A futuristic new solar-powered vehicle is now road-legal, with first delivery expected as early as November and will give drivers the freedom to exceed 1,000 km of range between charges.
A New Zeland-based designer Henry Glogau has developed Solar Desalination Skylight, a device that uses seawater to create natural ambient light, drinking water, and generates energy from the remaining sea salt.
Glogau’s Solar Desalination Skylight is the finalist of the Lexus Design Award 2021, a competition dedicated to empowering humans to make good things for the future of humanity and the planet. Projects that are finalized and awarded are determined by their positive impact on human society.
Continue reading “Solar Desalination Skylight provides free lighting and drinking water” »
Loki has just announced a new version of its Basecamp adventure pod—or camper shell, if you’re old fashioned—for the EV maker’s much-anticipated electric pickup. Although we’ll have to wait until the Cybertruck’s arrival to see it in action, the high-end accessory looks like it could turn the EV into the ultimate go-anywhere vehicle.
The $135,000 camper shell includes solar panels and a climate control system.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk described the electric automaker’s factories in Austin and Berlin as “money furnaces” that were losing billions of dollars because supply chain breakdowns were limiting the number of cars they can produce.
In a May 30 interview with a Tesla owners club that was just released this week, Musk said that getting the Berlin and Austin plants functional “are overwhelmingly our concerns. Everything else is a very small thing,” Musk said, but added that “it’s all gonna get fixed real fast.”
It’s not clear how much has changed in the three weeks since the interview, but last week Musk tweeted congratulations to his Berlin team for producing 1,000 cars in a week.
While electric vehicles promise a green future, the batteries that power them don’t boast the same level of sustainability.
While driving electric vehicles is a step towards a greener future, the car batteries that power them are not as sustainable. Though the battery is at the heart of any EV, most are made from lithium-ion and have a limited lifespan that starts to degrade from the first time you charge them. So what happens when they reach capacity?
The cycle of charging and discharging causes them lose energy and power. The more charge cycles a battery goes through, the faster it will degrade. Once batteries reach 70 or 80% of their capacity, which happens around either 5 to 8 years or after 100,000 miles of driving, they have to be replaced, according to Science Direct.
The researchers also optimized their electrolyzer to produce the highest levels of acetate ever produced in an electrolyzer to date. What’s more, they found that crop plants, including cowpea, tomato, rice, green pea, and tobacco, all have the potential to be grown in the dark using the carbon from acetate. There’s even a possibility that acetate could improve crop yields, though more research is required.
The researchers believe that by reducing the reliance on direct sunlight, artificial photosynthesis could provide an important alternative for food growth in the coming years, as the world adapts to the worst effects of climate change — including droughts, floods, and reduced land availability. “Using artificial photosynthesis approaches to produce food could be a paradigm shift for how we feed people. By increasing the efficiency of food production, less land is needed, lessening the impact agriculture has on the environment. And for agriculture in non-traditional environments, like outer space, the increased energy efficiency could help feed more crew members with less inputs,” Jinkerson explained.
A plan to export solar power from Australia to Singapore is advancing.
Development backed by billionaires aims to export clean power from the Northern Territory via a 2,600-mile high-voltage undersea cable.
The need to find alternative sources for fertilizer have become urgent as chemical fertilizer shortages from the Ukrainian war threaten countries globally.
A Chinese military analyst suggested countermeasures for the Starlink satellite system developed by Musk’s SpaceX – including ways to hack or destroy the service.
The company aims to be 100% SAF certified by 2030.Airbus carried out the first-ever helicopter flight using 100 percent sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).
Pdf 239.95 KB
An Airbus H225 has performed the first ever helicopter flight with 100% sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) powering both Safran’s Makila 2 engines.
