Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: sustainability

UK startup Fering is gearing up to build electric vehicles for cross-continental explorers. It’s starting out with the Pioneer, a go-anywhere brick outhouse of a thing designed for monster range figures under the most extreme circumstances on Earth.

Cybertrucks may be all well and good for your average camping trip, but they’re not designed for the kinds of extreme treatment the Pioneer wants to take on as a low-emissions alternative for explorers, adventurers and emergency services teams.

For starters, the lithium-ion batteries found in most EVs can’t handle extreme temperatures, so instead Fering has gone with a lithium-titanate-oxide (LTO) battery pack. These have advantages and drawbacks; they’re renowned for extremely long life cycles, they can charge quickly and they work from-40 to 60 °C (−40 °F to +160 °F), so they can handle just about anything shy of an Antarctic winter.

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GM has unveiled its latest series of new electric motors that will power its future electric vehicles, starting with the Hummer EV.

With the Bolt EV coming out in 2,016 GM has been selling electric vehicles for a long time, but the automaker has also been stuck on older EV technology.

GM is finally starting to release its latest EV technology, Ultium, in a series of new electric vehicles.

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Maybe try a 100 percent recycling rate for sewage and chemical extraction.

As if going to the bathroom in microgravity wasn’t complicated enough.

It sounds as though the four space tourists on SpaceX’s historic Inspiration4 flight last week had a bit of a smelly mishap. The Waste Management System experienced an “anomaly” — that’s code of “uh oh” in space jargon — with its suction fan causing the crew to struggle with doing their business while floating hundreds of miles above the surface.

Musk also promised a number of improvements for the next all-civilian space tourism flight. “Definitely upgraded toilets,” Musk responded to another Twitter account suggesting heated toilet seats. “We had some challenges with it this flight.”

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The new artificial intelligence tool has already led to the discovery of four new materials.

Researchers at the University of Liverpool have created a collaborative artificial intelligence tool that reduces the time and effort required to discover truly new materials.

Reported in the journal Nature Communications, the new tool has already led to the discovery of four new materials including a new family of solid state materials that conduct lithium. Such solid electrolytes will be key to the development of solid state batteries offering longer range and increased safety for electric vehicles. Further promising materials are in development.

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The Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT), Purdue University, and German startup Magment GmbH have announced the plans to develop the world’s first contactless wireless-charging concrete pavement highway segment. The project will use innovative magnetizable concrete, enabling wireless charging of electric vehicles as they drive.

The project will progress in three primary stages. The two first phases will feature pavement testing, analysis, and optimization research conducted by the Joint Transportation Research Program (JTRP) at Purdue’s West Lafayette campus. In the third phase, INDOT will construct a quarter-mile-long testbed at a location yet to be determined. There, the engineers will test the innovative concrete’s capacity to charge heavy trucks operation at high power (200 kilowatts and above).

Once the testing of all three phases has been successfully completed, INDOT will use the new technology to electrify a yet-to-be-determined segment of the interstate highway within Indiana.

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Altana AI, a startup building a database for global supply chain networks, today announced that it raised $15 million in a series A funding round led by GV with participation from Floating Point, Ridgeline Partners, Amadeus Capital Partners, and Schematic Ventures. The proceeds, which bring the company’s total raised to $22 million to date, will be used to further develop Altana’s data and AI systems and launch new machine learning and network analysis tools, according to CEO Evan Smith.

Trade wars, the rise of ecommerce, pandemic supply chain shocks, and sustainability concerns are driving fundamental changes to supply chain networks and global trade flows. Nearly 75% of companies report supply chain disruptions in some capacity due to pandemic-related transportation restrictions. And in a recent IBM survey, 40% of executives stressed the need for spare capacity to weather future crises.

Altana’s product aims to solve these challenges with a platform that connects and learns from billions of supply chain data points. It answers questions about products, shipments, companies, and networks, filtering out illicit trade and targeting bad actors and security threats across global commerce networks.

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Skycharge, developed by Green Motion and Pipistrel, has recently been approved by the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) as the world’s first OEM-independent electric aircraft charging station.

Pipistrel’s Velis Electro aircraft had already become the first electric aircraft to receive a type certificate from EASA in June last year. The approval of Skycharge is another important milestone on the way to environmentally sustainable aviation.

Skycharge is based on Eaton’s proprietary DC charging technology. The charging infrastructure for electric aircraft and eVTOL (electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing) aircraft offers exceptional conversion efficiency (over 96%), compactness and power density.

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Curtin University research has identified a new, cheaper and more efficient electrocatalyst to make green hydrogen from water that could one day open new avenues for large-scale clean energy production.

Typically, scientists have been using , such as platinum, to accelerate the reaction to break water into hydrogen and oxygen. Now Curtin research has found that adding nickel and cobalt to cheaper, previously ineffective catalysts enhances their performance, which lowers the required to split the water and increases the yield of hydrogen.

Lead researcher Dr. Guohua Jia, from Curtin’s School of Molecular and Life Sciences, said this discovery could have far-reaching implications for sustainable green fuel generation in the future.

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