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Category: transportation – Page 296

Among the three billionaires throwing money behind their own rockets in a race to space, Richard Branson may be the first to take flight after his company Virgin Galactic received approval from the U.S. aviation safety regulator to fly people to space.

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The toilet could turn roughly a pound of solid human waste, the average amount a human poops in a day, into an impressive 50 liters of methane gas, according to Cho. That means it can generate half a kilowatt hour of electricity, enough to drive an electric car for three quarters of a mile.

And because its 2021 — a day and age in which nothing is safe from the world of cryptocurrencies — Cho came up with a virtual currency called Ggool, or “honey” in Korean. Every use of the toilet scores you 10 Ggool per day, which can be used to buy stuff on the university’s campus.

“I had only ever thought that feces are dirty, but now it is a treasure of great value to me,” a postgraduate student Heo Hui-jin who’s both earned and spent Ggool, told Reuters. “I even talk about feces during mealtimes to think about buying any book I want.”

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Eviation, which has been described as the “Tesla of aircraft” for working on the first compelling long-range electric aircraft, has unveiled the production version of its Alice aircraft.

It has a shorter range than previously announced.

After Eviation unveiled the prototype of its Alice aircraft back in 2017, the company attracted a lot of attention and comparison with Tesla because the aircraft was amongst the first all-electric plane that was viable for actual commercial use.

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In 1958, Ford showed the world a car like it had never seen before, one powered by a small nuclear reactor. The Ford Nucleon, as it was christened, was envisioned as a car capable of driving more than 5000 miles between fueling stops, appealing to a postwar fixation with convenience that has dominated American consumerism since. Like some other midcentury nuclear fantasies, though, the Nucleon never came to fruition, in part due to engineering problems we still struggle with to this day.

Before we examine why the Nucleon could never be, let’s get a better grasp of the car itself, starting with its utterly comical dimensions. Ford’s press materials envisaged the Nucleon stretching 200.3 inches long and 77.4 wide, making it as long as the new Ford Maverick compact pickup, but slightly wider. Its roof was said to measure just 41.4 inches high, making it less than an inch taller than the legendarily low-slung Ford GT40.

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Hyundai’s fleet of hydrogen-powered truck prototypes reached a significant milestone in Europe in June 2021. With a successful testing phase comes a tremendous amount of data, and the information gathered during 11 months of real-world evaluation across the pond will ultimately help the firm design a truck sized for American roads.

Real-world users have collectively put 1 million kilometers (about 621400 miles) on the 46 trucks that Hyundai built for testing purposes, meaning each rig has covered an average of around 13500 miles. They’re in the hands of 25 different companies operating in Switzerland, including some in the logistics, distribution, and supermarket sectors. So far, users have been pleased: They praised the Xcient truck’s long driving range and short refueling times, attributes that a comparable electric model wouldn’t be able to offer. Specific figures weren’t released.

Hyundai will continue manufacturing the Xcient for early adopters in Switzerland. It plans to build 140 units of the truck for the Swiss market in 2021, and it hopes that number will grow to 1600 by 2025. Starting the project in Switzerland was a decision that carried relatively few risks. It’s a country that’s roughly a tenth the size of California, and its road network is relatively well developed. Next, the South Korean company will branch out into other European countries. It hasn’t decided where yet, but it singled out Germany and Holland as likely candidates.

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