Lifeboat Foundation

Imagine a road that always stays ice-free, interacts with vehicles to make their own electricity and has road markings that change according to live traffic. It sounds futuristic but a new partnership between The University of Manchester and Highways England is setting the wheels in motion to make this dream a reality.

Highways England is responsible for the motorways and major A roads in the country, carrying four million journeys a day. All this traffic can take its toll. Adding graphene into road maintenance has the potential to extend a road’s life, increase network performance to an industry-changing level and improve the road-user experience.

Manchester’s Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre (GEIC) is plotting a route to a solution, collaborating with Highways England and Pavement Testing Services to tackle low-carbon and digital road networks, and deterioration of road surfaces in the UK, with the help of graphene.

A new wheel-fitted device by technology startup, The Tyre Collective, could help to reduce both air and plastic pollution produced from vehicles.

Tesla has reintroduced the ‘Enhanced Autopilot’ option – offering a cheaper alternative to the ‘Full Self-Driving’ package for existing owners.

Welcome to the world’s newest motorsport: manned multicopter races that exceed speeds of 100 mph.

Battery technology is key to Tesla’s future — for more reasons than its electric cars.

Long-distance cargo ships lose a significant amount of energy due to fluid friction. Looking to the drag reduction mechanisms employed by aquatic life can provide inspiration on how to improve efficiency.

Fish and seaweed secrete a layer of mucus to create a slippery surface, reducing their friction as they travel through water. A potential way to mimic this is by creating lubricant-infused surfaces covered with cavities. As the cavities are continuously filled with the lubricant, a layer is formed over the surface.

Though this method has previously been shown to work, reducing drag by up to 18%, the underlying physics is not fully understood. In the journal Physics of Fluids, researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and Pohang University of Science and Technology conducted simulations of this process to help explain the effects.

The batteries will offer more range in the same size pack, but the automaker still has to solve the technology’s life-span problem.

Toyota has chosen to focus on hybrid and hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles as the cornerstones of its green strategy, but that doesn’t mean the automaker is forgoing an electric vehicle altogether. In addition to an EV crossover coming from the automaker and its partner Subaru in the near future and a lineup of six EVs (some of which are pictured above), which are likely to land in China first, Toyota is currently working on a technological breakthrough that will reach far beyond its use in an EV: the solid-state battery.

Researchers perfect a battery that will let electric vehicles charge faster and drive farther while lasting a lot longer, but don’t expect to see it anytime soon.

For years, solid-state batteries have been heralded as the answer to many of the issues surrounding EVs. The battery technology allows for greater energy density, which translates into more range from the same size pack as a lithium-ion battery. The problem has been that the failure rate is far too high after repeated charging. Also, they’re super expensive. But Samsung may have solved the first issue.

Coming late 2020 or early 2021.

CEO Elon Musk is expected to detail the new battery tech at a “Battery Day” event for investors later this month. The long-rumored advancement could make it possible for Tesla to sell its vehicles at more competitive prices.