Lifeboat Foundation

Until recently, charging your electric vehicle at a public charging station was sort of like a full-time job. Although the charging time varies, the average time required to fully charge an electric vehicle (EV) at those stations is eight hours.

That’s changing — and rapidly, you might say.

On Monday, Starkville Utilities Department announced it will be adding two fast-charging EV stations, one downtown near its office and another near the Starkville Sportsplex.

Long a hub of geothermal power production, a forgotten backwater of Southern California known as the Salton Sea, is a bountiful reservoir of lithium, is being dubbed “Lithium Valley.” The silvery-white metal is now in huge demand as it is used in electric vehicle batteries. Ben Tracy reports.

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Continue reading “California’s ‘Lithium Valley’ on the rise” »

Tesla appears to have finally agreed to walk back one feature of its controversial yoke steering wheel, as it will now provide a regular horn.

When Tesla unveiled the new Model S with the “yoke” butterfly steering wheel, it was controversial. Some were worried about the actual shape of the wheel being problematic, while others were concerned about the lack of drive stalk to choose the drive mode.

As for the former, we thought that the automaker wouldn’t risk bringing the controversial yoke steering wheel to market without a nonlinear steering curve enabled by a steer-by-wire system – especially knowing that Tesla has been developing a steer-by-wire system.

British startup Urban-Air Port (UAP) has announced plans to open 200 flying taxi and cargo drone hubs in 65 cities globally over the next five years. The announcement comes following a significant investment from Supernal, a division of Hyundai Motor Group, to deliver on the company’s shared vision of integrating advanced air mobility (AAM) into existing transit networks and creating a seamless passenger journey.

UAP’s vertiport sites will provide essential infrastructure to help enable mass adoption of eVTOL aircraft – such as cargo drones and air taxis – as public acceptance grows and will transform the way goods and people are transported around urban areas. The world’s first fully operational hub for eVTOLs, Air-One, will open for public visitation in Coventry City Centre in April.

The demonstration will show how AAM can help unlock the potential of sustainable mobility and how the industry will work to help reduce congestion, cut air pollution and decarbonize transport.

Solar Electric Vehicle (SEV) startup Aptera Motors, recently shared test footage of the beta version of its upcoming SEV. The SEV prototype was seen on a test track alongside the three alpha versions already unveiled by Aptera. The beta version represents Aptera’s last phase before pre-production and deliveries later this year.

Aptera Motors is a mobility startup based in San Diego, California, that specializes in solar electric vehicles (SEVs). Since this is the second iteration of the company intending to bring its flagship SEV to market, it has been a story we at Electrek have been following for quite some time.

After unveiling its new SEV in late 2020 with the same monicker as the company, Aptera Motors has been quite prudent in keeping the public and its growing list of reservation holders in the know about its progress.

Utility regulators have proposed slashing the incentives homeowners receive to install solar panels, a long-sought goal of utilities and labor unions.

After a few pictures leaked this weekend, we now have a full video walkaround of Tesla’s latest Cybertruck prototype.

As we previously reported, some pictures of the latest Tesla Cybertruck have leaked this weekend. It appears to be from Gigafactory Texas, where the automaker plans to build the electric pickup truck late this year. The pictures gave us a better look at the lack of door handles as well as the new wheels without any aero cover on.

Continue reading “Tesla Cybertruck prototype shown in detail in new leaked walkaround video” »

It’s wild.

A global apocalypse could be closer than you think.

According to astronomers, in five billion years or so, the sun will run out of hydrogen in its core completely and expand, possibly engulfing the earth. Now that’s a bright future you don’t want. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk recently tweeted that the expansion of the Sun would result in the extinction of all life on the planet, making interplanetary living a necessity. Musk said this in response to a paper warning about mass extinction caused by human activity, arguing for the necessity of working on ways to move off-world. However, while we lack the technology to live on other worlds just yet, we may have a more immediate catastrophe at hand — climate change and global warming. a preprint that has not yet been peer-reviewed, Sohrab Rahvar, proposes using gravity assist by the asteroids to change the orbit of the Earth.

Perovskites are hybrid compounds made from metal halides and organic constituents. They show great potential in a range of applications, e.g. LED lights, lasers, and photodetectors, but their major contribution is in solar cells, where they are poised to overtake the market from their silicon counterparts.

One of the obstacles facing the commercialization of perovskite solar cells is that their power-conversion efficiency and operational stability drop as they scale up, making it a challenge to maintain high performance in a complete solar cell.

The problem is partly with the cell’s electron-transport layer, which ensures that the electrons produced when the cell absorbs light will transfer efficiently to the device’s electrode. In perovskite solar cells, the electron-transport layer is made with mesoporous titanium dioxide, which shows low electron mobility, and is also susceptible to adverse, photocatalytic events under ultraviolet light.