Lifeboat Foundation

Plan ahead.

We have brought you multiple videos of Tesla cars in ‘boat mode’ wading through flooded streets across different parts of the world. Electric SUV maker, Rivian, seems to have an unofficial ‘boat mode’ as well, judging from a reasonably well performance in a recent test run.

Tesla’s rival electric SUV-maker Rivian just showcased its new R1T going through deep waters and unlike gas-powered cars, it seemed unbothered.

Continue reading “Watch Rivian R1T Wade Through 3-Foot-Deep Water in Trial” »

The automotive electric vehicle revolution paves the way for urban air mobility, but people must not be naive to believe that electric vehicle batteries are enough for electric flight. The need for fast charging, 30 times the energy throughput, and three times the power demand requires a new generation of batteries.

Engineers at Penn State have now demonstrated two energy-dense lithium-ion batteries that can recharge with enough energy for a 50-mile eVTOL trip in five to ten minutes. These batteries could sustain more than 2,000 fast charges over their lifetime.

In the last couple of years, several prototypes have emerged – including from companies like Volocopter, Boeing, Lilium, SkyDrive. While some prototypes have included wheels, they all incorporate spinning rotors to facilitate takeoff and landing, including the air taxi shown off last year by Hyundai, which is basically a small helicopter.

NuScale Power, the startup specializing in the design of small modular nuclear reactors, has published new data concerning the production capacities of its NuScale Power Module (NPM). Thanks to the 25% increase in power output of an NPM, each NuScale module is now capable of producing 2,053 kg/hour of hydrogen, or nearly 50 metric tons per day.

Just one NuScale Power Module can produce 77 MWe of carbon-free electricity to power 60,000 homes in the U.S. NuScale’s flagship power plant design can house up to 12 modules for a total gross output of 924 MWe. The 924 MWe that a 12-module NuScale plant produces is enough to power nearly 700,000 homes with clean, reliable energy.

Continue reading “NuScale modular nuclear reactors can produce over 2,000 kg/hour of hydrogen” »

Elon Musk recently shared a rather interesting update on Twitter — his companies now employ about 110,000 people worldwide. This is quite impressive considering that in the grand scheme of things, Tesla, SpaceX, and Musk’s other ventures are still just getting started.

Musk’s update came as a response to a TSLA bull on Twitter who inquired if his companies had already reached the 100,000-employee milestone. Musk’s response revealed that his companies had not only met their 100,000 employee mark — they had already passed it.

Elon Musk did not share further details about his companies’ worldwide employee headcount, though there is a good chance that the lion’s share of his workers today are in the United States and China. These are the two countries where Tesla, one of Musk’s largest companies, has operational vehicle production plants, after all.

The Tesla Model Y has boosted Tesla’s presence and sales in Europe. Charts that track EV sales in Europe reveal that Tesla Model Y sales have already exceeded numbers from legacy automakers in Norway, including Volkswagen, Ford, and Audi.

In terms of the full transition to electric vehicles, Norway might be considered the closest to the goal. The Norwegian Road Traffic Information Council (OFV) reported that most new passenger car sales in July were zero-emission cars, taking up 64.1% market share.

Norway might be an excellent place to test the Tesla Model Y’s future in Europe as Giga Shanghai continues to send exports to the continent. As of August 30 the top EV brand selling in Norway is Tesla, with 1,776 vehicle registrations. The top model sold in Norway this month was the Tesla Model Y, with 1,115 registrations.

In the past week, CleanTechnica readers were most attracted to stories about cool & cheap electric motorcycles, an Australian pastime that electric vehicles are sure to kill, and the standard-range Tesla Model 3 and Model Y getting LFP batteries. Following those medal winners, the BYD Dolphin potentially getting millions of sales, love for water batteries, and solar-powered trains took the next three spots.

For the details on those stories, to see the rest of the top 20 list, or to go explore the sometimes wild and crazy (but almost always useful) comments under the pieces, scroll down and have a gander.

A global microchip shortage has kept car prices high all year. Now, chip manufacturers are warning that it may not get better next year.

Summary: Researchers find a region of the brain stem called the periaqueductal gray may mediate religiosity and spirituality in humans.

Source: Elsevier.

Scientists have long suspected that religiosity and spirituality could be mapped to specific brain circuits, but the location of those circuits remains unknown. Now, a new study using novel technology and the human connectome, a map of neural connections, has identified a brain circuit that seems to mediate that aspect of our personality.

I believe the transduction theory has a great deal to offer in our scientific study of the mind–brain relationship. It is, of course, a dualist theory. It provides a framework for understanding the close link between brain states and mental states, yet at the same time, it explains mental states in a way that does not invoke nonsensical materialist metaphysics.

A successful understanding of the mind–brain relationship will necessarily involve understanding the brain as a transduction device in one way or another. Such an understanding could prove enormously fruitful and can help us move beyond the current materialist framework in which neuroscience is practiced, which has has held us so far back in our understanding of the mind and the brain. The brain is obviously material but it is just as obvious that the mind has immaterial abilities.

We accept that the ear is a transducer for sound to hearing and the eye is a transducer for light to vision. It is reasonable to infer that the brain is a transducer for thought to body. Transduction theory is a plausible approach to understanding the connection between the mind and the brain. It should be taken seriously by neuroscientists and philosophers of the mind.