The decades-old dream of zipping around in the sky as simply as driving on highways may be becoming less illusory.
Japan’s SkyDrive Inc., among the myriads of “flying car” projects around the world, has carried out a successful though modest test flight with one person aboard.
In a video shown to reporters on Friday, a contraption that looked like a slick motorcycle with propellers lifted several feet (1−2 meters) off the ground, and hovered in a netted area for four minutes.
« Acording to Electrek, an FBI complaint details how the feds helped foil a plot by Russian hackers to target Tesla’s Nevada Gigafactory with a massive ransomware hack and data breach.
It’s worth noting that the complaint itself never explicitly says that the target of the hack was Tesla, though its Gigafactory is located outside Sparks, Nevada. Electrek, though, is reporting as fact that Tesla is the target. We’ve reached out to Tesla for additional information and we’ll update if any new info comes to light. »
Intriguingly, it sounds as though the hackers weren’t just after ransom.
Reliable Robotics, a startup developing autonomous flight technologies, this week emerged from stealth with $33.5 million in venture capital funding. Cofounder and CEO Robert Rose says the funds will be used to scale production of the company’s products and bring on new engineering talent.
Aviation companies pursuing autonomous transportation include Uber, Boeing, and Honeywell. According to management consulting firm Oliver Wyman, replacing single-pilot operations with autonomous planes could save airlines as much as $60 billion annually. Pandemic headwinds have only reinvigorated the search for cost-cutting opportunities, as Statista estimates airlines will lose at least $314 billion in revenue in 2020.
Looking to expedite their path to market, companies like Xwing, Airbus, and Elroy Air have explored retrofitting existing aircraft rather than developing hardware from scratch. Reliable Robotics, which was founded in 2017 by Rose and VP of engineering Juerg Frefel, aims to develop a platform that imbues any fixed-wing plane with autonomous capabilities.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ksMXbhftBbM
California company NDB says its nano-diamond batteries will absolutely upend the energy equation, acting like tiny nuclear generators. They will blow any energy density comparison out of the water, lasting anywhere from a decade to 28,000 years without ever needing a charge. They will offer higher power density than lithium-ion. They will be nigh-on indestructible and totally safe in an electric car crash. And in some applications, like electric cars, they stand to be considerably cheaper than current lithium-ion packs despite their huge advantages.
The heart of each cell is a small piece of recycled nuclear waste. NDB uses graphite nuclear reactor parts that have absorbed radiation from nuclear fuel rods and have themselves become radioactive. Untreated, it’s high-grade nuclear waste: dangerous, difficult and expensive to store, with a very long half-life.
This graphite is rich in the carbon-14 radioisotope, which undergoes beta decay into nitrogen, releasing an anti-neutrino and a beta decay electron in the process. NDB takes this graphite, purifies it and uses it to create tiny carbon-14 diamonds. The diamond structure acts as a semiconductor and heat sink, collecting the charge and transporting it out. Completely encasing the radioactive carbon-14 diamond is a layer of cheap, non-radioactive, lab-created carbon-12 diamond, which contains the energetic particles, prevents radiation leaks and acts as a super-hard protective and tamper-proof layer.
The Air Force is on the hunt for a Jetsons–style flying car, and service officials just got an eyeful of one of their very first prototypes.
Secretary of the Air Force Barbara Barrett, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown, Jr., and Chief Master Sgt. of the Air Force JoAnne S. Bass were among the officials present for the first Agility Prime electric vertical takeoff and landing flight (eVTOL) flight demonstration at Camp Mabry on Aug. 20.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has updated the timeline on which he sees batteries enabling electric aircraft coming to maket. He now sees it happening in “3 to 4 years.”
Xiaomi may have just helped produce the most affordable Lamborghini ever — and the only electric one. Just don’t plan on taking it on the highway, since the new Lamborghini electric go-kart is built purely for the track.
Officially known as the Ninebot GoKart Pro Lamborghini Edition, the new electric go-kart was produced by a partnership between Xiaomi and Lamborghini.
A historic French brand is set to return with one of the most extreme hypercar designs ever. The new holders of the Delage brand are squarely focused on the Nurburgring lap record with the monstrous D12 and its 7.6-liter, naturally aspirated V12.
Miami-based French entrepreneur Laurent Tapie has leased the rights to the Delage name, with an option to buy, and is building the first Delage car in some 64 years. And how! With backing from “four deeply invested billionaires” according to an interview with Robb Report, he’s fulfilling his dream of an F1 car for the street.
The D12 is a wasp-waisted monster whose dart-shaped cabin is so separated from the front wheels that it might as well be an open-wheeler. Its colossal mid-mounted V12, developed in-house, will put power down through an eight-speed single-clutch transmission with an electric motor built in to form a hybrid system.
Electrification of transport has many faces and the automotive industry is exploring various paths to increase the share of electric miles in long-distance travel, but not necessarily by switching to full BEVs with huge batteries.
This summer, a new 5 km (3.1 mi) e-highway test track with catenary overhead lines (in both directions) entered service on the A5 Autobahn in Hessen, near Frankfurt in Germany. It’s part of a three-stage project announced in 2018.
The idea is to use a power supply, kind of like in the case of trains or trams, to drive on the highway using electricity, and then to switch to battery power or internal combustion engine for the final miles. That’s the theory. The major obstacle is the cost of €2 million per km (in both directions) — according to a report from Sweden (see video below) — and further costs of maintenance of the new infrastructure. Another thing is that it does not look too attractive.
It can lift a car or tow a truck, but the ultimate goal is to make mech racing a sport.
