactor” »

Aug 28, 2019

To Hunt Gravitational Waves, Scientists Had to Create the Quietest Spot on Earth

Posted by in categories: physics, space, transportation

LIVINGSTON, La. — About a mile and a half from a building so big you can see it from space, every car on the road slows to a crawl. Drivers know to take the 10 mph (16 km/h) speed limit very seriously: That’s because the building houses a massive detector that’s hunting for celestial vibrations at the smallest scale ever attempted. Not surprisingly, it’s sensitive to all earthly vibrations around it, from the rumblings of a passing car to natural disasters on the other side of the globe.

As a result, scientists who work at one of the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) detectors must go to extraordinary lengths to hunt down and remove all potential sources of noise — slowing down traffic around the detector, monitoring every tiny tremor in the ground, even suspending the equipment from a quadruple pendulum system that minimizes vibrations — all in the effort to create the most “silent” vibrational spot on Earth.

Aug 27, 2019

New Electric Aircraft Motor Lab Aims For 1MW Electric Airplane Motor

Posted by in category: transportation

You know a new industry is born when investments pour in and results encourage more spending. Now, a new lab, the Collins Electric Aircraft Lab, wants to offer urban air mobility (UAM) and the general electric aviation world a 1MW electric airplane motor.

Aug 27, 2019

Researchers have found a way to make electric car batteries from glass bottles

Posted by in categories: engineering, sustainability, transportation

Who knew?


Not only are the batteries eco-friendly, but they are powerful as well. The researchers found a way to make them last longer and provide more electricity batteries by using silicon anodes — an electrode through which the current enters into an electrical device — instead of traditional graphite.

Continue reading “Researchers have found a way to make electric car batteries from glass bottles” »

Aug 27, 2019

Neuromorphic Chips and the Future of Your Cell Phone

Posted by in categories: mobile phones, robotics/AI, transportation

Summary: The ability to train large scale CNNs directly on your cell phone without sending the data round trip to the cloud is the key to next gen AI applications like real time computer vision and safe self-driving cars. Problem is our current GPU AI chips won’t get us there. But neuromorphic chips look like they will.

Aug 26, 2019

Cerebras reveals world’s ‘largest computer chip’ for AI tasks

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, surveillance, transportation

A Californian-based start-up has unveiled what it says is the world’s largest computer chip.

The Wafer Scale Engine, designed by Cerebras Systems, is slightly bigger than a standard iPad.

The firm says a single chip can drive complex artificial intelligence (AI) systems in everything from driverless cars to surveillance software.

Aug 25, 2019

Volocopter gets safety nod in push for air taxis of the future

Posted by in categories: futurism, transportation

How far off are we from hopping on and off air taxis as a familiar local mode of transport? Eyes this week were fixed on one company aggressively keeping up its bit to open commercial routes and bring this type of mobility to life.

Volocopter on Wednesday presented its latest air design, dubbed VoloCity. The machine can accommodate two people and hand luggage.

Ben Sampson, Aerospace Testing International, noted that this is actually the fourth electrical take-off and landing aircraft (eVTOL) iteration but “the first that meets the new European Aviation Safety Agency standards.”

Aug 25, 2019

The Best Electric Vans — CleanTech Talk with Tomek Gać

Posted by in categories: futurism, transportation

In this episode of our CleanTech Talk podcast interview series, Zach Shahan sits down with Tomek Gać, Co-Founder of Tesla Shuttle and founder and CEO of Quriers.pl and Energia Słonca, to discuss the successes, challenges, and future of electric delivery vehicles. You can listen to the full conversation in the embedded player below. Below that embedded SoundCloud player is a brief summary of the topics covered, but tune into the podcast to follow the full discussion.