Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: transportation – Page 336

Rimac Nevera Faces Tesla Model S Plaid In Hi-Powered EV Showdown

The Nevera packs four electric motors that send 1,914 horsepower (1,408 kilowatts) to all four wheels. The car is also wearing Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tires while tipping the scales at 4,733 pounds (2,146 kilograms). It has an MSRP of $2.4 million. The Tesla Model S is far less powerful and cheaper, but it still impresses with its 1,020 hp (760 kW) output, thanks to its three-motor setup. It’s heavier than the Rimac at 4,833 lbs (2,192 kg), though it’s much cheaper at $124,000. Power routes to all four Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tires.

Watch as the Tesla Model S Plaid faces off against the Rimac Nevera hypercar in a series of high-powered EV drag races.

Elon Musk Says Tesla Will Release Humanoid Robots Next Year

😃

At Tesla’s AI Day event, Elon Musk unveiled the Tesla Bot — a humanoid robot that uses much of the tech found in Tesla’s car to perform such tasks as getting groceries or attaching a bolt to a car with a wrench. Oh, and a prototype is set to be ready next year.

The Tesla Bot will stand at 5’8” and will weigh approximately 125 pounds. Fortunately, for those who fear a possible robot uprising, the team at Tesla is building the Tesla Bot in a way that “you can run away from it… and most likely overpower it.”

Elon Musk Unveils Tesla Bot a humanoid robot set to debut in 2022

On Thursday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled the Tesla Bot, which runs on the same AI used in Tesla’s autonomous vehicles. This surprise reveal was shared at the end of Tesla’s AI Day presentation. Musk revealed very few details about the humanoid robot besides the fact that it is 5″ 8′ and weighs 125 pounds.

The Tesla Bot is to be built from lightweight materials, and its head will be fitted with the autopilot cameras used by Tesla’s vehicles for sensing the environment. The Bot will be operated by Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) computer.

As Tesla focuses on Artificial Intelligence (AI) upgrades for its electric vehicles, there has also been a focus on the Dojo supercomputer, which is intended to help train the EVs to navigate the streets without human assistance. Musk said that it only made sense to make the robot into a humanoid form and that it is intended to be friendly and help navigate through a world built for humans.

The case for onboard carbon dioxide capture on long-range vehicles

Researchers are studying adding carbon capture technologies to vehicles so that the CO2 can be sequestered or recycled into renewable hydrocarbon fuels.

According to senior researcher of the study; “This technology really doesn’t have any major hurdles to making it work,”

When people talk about how to eliminate vehicles’ carbon dioxide (CO2) emission, often the conversation often focuses on electrifying cars, trucks and buses. Yet cargo and tanker ships, which are responsible for 3% of all CO2 emissions, are rarely a part of the discussion.

Now a Northwestern University research team offers a practical way to make ships CO2 neutral—or even CO2 negative—with CO2-capturing solid oxide fuel cells. After “burning” traditional carbon-based fuels, the fuel cell generates concentrated CO2 that can be stored on-board the ship. From there, the CO2 can either be sequestered or recycled into a renewable hydrocarbon fuel.

The team presents its analysis in “Viability of vehicles utilizing on-board CO2 capture,” published today (Aug. 18) in the journal ACS Energy Letters. In the paper, the team looks at various factors, including fuel volumes and mass requirements for a wide range of vehicle classes—from light-duty passenger vehicles to tanker ships—and compares onboard CO2 capture to battery electric and hydrogen fuel cell options.

These electric submarines map the seafloor to make way for wind power

In March, the departments of Energy, Interior and Commerce said they were aiming for U.S. offshore wind capacity to hit 30 gigawatts (GW) by 2,030 a hugely optimistic goal that would require thousands of new wind turbines to be installed off the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf coasts.

With federal support locked in, now it’s up to developers and operators to figure out where it’s safe to install offshore wind farms and pursue permits.

Bedrock, a Richmond, California, start-up, wants to help them map the seafloor using electric autonomous underwater vehicles (e-AUV) that can launch right from the shore.

Fully automated container storage system makes first successful trial

DP World has completed testing of the Boxbay fully automated container storage system at its Jebel Ali terminal in Dubai, accomplishing more than 63,000 container moves since the facility was commissioned earlier this year.

The facility, which can hold 792 containers at a time, exceeded expectations, delivering faster and more energy-efficient than anticipated, the Dubai-headquartered terminal operator said.

The solar-powered system stores containers in slots in a steel rack up to eleven high. DP World claims Boxbay delivers three times the capacity of a conventional yard in which containers are stacked directly on top of each other, reducing the footprint of terminals by 70% and energy costs by 29%. Boxbay delivered 19.3 moves per hour at each waterside transfer table to the straddle carrier and 31.8 moves per hour at each landside truck crane.

Electric cars and batteries: how will the world produce enough?

Battery-and carmakers are already spending billions of dollars on reducing the costs of manufacturing and recycling electric-vehicle (EV) batteries — spurred in part by government incentives and the expectation of forthcoming regulations. National research funders have also founded centres to study better ways to make and recycle batteries. Because it is still less expensive, in most instances, to mine metals than to recycle them, a key goal is to develop processes to recover valuable metals cheaply enough to compete with freshly mined ones. “The biggest talker is money,” says Jeffrey Spangenberger, a chemical engineer at Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Illinois, who manages a US federally funded lithium-ion battery-recycling initiative, called ReCell.

Reducing the use of scarce metals — and recycling them — will be key to the world’s transition to electric vehicles.

The New Supersonic Boom

Despite strong support from the FAA, the airline industry, and aerospace companies, the U.S. Senate ceased funding the development of a supersonic airliner in 1971. Two years later, the FAA banned supersonic flight over land, a prohibition that remains to this day.

The Concorde went on to serve various destinations, including some in the United States, flying at supersonic speeds only over water. That continued until 2,003 when British Airways and Air France retired their fleets, together amounting to just 12 aircraft. (Fourteen production aircraft were manufactured, but one was scrapped in 1,994 and another crashed in 2000.)

While the Concorde successfully overcame the technical hurdles standing in the way of supersonic passenger service, it succumbed to economics: The cost of fuel and maintenance was especially high for these planes. A new generation of aeronautical engineers and entrepreneurs are, however, keen to once again take on the technical, environmental, and economic challenges.

/* */