When traveling at five times the speed of sound or faster, the tiniest bit of turbulence is more than a bump in the road, said the Sandia National Laboratories aerospace engineer who for the first time characterized the vibrational effect of the pressure field beneath one of these tiny hypersonic turbulent spots.

“The problem is that these patches of turbulence are really fast and really small,” said researcher Katya Casper. “There are thousands of turbulent spots every second in hypersonic flow, and we need really fast techniques to study their behavior.”

The pressure field is key to understanding how intermittent turbulent spots shake an aircraft flying at Mach 5 or greater, Casper said. Hypersonic vehicles are subjected to high levels of fluctuating pressures and must be engineered to withstand the resulting vibrations.

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A new update pushed to Tesla vehicles includes a “live issue detection” feature, which enables them to “keep tabs on certain components to let you know if they need replacing and order parts ahead of your next service visit,” according to a company statement sent to Electrek.

Once the vehicle figures out which replacement part it needs, it pre-orders it to the closest Tesla Service Center. Owners can then schedule a visit through the Tesla app.

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Two hypersonic vehicle prototypes developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Air Force are due to fly by the end of the year, the agency’s director said May 1.

One vehicle is part of the hypersonic air-breathing weapon concept, or HAWC, program. The other is the tactical boost glide, or TBG, effort, said Steven Walker.

“We’re on track for both to have flights … before the calendar year ends,” he told reporters during a breakfast meeting in Washington, D.C. However, that might be questionable because once “you actually get into the building of these things and qualifying the hardware, … things tend to slip.”

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Volkswagen is about to open its order book for the ID all-electric hatchback, the first all-electric vehicle built on its new MEB platform made to mass produce electric vehicles.

We now get a rare new look at a camouflaged ID prototype ahead of the production version unveiling.

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Electric bicycles are becoming so popular that they are now available in a wide range of styles. While conventional categories like electric road bikes and cruisers are common, a new wave of vintage-inspired electric bicycles is gaining in popularity. The Titan R electric bicycle is the latest to offer an eye catching cafe racer design.

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Groupe PSA, responsible for some 25 percent of all light commercial vehicle sales in the UK, has affirmed a commitment to electrification at the Birmingham Commercial Vehicle Show, showing a new Peugeot Boxer and Citroen Relay based on an electric platform.

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Fixed-wing planes and helicopters are no longer the darling of the RC world. Even quadcopters and other multirotors are starting to look old hat, as the community looks to ever more outrageous designs. [rctestflight] has slimmed things down to the extreme with this coaxial bicopter build, also known as the Flying Stick (Youtube video, embedded below).

The initial design consists of two brushless outrunner motors fitted with props, rotating in opposite directions to cancel out their respective torques. Each is mounted on a gimbal, setup to provide control authority. iNav is used as a flight controller, chosen due to its versatile motor mixing settings. The craft was built to test its ability at recovery from freefall, as a follow-on from earlier attempts at building a brushless “rocket” craft.

Performance is surprisingly good for what is fundamentally two props on a stick. Initial tests didn’t quite manage a successful recovery, but the repaired single-gimbal version almost achieves the feat. Multirotors in general struggle with freefall recovery, so more research in this area is definitely worthwhile. Video after the break.

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