Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: sustainability – Page 311

China’s technology giant Baidu is stepping up its efforts to expand in the autonomous vehicle segment with the commercial launch of a car model with Level-2 self-driving technology next year.

Last week the company’s CEO Robin Li confirmed that Jidu Auto, Baidu’s joint venture with local automaker Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, plans to begin mass production of its first electric vehicle (EV) with Level-2 autonomous driving technologies in 2023. The vehicle’s self-driving system is powered by Nvidia chips and is scheduled to be unveiled at the Beijing Auto Show in April of this year.

Baidu, known widely as an internet search engine and artificial intelligence company, is targeting the autonomous vehicle segment as a key growth industry and is in the process of rolling out autonomous taxi services across China.

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HYBRIT and H2 Green Steel have launched projects in Sweden with a target to manufacture 10 million tonnes (mt) of fossil fuel-free crude (green) steel per year by 2030. Success, of course, depends on the numbers adding up, or rather, the numbers going down.

To make green steel, you need green hydrogen; to make green hydrogen, you need cheap renewable energy. HYBRIT and H2 Green Steel believe this will come from wind power at a LCOE of $30 per megawatt-hour. With the trajectory of costs for renewable energy going ever downward, it is likely they will be able to achieve this.

Add to the mix the increasing costs of carbon and the pressure to decarbonize, and you have a winner. It is expected that a carbon credits will be available to green steel producers of around $85 per ton.

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About a decade ago, MIT researchers discovered a technique that speeds physics modeling by 1000X. They spun this out into a new company, called Akselos, which has been helping enterprises to weave the tech into various kinds of digital twins used to improve shipping, refining, and wind power generation.

A digital twin is a virtual representation of an object or system that spans its lifecycle, is updated from real-time data, and uses simulation, machine learning, and reasoning to help decision-making. Connected sensors on the physical asset collect data that can be mapped onto the virtual model.

The specific innovation improves the performance of finite element analysis (FEA) algorithms which underpin most types of physics simulations. Akselos experience over the last decade can help executives explore the implications of the million-fold improvements in physics simulation that Nvidia is now demonstrating thanks to improvement in hardware, scalability, and new algorithms.

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iSun has won a massive solar canopy order. But who’s buying?

There are not many things I love more than a solar power canopy that charges an EV charging station. It’s all right there — transferring sunlight into electricity and then using that electricity to power a modern electric car; driving on sunshine.

So, it’s quite exciting to see that iSun (NASDAQ: ISUN) has been awarded a contract to provide 1,780 solar power canopies for EV charging stations. The problem is: we don’t have much more detail than that. We don’t know where these charging stations are and don’t know who is procuring the solar canopies.

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At the touch of a button, the car changes colors.

The surface coating of the BMW iX Flow featuring E Ink contains many millions of microcapsules, with a diameter equivalent to the thickness of a human hair. Each of these microcapsules contains negatively charged white pigments and positively charged black pigments. Depending on the chosen setting, stimulation by means of an electrical field causes either the white or the black pigments to collect at the surface of the microcapsule, giving the car body the desired shade.

Just don’t expect to see this at your local BMW dealership anytime soon: the automaker says this is just an “advanced research and design project.”

The innovative paint scheme can be triggered at the touch of a button. Right now, the colors are limited to white, black, and grey. But despite the constrained palette, BMW says it could have implications for the efficiency of its electric vehicles.

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Even though solid state batteries are seen as technology that could drastically improve today’s fully-electric vehicles, it seems the first vehicles to feature one won’t actually be EVs. This is at least true in Toyota’s case since the manufacturer has now confirmed that its first solid state-equipped vehicles will be hybrids expected to debut in two or three years’ time.

The news comes from Gill Pratt, Toyota’s chief scientist and head of the Toyota Research Institute, who made the announcement during an interview for Autoline. He also mentioned that the manufacturer has made progress with its solid state project and that development is on schedule.

He did not say which hybrid Toyota will get a solid state battery, but he did go on to explain why it won’t immediately offer solid state EVs. The main reason has to do with the size of the battery pack, which for a hybrid vehicle that still has an internal combustion engine, is considerably smaller than what you see in pure EVs.

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A wind turbine sitting idle on a calm day or spinning swiftly when power demand is already met poses a problem for renewables, and is one researchers think can be tackled under the sea.

In one vision, could use seawater to essentially store until it’s needed, helping wean humanity off fossil fuels.

“We came up with a solution that we call the battery,” Frits Bliek, CEO of Dutch startup Ocean Grazer told AFP while showing off the at the CES tech fair in Las Vegas.

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All-solid-state batteries are now one step closer to becoming the powerhouse of next-generation electronics, as researchers from Tokyo Tech, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), and Yamagata University introduce a strategy to restore their low electrical resistance. They also explore the underlying reduction mechanism, paving the way for a more fundamental understanding of the workings of all-solid-state lithium batteries.

All-solid-state lithium batteries have become the new craze in and engineering as conventional lithium-ion batteries can no longer meet the standards for advanced technologies, such as electric vehicles, which demand high energy densities, fast charging, and long cycle lives. All-solid-state batteries, which use a instead of a liquid electrolyte found in traditional batteries, not only meet these standards but are comparatively safer and more convenient as they have the possibility to charge in a short time.

However, the solid electrolyte comes with its own challenge. It turns out that the interface between the positive electrode and solid electrolyte shows a large electrical whose origin is not well understood. Furthermore, the resistance increases when the electrode surface is exposed to air, degrading the battery capacity and performance. While several attempts have been made to lower the resistance, none have managed to bring it down to 10 Ω cm2 (ohm centimeter-squared), the reported interface resistance value when not exposed to air.

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