Lifeboat Foundation

Luminar is using lidar to build smarter and safer autonomous vehicles.

It was a historic night at Tucson Dragway as Steve Huff became the first four-wheel electric dragster racer to record a 200 mph pass, beating his childhood hero and rival “Big Daddy” Don Garlits to the mark. The electric drag racing milestone was achieved on Huff’s second full pass after doubling the power of his electric drag car over the winter and getting some help from the electronics experts at AEM.

Watch more awesome FAST MOTORCYCLE action video playlists here on our channel:

Continue reading “HISTORY MADE! 1ST ELECTRIC CAR TO ECLIPSE 200 MPH ON THE DRAG STRIP! STEVE HUFF’s ELECTRIC DRAGSTER!” »

Michigan will become the first state in America to deploy inductive vehicle charging technology in roads, in an effort to accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles (EVs).

Governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, made the announcement during the opening ceremony of the Motor Bella auto show on Tuesday. The Inductive Vehicle Charging Pilot is a partnership between Michigan’s Department of Transportation (MDOT) and the Office of Future Mobility and Electrification (OFME). It will deploy an electrified roadway system allowing electric cars, buses, shuttles and other vehicles to charge while driving, allowing them to operate continuously without stopping to charge. This will address range anxiety, while turning public roads into safe, sustainable, shared energy platforms.

“Michigan was home to the first mile of paved road, and now we’re paving the way for the roads of tomorrow with innovative infrastructure that will support the economy and the environment, helping us achieve our goal of carbon neutrality by 2050,” said Governor Whitmer. “This project reinforces my commitment to accelerating the deployment of electric vehicle infrastructure in Michigan and will create new opportunities for businesses and high-tech jobs amidst the transition to electric vehicles.”

TOKYO — A Japanese flying car startup is eager to gain credibility with the public for its sci-fi-like mobility system by forging close ties with local governments and big companies in the western city of Osaka.

Tokyo-based SkyDrive, which is working on an electrically powered vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, signed an agreement last week with the Osaka municipal and prefectural governments to promote the industry.

SkyDrive hopes to use the 2025 Osaka World Expo to launch its mobility service, ferrying visitors around by air without the need for large-scale takeoff and landing facilities.

The challenge of getting high-quality real-world data.

Tesla is combining manual labeling, auto labeling, and simulation to create real-world datasets for fully self-driving cars.

Continue reading “Tesla AI Day 2021 Review — Part 2: Training Data. How Does a Car Learn?” »

A surprise result for solid state physicists hints at an unusual electron behavior.

While studying the behavior of electrons in iron-based superconducting materials, researchers at the University of Tokyo observed a strange signal relating to the way electrons are arranged. The signal implies a new arrangement of electrons the researchers call a nematicity wave, and they hope to collaborate with theoretical physicists to better understand it. The nematicity wave could help researchers understand the way electrons interact with each other in superconductors.

A long-standing dream of solid state physicists is to fully understand the phenomenon of superconductivity — essentially electronic conduction without the resistance that creates heat and drains power. It would usher in a whole new world of incredibly efficient or powerful devices and is already being used on Japan’s experimental magnetic levitation bullet train. But there is much to explore in this complex topic, and it often surprises researchers with unexpected results and observations.

The logo of Samsung Electronics is seen at its office building in Seoul, South Korea, August 25 2017. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji/File Photo.

SEOUL, Sept 23 (Reuters) — Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) is in talks with Tesla (TSLA.O) to make Tesla’s next-generation self-driving chips based on Samsung’s 7-nanometre chip production process, a South Korean newspaper reported on Thursday.

Since the beginning of this year, Tesla and Samsung have discussed chip design multiple times and exchanged chip prototypes for Tesla’s upcoming Hardware 4 self-driving computer, the Korea Economic Daily reported, citing sources with direct knowledge of the matter.

Porsche is about to turn its 718 lineup fully electric, diverging from the 911 which won’t go EV in this decade or maybe ever.

A few months ago, we speculated on Porsche’s plans to turn the 718 into a fully electric car. Now we have gathered additional material from different sources within and outside the company. Not only did we get confirmation that it will be a full battery-electric vehicle, we also gathered that it will be fundamentally detached from the 911—which, we learned, will retain its combustion engine beyond 2030 and may not even become hybridized.

Working with electric utilities is one of the more time consuming parts of building new charging stations, as quite a lot of infrastructure work and planning goes into building an EV station, as the local grid has to be taken into account in such projects.

But what if electric utilities weren’t involved at all, and a station could just be delivered on a flatbed truck with a forklift?

That’s the promise of a fast-charging station dubbed Drive Booster, developed by E.ON and Volkswagen that was just opened for use in Essen, Germany. The concept behind it is quite simple: Instead of drawing power directly from the grid, the charger has its own integrated battery, and draws power from a normal power connection found in any supermarket, like a soda machine or other large appliance. The charger can juice up two EVs at once at speeds of up to 150 kW, giving them enough range in 15 minutes to travel 124 miles.