Jul 19, 2020
Fully Superconducting Motor Prepares for Testing
Posted by Quinn Sena in categories: energy, transportation
Circa 2019 o.o
Extreme power-to-weight ratio and efficiency will be key to electrification of aviation.
Circa 2019 o.o
Extreme power-to-weight ratio and efficiency will be key to electrification of aviation.
The U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy on Friday announced both had awarded Lockheed Martin substantial aircraft contracts.
An AI algorithm is capable of automatically generating realistic-looking images from bits of pixels.
Why it matters: The achievement is the latest evidence that AI is increasingly able to learn from and copy the real world in ways that may eventually allow algorithms to create fictional images that are indistinguishable from reality.
What’s new: In a paper presented at this week’s International Conference on Machine Learning, researchers from OpenAI showed they could train the organization’s GPT-2 algorithm on images.
While the ID Buzz, aka the electric Microbus, isn’t quite production-ready, it may not be the only iconic vehicle Volkswagen’s rebooting into an EV. 2019 saw the release of the final Volkswagen Beetle. Despite its styling and long history, consumer interest lagged, and VW discontinued it. But now, there’s rumors of a new Volkswagen Beetle—an electric one.
RELATED: Why Is This 1964 Volkswagen Selling For $290,000?
Continue reading “Volkswagen May Bring the Beetle Back as an Electric Car” »
(MENAFN — The Conversation) A large crack, stretching several kilometres, made a sudden appearance recently in south-western Kenya. The tear, which continues to grow, caused part of the Nairobi-Narok highway to collapse. Initially, the appearance of the crack was linked to tectonic activity along the East African Rift. But although geologists now think that this feature is most likely an erosional gully, questions remain as to why it has formed in the location that it did and whether its appearance is at all connected to the ongoing East African Rift. For example, the crack could be the result of the erosion of soft soils infilling an old rift-related fault.
The Earth is an ever-changing planet, even though in some respects change might be almost unnoticeable to us. Plate tectonics is a good example of this. But every now and again something dramatic happens and leads to renewed questions about the African continent splitting in two.
The Earth’s lithosphere (formed by the crust and the upper part of the mantle) is broken up into a number of tectonic plates. These plates are not static, but move relative to each other at varying speeds, ‘gliding’ over a viscous asthenosphere. Exactly what mechanism or mechanisms are behind their movement is still debated, but are likely to include convection currents within the asthenosphere and the forces generated at the boundaries between plates.
They suggest next steps in search for large-scale energy storage solution.
Lithium-ion batteries are recognized for their high energy density in everything from mobile phones to laptop computers and electric vehicles, but as the need for grid-scale energy storage and other applications becomes more pressing, researchers have sought less expensive and more readily available alternatives to lithium.
Batteries using more abundant multivalent metals could revolutionize energy storage. Researchers review the current state of multivalent metal-ion battery research and provide a roadmap for future work in Nature Energy, reporting that the top candidates – using magnesium, calcium, zinc and aluminum – all have great promise, but also steep challenges to meet practical demands.
How do you beat Tesla, Google, Uber and the entire multi-trillion dollar automotive industry with massive brands like Toyota, General Motors, and Volkswagen to a full self-driving car? Just maybe, by finding a way to train your AI systems that is 100,000 times cheaper.
It’s called Deep Teaching.
Perhaps not surprisingly, it works by taking human effort out of the equation.
Circa 2017
This bubbly concept car protects more than the driver; its next-generation rubber exterior can save pedestrians, too.
Continue reading “The Shapeshifting Car Of The Future Has Airbags On The Outside” »
Scattered across the world are a number of bewildering ‘mystery spots’ that appear to defy gravity — places where cars seem to drift uphill, and cyclists struggle to push themselves downhill.
Also known as gravity hills, these bizarre natural phenomena can be found in places like Confusion Hill in California and Magnetic Hill in Canada, and while they’ve inspired rumours of witchcraft and giant magnets buried in the countryside, the actual scientific explanation will have you questioning every slope you encounter from here on out.
Car buyers in Europe can now get their hands on a brand-new electric vehicle for less than the typical cost of a mobile-phone contract. Thanks to newly generous subsidies, some are even free.
Shoppers have swarmed virtual showrooms in Germany and France — the region’s two largest passenger car markets — after their national governments boosted electric-vehicle incentives to stimulate demand. Their purchase subsidies are now among the most favorable in the world.
The state support is allowing Autohaus Koenig, a dealership chain with more than 50 locations across Germany, to advertise a lease for the battery-powered Renault Zoe that is entirely covered by subsidies. In the 20 days since it put the offer online, roughly 3,000 people have inquired and about 300 have signed contracts.