It was an audacious statement, but there it was.
Audi expects that 25 percent of the cars it sells just 10 years hence will be either battery-electric or plug-in hybrid models.
And it came directly from Scott Keogh, president of Audi of America, in front of a packed media audience at the Los Angeles Auto Show.
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How thin can a camera be? Very, say Rice University researchers who have developed patented prototypes of their technological breakthrough.
FlatCam, invented by the Rice labs of electrical and computer engineers Richard Baraniuk and Ashok Veeraraghavan, is little more than a thin sensor chip with a mask that replaces lenses in a traditional camera.
Making it practical are the sophisticated computer algorithms that process what the sensor detects and converts the sensor measurements into images and videos.
While solar or wind farms are now contributing more energy than ever to the world’s power supply, traditional energy sources are often required at peak times or to supplement renewable sources during dips in availability — at night, for example. So Canadian startup Hydrostor has invented a system of pressurised underwater balloons that can store renewable energy until it’s needed, which could reduce the need for diesel or gas as a back-up source of power.
The company says its solution can last twice as long as the best batteries we have today, and at a much lower cost. The first facility has been set up in Lake Ontario near Toronto, with a series of balloons set 55 metres under the surface of the water and connected to the power grid via a pipeline.
“Compressed air’s been around for 40 years,” Hydrostor CEO Curtis VanWalleghem told Canadian Manufacturing. “It’s finding places to store the air that’s been the problem [and] why it hasn’t been massively adopted. We open it up to thousands more sites because we use hydrostatic water pressure.”
A string of benzene molecules that’s 20,000 times smaller than a strand of human hair is the strongest material ever made.
Massachusetts-based space company Draper has trialled a gyroscopic jet-packthat could help give astronauts new freedom when working in orbit or exploring asteroids in the future.
