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Category: transportation – Page 425

DETROIT — Electric vehicle startup Rivian Automotive got a big boost from one of its investors on Thursday when Amazon.com announced it was ordering 100,000 electric delivery vans.

Before Rivian has even begun commercial production at its factory in Normal, Illinois, the Amazon order rocketed it to the forefront of electric vehicle makers.

Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos said in Washington that as part of the online retailer’s plan to be carbon neutral by 2040 it would order the electric vans from Rivian, with deliveries starting in 2021. The goal is to deploy all the vehicles by 2024.

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A bit old news.

As the fast charging infrastructure progresses towards 150–350 kW power levels (for passenger cars and beyond in case of bigger vehicles), also plug/connector suppliers try to keep pace with change.

Here we see one of the ITT Cannon DC fast charging plugs, presented at the eMove360° fairs in Munich, Germany.

The company says that its ultra-fast liquid-cooled High Power Charging (HPC) solution is ready to deliver current of 500 A at a voltage of 1,000 V, which would be 500 kW! The HPC is available in both, CCS1 and CCS2 variants for North American and European markets.

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Tesla is rolling out more Model Y prototypes for testing and we are getting to see the new electric crossover in new colors, including now a beautiful new bright red prototype spotted at Gigafactory 1.

Earlier this month, a Model Y prototype was spotted being tested around Tesla’s headquarters in Palo Alto and since then, there has been a more steady stream of Model Y sightings.

This week, we reported on a bunch of Tesla Model Y vehicles with new wheels spotted on a carrier near the factory and later, a beautiful new Model Y Midnight Silver prototype was spotted in Fremont.

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The only in-flight beverages on the 11-seat private jet were bottled water and a genetically modified bacterial slurry designed to prevent the worst effects of hangovers.

A handful of passengers on the short evening flight from Hawthorne to the edge of the Mojave — venture capitalists, a man with a mushroom-based manufacturing company and this reporter — downed the mixture. The pilot, along with two senior SpaceX engineers, politely declined.

At the Apple Valley Airport, a helicopter waited to take us beyond a far ridge, farther from civilization. Miles from paved roads were two tents, a ring of shipping containers and an “H” painted on the dirt marking a makeshift helipad.

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Tesla’s air filtration system with “Bioweapon Defense Mode” is proving useful for the owners affected by the current wildfires in California.

Watch an owner using the system while going through a hellish-looking road with scary air quality.

With the Model X, Tesla put a lot of effort into developing a more powerful air filtering system in order to not only contribute to the reduction of local air pollution with electric vehicles, but also to reduce the direct impact of air pollution on the occupants of its vehicles.

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Researchers at TU Delft have developed a new supercompressible but strong material without conducting any experimental tests at all, using only artificial intelligence (AI). “AI gives you a treasure map, and the scientist needs to find the treasure,” says Miguel Bessa, first author of a publication on this subject in Advanced Materials on 14 October.

Foldable bicycle

Miguel Bessa, assistant professor in and engineering at TU Delft, got the inspiration for this research project during his time at the California Institute of Technology. At a corner of the Space Structures Lab, he noticed a satellite structure that could open long solar sails from a very small package.

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