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Archive for the ‘transportation’ category: Page 427

Sep 30, 2017

Let’s ban gasoline-powered cars, says California’s governor

Posted by in category: transportation

Electric vehicles would get a big boost if California bans internal combustion engines.

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Sep 30, 2017

China’s New Electric Car Rules Are Amazingly Aggressive

Posted by in categories: government, sustainability, transportation

This is how you really get an industry to change its ways. Bloomberg reports that China’s government has announced that any automaker producing or importing more than 30,000 cars in China must ensure 10 percent of them are all-electric, plug-in hybrid, or hydrogen-powered by 2019. That number will rise to 12 percent in 2020.

In fact, the new regulations are actually more lenient than drafts of the rules had suggested: they scrap a 2018 introduction to give manufacturers more time to prepare, and will also excuse failure to meet the quota in the first year. So, really, the 12 percent target in 2020 is the first enforceable number.

That still doesn’t make it very easy, as the Wall Street Journal notes (paywall). Domestic automakers already make plenty of electric cars (largely at the government’s behest), which means that they should be able to meet the numbers, but Western firms will find it harder. In preparation, some have actually set up partnerships with Chinese companies to help them build electric vehicles in time.

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Sep 30, 2017

Toyota and Mazda are making a new company to develop electric cars

Posted by in categories: sustainability, transportation

Both automakers are set to make future EVs off of Prius platform.

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Sep 30, 2017

Federal, State Governments React to Eventual Arrival of Autonomous Cars

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, transportation

Autonomous cars are on the radar of the National Highway Safety Administration (NHTSA) and Department of Transportation (DOT), as well as state legislators.

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Sep 30, 2017

Hands Off With Cadillac Super Cruise, the Masterful One-Trick Pony of Self-Driving

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, transportation

Despite minor gotchas—not glitches—Super Cruise is a powerful tool that is the pinnacle of Level 2 autonomy. You’ll want it on your car.

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Sep 30, 2017

The First Successful Full-System Test of a Hyperloop Just Happened

Posted by in category: transportation

Hyperloop One announces completion of first successful full-system hyperloop test.

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Sep 30, 2017

Mexico is planning to build its own Hyperloop

Posted by in category: transportation

Click on photo to start video.

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Sep 30, 2017

Electric car-sharing service begins in Singapore

Posted by in categories: sustainability, transportation

Singapore gets its first electric vehicle-sharing service, and it comes from France.

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Sep 30, 2017

Vacuum company Dyson is building an electric car

Posted by in categories: sustainability, transportation

Dyson says the car will be unveiled in 2020 and will be ‘radically different’ to other vehicles on the market.

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Sep 30, 2017

Hypersonic SR-72 spyplane demo spotted

Posted by in category: transportation

A subscale demonstrator of the SR-72 hypersonic spyplane was reportedly spied at Lockheed’s facilities in California.

A proposed hypersonic reconnaissance and strike aircraft, the SR-72 would serve as a replacement for the famed SR-71 Blackbird, which was retired by the Air Force back in 1998. The SR-71 Blackbird could fly at 2200 mph (over 3 times the speed of sound).

Lockheed has said they are working on a combined-cycle engine. It uses both a turbine and a scramjet to achieve hypersonic speeds. Lockheed Martin is testing Aerojet Rocketdyne from 2013 to 2017. Two combined-cycle engines are planned to power the SR-72, which is designed to be about the same size of the SR-71 and could achieve first flight in the late 2020s.

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