Lifeboat Foundation

Electrification of transport has many faces and the automotive industry is exploring various paths to increase the share of electric miles in long-distance travel, but not necessarily by switching to full BEVs with huge batteries.

This summer, a new 5 km (3.1 mi) e-highway test track with catenary overhead lines (in both directions) entered service on the A5 Autobahn in Hessen, near Frankfurt in Germany. It’s part of a three-stage project announced in 2018.

Continue reading “Germany: A5 Autobahn Gets Catenary Overhead Lines For xEV Trucks” »

It can lift a car or tow a truck, but the ultimate goal is to make mech racing a sport.

The only slight hitch is it costs as much as a brand new Rolls-Royce Phantom, so it’s for millionaires.

We wrote earlier this year that because the demand for electrified classics was on the rise, Lunaz, U.K.-based company that specializes in EV conversions had doubled its workforce to keep up with demand. The company’s first product was a pure-electric 1953 Jaguar XK120, but if that was not opulent enough, it now offers a car that makes a lot of sense on paper: an electric 1961 Rolls-Royce Phantom V.

In fact, an old electric Roller is about as fitting as an EV converted classic could get, simply because no internal combustion engine can match the blend of smoothness, quietness and power provided by an electric motor. To top it all off, the guys from Lunaz equip their electric Phantom with a really big 120 kWh battery pack that is said to provide enough juice for a range of 300+ miles (480+ km).

Tesla vehicles are equipped with extrernal speakers.

The main function is to output a pedestrian warning sound, which has become required for electric vehicles in many markets due to the fact that they are quiet at low speeds.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been playing around with ideas on how to release other features that take advantage of the fact that the vehicles are now equipped with external speakers.

This driverless DeLorean drifts through a kilometre long course just as good as any human would 😲🤯.

As we wind up our discussion about the Space Race and touch on the strategies employed by China in its bid to stay on top of space and tech, we delve into the meaty topic of next generation Artificial Intelligence including GPT-3, OpenAI, CommaAI and how they are making strides in the avenues of automation, machine learning and translation and also self driving cars. It’s a brave new world and we discuss some of the many pitfalls of this new emerging range of systems that can come with many issues along with many benefits.

Circa 2007

The first air-powered cars could hit showrooms as early as August of 2008.

I finally got footage of the Mercedes-Benz AVTR driving!! This car can crawl like a crab sideways. How frickin cool is that! Thoughts guys??

Munich’s Sono Motors are about to launch the first mass-produced solar powered car in the world, the Sion, with solar panels all over it.