Lifeboat Foundation

Researchers from Chalmers University of Technology have produced a structural battery that performs ten times better than all previous versions. It contains carbon fiber that serves simultaneously as an electrode, conductor, and load-bearing material. Their latest research breakthrough paves the way for essentially ’massless’ energy storage in vehicles and other technology.

The batteries in today’s electric cars constitute a large part of the vehicles’ weight, without fulfilling any load-bearing function. A structural battery, on the other hand, is one that works as both a power source and as part of the structure – for example, in a car body. This is termed ‘massless’ energy storage, because in essence the battery’s weight vanishes when it becomes part of the load-bearing structure. Calculations show that this type of multifunctional battery could greatly reduce the weight of an electric vehicle.

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Circa 2021

Nissan and Waseda University in Tokyo have been working together since 2017, and today, they announced that they are starting the testing of a recycling process that recovers high-purity, rare-earth compounds from electric vehicle motor magnets.

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We’re big fans of this big fan.

There’s a new, more fuel-efficient airliner engine on the scene, as Rolls-Royce has started work on its UltraFan aero engine. The gigantic fan engine gets 25 percent better mileage compared with its predecessor, and Rolls-Royce says it will revolutionize passenger and cargo flight around the world.

The first demonstrator engine will be finished by the end of 2021. Rolls-Royce revealed more details in a statement:

Continue reading “The World’s Largest Aircraft Engine Is Underway” »

Going beyond previous unmanned helicopters that featured “advanced autopilots” or “the beginning of autonomy,” a new DARPA experiment showed off a pilotless Bla… See more.

Software once designed to be a digital co-pilot is taking the wheel.

Tesla has released a quick sneak peek of the paint shop inside Gigafactory Berlin, which the automaker has been taunting as “its most advanced paint shop” yet – and it should enable new colors.

It’s literally has been years since Tesla has launched a new vehicle paint color.

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Fraunhofer ISE has developed a process for recycling the silicon in old solar panels.

The big knock on new technology like electric cars and solar panels is that they are not recyclable. People haven’t cared a flying fig leaf about recycling stuff for the past 100 years. If they did, citizens would be at the gates of the corporate headquarters of Nestlé, Coca Cola, and Pepsi with flaming torches and pitchforks demanding they stop inundating the Earth with their endless profusion of waste products.

But suddenly, people are all atwitter about what will happen to the batteries of electric cars. Fearmongers on the internet are telling people they will have to drive their old electric cars into lakes and rivers when they stop working. The amazing thing is, people believe that codswallop and repeat it to their friends as if it were carved on the stone tablets Moses brought down with him when he descended the mountain. So much for public education making people smarter.

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Circa 2020

Autopilot has been around longer than you think. Indeed, in 1914, just 11 years after the Wright Brothers first ushered humanity into the aviation age, a fellow named Lawrence Sperry built a gyroscopic self-stabilization system into a Curtiss C-2. It was capable, he claimed, of keeping an aircraft straight and level and pointed in a consistent direction on the compass, and he put on a spectacular public demonstration at the Seine just outside Paris to prove it.

Continue reading “Autonomous Airbus aces autopilot taxi, takeoff and landing tests” »

Is this the future of hypersonic transportation? Russia’s version of Elon Musk thinks so.

Conventional batteries are a lot like camels. They’re great for storage and transportation, but they’re not exactly speedy.

For technologies that require a fast discharge of energy, such as heart defibrillators, alternative materials are often used; foremost among them, antiferroelectrics.

There is only a handful of known antiferroelectric materials, and most of them contain lead, so they aren’t safe enough for everyday applications. Now, a Cornell-led collaboration has discovered a new approach for making a lead-free antiferroelectric that performs as well as its toxic relatives.