Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: transportation – Page 296

PepsiCo gets a permit to install Tesla Semi Megacharger

According to the public papers given by Stanislaus County, PepsiCo. Gets approval to install a Tesla Semi Megacharger at its Modesto, California, factory.

According to the documents, the Stanislaus County Planning Commission issued a permit for the Megacharger installation on November 22nd. PepsiCo has been attempting to obtain installation privileges since the first submission of the application on April 21st. In the months between the application’s submission, permit issuance, and the Planning Commission conducted frequent inspections. Including a fire inspection. @MarcoRPTesla was the first to tweet about the permit approval.

Later this year, PepsiCo will be the first company to receive Tesla Semis. On CNBC earlier this month, CEO Ramon Laguarta stated the company would get the first Tesla Semi units in Q4. Implying that Tesla had around five weeks to deliver the trucks to PepsiCo.

AI That Tries To Be Funny Is Not Necessarily A Laughing Matter, Especially When Used By Self-Driving Cars

Humor can be quite useful.

Let’s see how.

Suppose you are having a bad day (I realize this seems a bit dour and gloomy, but the venerated gallantry of well-placed humor will turn this around, wait and see).

While on the way home from work, you opt to use a ridesharing or ride-hailing service. After settling into the car and getting ready to have a quiet and solemnly introspective ride home, the driver suddenly speaks up and tells you an entertaining joke that causes you to laugh out loud. The merriment of the humorous anecdote sparks you to get out of your dismally sour mood. It was one of the best jokes you have ever heard, a knee-slapping and side-splitting piece of humor.

Things are looking up, and when you arrive home, your perspective and attitude about the world have shifted into one of peacefulness and content.

All due to letting some humor enter into your day.

Full Story:

Continue reading “AI That Tries To Be Funny Is Not Necessarily A Laughing Matter, Especially When Used By Self-Driving Cars” | >

This solar-powered electric bicycle is making a 6,500-mile loop around US

Sushil Reddy is no stranger to long-distance electric bicycles rides, having broken the Guinness World Record back in 2016 with a 7,424 km (4,613 mile) ride across India. Since then he’s set his sights on solar power, performing several more long-distance solar-powered electric bike rides. Now he’s halfway through a 10,460 km (6,500 mile) ride around the US on a custom-built solar-powered electric bike as part of the SunPedal Ride project.

As the SunPedal Ride project explained:

“The SunPedal Ride is an outreach project started by Sushil Reddy in 2016. The idea is to have conversations about clean energy and sustainable mobility via endurance journeys undertaken on zero tail-pipe emission vehicles. Each edition of The SunPedal Ride is a new challenge which is executed by a team and supported by a group of sponsors/partners to spread the message via public interactions. A medium of a zero tail-pipe emissions vehicle is used in each edition of The SunPedal Ride.”

World’s first autonomous, all-electric container ship

“We are proud to be able to showcase the world’s first fully electric and self-propelled container ship,” said Svein Holsether, CEO of Norwegian chemical company Yara International. “It will cut 1,000 tonnes of CO2 and replace 40,000 trips by diesel-powered trucks a year.”

Yara has collaborated since 2017 with maritime technology company Kongsberg to develop the ship, which sailed from Horten to Oslo, a distance of approximately 35 nautical miles (65 km). Powered by 7 MWh batteries, it uses an automatic identification system (AIS), cameras (including infrared), a lidar, and radar system. It will begin commercial operations in 2022, transporting mineral fertiliser between ports in southern Norway at up to 15 knots (28 km/h).

“Norway is a big ocean and maritime nation, and other nations look to Norway for green solutions at sea. Yara Birkeland is the result of the strong knowledge and experience we have in the Norwegian maritime cluster and industry,” said Geir Håøy, CEO of the Kongsberg Group. “The project demonstrates how we have developed a world-leading innovation that contributes to the green transition and provides great export opportunities for Norwegian technology and industry.”

Researchers suggest battery-powered trains could very soon be economically viable

A small team of researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California has found that battery-powered trains could become economical as soon as 2023. In their paper published in the journal Nature Energy, the group argues that improved battery technology and cheap, renewable energy could soon allow battery power to compete with diesel fuel to power trains. Federico Zenith with NTNU, Trondheim, has published a News & Views piece in the same journal issue outlining the reasons for converting trains to battery power and gives an overview of the work done by the team on this new effort.

Trains, as Zenith notes, haul approximately 40 percent of intercity freight in the U.S., and sending things by train is cheaper than using trucks. Most of the freight trains in the U.S. run on , he states, spewing approximately 0.6 percent of total U.S. carbon emissions. In this new effort, the researchers suggest that switching to could prevent these emissions.

Electric trains in the U.S. get their power from overhead lines—a system that is expensive and inefficient. The team suggests that batteries could provide a better option; more specifically, they claim that a single locomotive equipped with a 14-megawatt battery system would be sufficient to replace a train powered by a diesel engine. They further claim that such a locomotive could carry a train approximately 240 kilometers on a single charge. This would consume half the energy of a diesel-powered train. And if the battery is charged using a renewable resource, it would reduce the carbon footprint of an electric train to zero.

First ‘robotaxis’ enter service in Beijing

It looks like a normal car but the white taxi by the kerb has nobody driving it, and communicates with customers digitally to obtain directions and take payment.

Beijing this week approved its first autonomous taxis for commercial use, bringing dozens of the so-called “robotaxis” to the streets of the Chinese capital.

The vehicles can only carry two passengers at a time and are confined to the city’s southern Yizhuang area.

Watch: BMW Made the World’s First Electrified Wingsuit. It Reached 186 MPH on Its First Flight

After three years of intensive research and countless test flights in BMW’s horizontal wind tunnel, Salzmann and the wingsuit completed the maiden flight over the picturesque mountains of Austria last week. The 33-year-old was dropped by helicopter at just shy of 10,000 feet alongside two other fliers sporting conventional wingsuits. BMW says the electric wingsuit enabled Salzmann to accelerate faster than his mates at a peak speed of 186 mph. (Normal wingsuit operators typically reach horizontal speeds around 62 mph.)

The e-wingsuit is built upon BMW i EV technology and powered by a chest-mounted rig. It offers 15 kW of grunt that’s split between two 7.5 kW carbon impellers. The impellers spin at a speed of 25,000 rpm and produce thrust for up to five minutes. The aim of the electric wingsuit is to increase performance and eventually allow for longer distances to be covered.

How an AI-powered system helps Abu Dhabi rank among the safest cities in the world

Through the integrated use of sensors, closed-circuit television network, automatic licence plate readers and facial recognition software, all of which feed data into a central control room, the Safe City project helps authorities predict incidents and take preemptive action against crime or violence, said Dr Major Ahmed Al Shamsi, head of Safe City Project at Abu Dhabi Police.

“The project was launched three years ago and currently covers 85 per cent of the emirate’s infrastructure. It has helped reduce traffic incidents and fatalities, patrol areas more efficiently and take action to prevent untoward occurrences,” he told Gulf News on the sidelines of the Abu Dhabi Smart City Summit.

The two-day summit is seeing the attendance of 400 experts, with the focus on the technological advances and innovations that are improving the quality of life in the UAE capital. Organised by Abu Dhabi emirate’s municipalities sector regulator, the Department of Municipalities and Transport (DMT), the Summit has already seen the launch of driverless taxis on Yas Island, as well as the signing of other agreements with technology developers like Huawei, Bayanat and G42.

/* */