Lifeboat Foundation

Operators hope newly opened Dutch track will help prove feasibility of high-speed shuttle system.

This new Lotus flagship isn’t a small, lightweight sports car; it’s an all-electric hyper GT sedan that’s quick in an all-new way.

An all-electric Toyota pickup may be closer than expected. According to the company’s Thailand president, Toyota will launch an electric Hilux pickup by the end of 2025. The move comes after Japanese rival Isuzu is set to reveal its first 100% electric truck later this month.

Toyota’s Hilux is one of the top-selling pickup trucks globally, so it would make sense for an all-electric version.

The Toyota Hilux is built in six nations with sales across 180 countries and regions. Despite releasing its first “electrified” Hilux Hybrid 48V in December, it still featured a 2.8L diesel engine. The update provided a modest 5% improvement in fuel efficiency.

French automaker Renault is exploring a lucrative business prospect by partnering with companies to extract and recycle lithium and other metals in EV batteries, creating a circular economy that can bring in billions of dollars and reduce reliance on China.

According to Automotive News Europe, Renault aims to be the first European automaker to recycle batteries on an industrial scale.

“In Europe, there is currently… nobody who can claim to recycle used batteries in a closed-loop to reproduce nickel, cobalt and lithium to make new batteries,” said Jean-Philippe Bahuaud, CEO Renault’s environment unit, called The Future Is Neutral (TFIN), which was launched in 2022.

Tesla has started to release a new version of its auto parking system, an updated automated parking for its newer vision-only vehicles.

Ever since Tesla stopped using ultrasonic sensors in its new vehicles and only relied on cameras for its ADAS features, its vehicles have lacked auto-parking features.

That move started in 2022.

Two of my passions are electric bicycle projects and DIY solar powered projects. In fact I’ve written the book on both topics. So to see these two fields combined in one quirky-yet-awesome product totally made my week. I just hope you’re as excited as I am to dive into this strange electric bike/car contraption that boasts a heap of features from seating for two to a giant solar panel array offering nearly unlimited range!

It’s just one of many strange, awesome and fun-looking electric vehicles I’ve discovered while window shopping on the world’s most eclectic digital thrift store: Alibaba. And now it has the honor of officially becoming this week’s Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week!

We’ve seen solar powered electric bicycles before, but they’re usually designed with some serious pedaling requirements. The low power of even large-sized panels means that riders generally still have to provide some significant leg assist.

Stellantis’ CEO less-than-subtly hinted that Tesla’s price cuts were a major problem for all automakers.

The term “artificial general intelligence” (AGI) has become ubiquitous in current discourse around AI. OpenAI states that its mission is “to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.” DeepMind’s company vision statement notes that “artificial general intelligence…has the potential to drive one of the greatest transformations in history.” AGI is mentioned prominently in the UK government’s National AI Strategy and in US government AI documents. Microsoft researchers recently claimed evidence of “sparks of AGI” in the large language model GPT-4, and current and former Google executives proclaimed that “AGI is already here.” The question of whether GPT-4 is an “AGI algorithm” is at the center of a lawsuit filed by Elon Musk against OpenAI.

Given the pervasiveness of AGI talk in business, government, and the media, one could not be blamed for assuming that the meaning of the term is established and agreed upon. However, the opposite is true: What AGI means, or whether it means anything coherent at all, is hotly debated in the AI community. And the meaning and likely consequences of AGI have become more than just an academic dispute over an arcane term. The world’s biggest tech companies and entire governments are making important decisions on the basis of what they think AGI will entail. But a deep dive into speculations about AGI reveals that many AI practitioners have starkly different views on the nature of intelligence than do those who study human and animal cognition—differences that matter for understanding the present and predicting the likely future of machine intelligence.

Continue reading “Debates on the nature of artificial general intelligence” »

The Biden administration has today announced new vehicle emission standards for 2027–2032, as it pushes for wider adoption of hybrid and electric vehicles.

Tesla Model 3 at a charging station in Delaware, United States. Credit: K.A

Automobile emissions in the United States could be slashed by half within the next eight years, thanks to new standards finalised and published today by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The ambitious set of rules – not only aimed at reducing air pollution, but also cutting fuel costs – are to be phased in between 2027 and 2032.