71 percent of the Earth is covered in water, but only 3 percent of that is freshwater. The effective desalination of seawater at a mass scale would clearly be a world-changing achievement, celebrated the world over.
With that goal in mind, London-based Solar Water PLC recently signed an agreement with the Saudi Arabian government as part of the country’s clean future $500 billion “NEOM” project. The company is building the “first desalination plant with solar dome technology”, a CNN Arabia report (translated on Solar Water PLC’s website) explains.
China has shown off the prototype of its “Mars cruise drone” designed for surveillance work on future Mars missions, following the historic landing of a robotic rover on the Red Planet a few months ago.
The prototype of the miniature helicopter successfully passed the final acceptance, China’s National Space Science Center (CNNSC) announced on Wednesday. In the images shared by the science center, the prototype looks similar in appearance to NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter, developed for its Perseverance mission this year.
The Chinese prototype sports two rotor blades, a sensor-and-camera base, and four thin legs, but there is no solar panel at the top like Ingenuity.
Lotus targets almost2000horsepower for its new hypercar.
Lotus is wary of corporate hubris these days, preferring to remain quiet when previously it would have shouted. Former boss Dany Bahar once introduced five sports-car concepts on the same auto-show stand, none of which made it even close to production. Lotus’s resources have grown massively since the thinly applied gild of the Bahar era; Chinese automaker Geely took a majority stake in the British sports-car maker two years ago. But although the company has recruited hundreds of new engineers, and is known to be working on several new models, few details have been shared so far.
Bill Gates made headlines for becoming the largest private farmland owner in the U.S. But he’s not the only one. Some of the wealthiest landowners including Jeff Bezos, John Malone and Thomas Peterffy are buying up forests, ranches and farmlands across the United States. Why? Watch the video to find out.
Investments in farmland are growing across the country as people, including the ultra-wealthy like Bill Gates, look for new ways to grow their money.
In 2,020 Gates made headlines for becoming the largest private farmland owner in the U.S. He had accumulated more than 269,000 acres of farmland across 18 states in less than a decade. His farmland grows onions, carrots and even the potatoes that are used to make McDonald’s French fries.
“It’s an asset with increasing value,” American Farmland Trust CEO John Piotti said. “It has great intrinsic value and beyond that, it is a limited resource.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that 30% of all farmland is owned by landlords who don’t farm themselves. Buyers often purchase land from farmers who have owned it for decades; many of whom may be asset rich but maybe cash poor.
“The economic realities for them are typical that they’ve spent their life farming,” said Holly Rippon-Butler, land campaign director at the National Young Farmers Coalition. “Their retirement, their equity is all in the land and tied up in selling land.”
The two companies have raised an initial US$6.5 million toward what could genuinely be a revolutionary powertrain for electric aircraft; a fully FAA-certified hydrogen system would instantly allow electric aircraft to carry several times more energy on board, vastly boosting flight endurance while also enabling fast refueling instead of slow charging.
HyPoint claims its “turbo air-cooled” fuel cell system” will be able to achieve up to 2,000 watts per kilogram (2.2 lb) of specific power, which is more than triple the power-to-weight ratio of traditional (liquid-cooled) hydrogen fuel cells systems. It will also boast up to 1,500 watt-hours per kilogram of energy density, enabling longer-distance journeys.” For comparison, today’s commercially available lithium battery packs rarely break the 300-Wh/kg mark.
We have brought you multiple videos of Tesla cars in ‘boat mode’ wading through flooded streets across different parts of the world. Electric SUV maker, Rivian, seems to have an unofficial ‘boat mode’ as well, judging from a reasonably well performance in a recent test run.
Tesla’s rival electric SUV-maker Rivian just showcased its new R1T going through deep waters and unlike gas-powered cars, it seemed unbothered.
The automotive electric vehicle revolution paves the way for urban air mobility, but people must not be naive to believe that electric vehicle batteries are enough for electric flight. The need for fast charging, 30 times the energy throughput, and three times the power demand requires a new generation of batteries.
Engineers at Penn State have now demonstrated two energy-dense lithium-ion batteries that can recharge with enough energy for a 50-mile eVTOL trip in five to ten minutes. These batteries could sustain more than 2,000 fast charges over their lifetime.
In the last couple of years, several prototypes have emerged – including from companies like Volocopter, Boeing, Lilium, SkyDrive. While some prototypes have included wheels, they all incorporate spinning rotors to facilitate takeoff and landing, including the air taxi shown off last year by Hyundai, which is basically a small helicopter.
Elon Musk recently shared a rather interesting update on Twitter — his companies now employ about 110,000 people worldwide. This is quite impressive considering that in the grand scheme of things, Tesla, SpaceX, and Musk’s other ventures are still just getting started.
Musk’s update came as a response to a TSLA bull on Twitter who inquired if his companies had already reached the 100,000-employee milestone. Musk’s response revealed that his companies had not only met their 100,000 employee mark — they had already passed it.
Elon Musk did not share further details about his companies’ worldwide employee headcount, though there is a good chance that the lion’s share of his workers today are in the United States and China. These are the two countries where Tesla, one of Musk’s largest companies, has operational vehicle production plants, after all.
The Tesla Model Y has boosted Tesla’s presence and sales in Europe. Charts that track EV sales in Europe reveal that Tesla Model Y sales have already exceeded numbers from legacy automakers in Norway, including Volkswagen, Ford, and Audi.
In terms of the full transition to electric vehicles, Norway might be considered the closest to the goal. The Norwegian Road Traffic Information Council (OFV) reported that most new passenger car sales in July were zero-emission cars, taking up 64.1% market share.
Norway might be an excellent place to test the Tesla Model Y’s future in Europe as Giga Shanghai continues to send exports to the continent. As of August 30 the top EV brand selling in Norway is Tesla, with 1,776 vehicle registrations. The top model sold in Norway this month was the Tesla Model Y, with 1,115 registrations.
In the past week, CleanTechnica readers were most attracted to stories about cool & cheap electric motorcycles, an Australian pastime that electric vehicles are sure to kill, and the standard-range Tesla Model 3 and Model Y getting LFP batteries. Following those medal winners, the BYD Dolphin potentially getting millions of sales, love for water batteries, and solar-powered trains took the next three spots.
For the details on those stories, to see the rest of the top 20 list, or to go explore the sometimes wild and crazy (but almost always useful) comments under the pieces, scroll down and have a gander.
