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Category: transportation

The only slight hitch is it costs as much as a brand new Rolls-Royce Phantom, so it’s for millionaires.

We wrote earlier this year that because the demand for electrified classics was on the rise, Lunaz, U.K.-based company that specializes in EV conversions had doubled its workforce to keep up with demand. The company’s first product was a pure-electric 1953 Jaguar XK120, but if that was not opulent enough, it now offers a car that makes a lot of sense on paper: an electric 1961 Rolls-Royce Phantom V.

In fact, an old electric Roller is about as fitting as an EV converted classic could get, simply because no internal combustion engine can match the blend of smoothness, quietness and power provided by an electric motor. To top it all off, the guys from Lunaz equip their electric Phantom with a really big 120 kWh battery pack that is said to provide enough juice for a range of 300+ miles (480+ km).

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Tesla vehicles are equipped with extrernal speakers.

The main function is to output a pedestrian warning sound, which has become required for electric vehicles in many markets due to the fact that they are quiet at low speeds.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been playing around with ideas on how to release other features that take advantage of the fact that the vehicles are now equipped with external speakers.

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As we wind up our discussion about the Space Race and touch on the strategies employed by China in its bid to stay on top of space and tech, we delve into the meaty topic of next generation Artificial Intelligence including GPT-3, OpenAI, CommaAI and how they are making strides in the avenues of automation, machine learning and translation and also self driving cars. It’s a brave new world and we discuss some of the many pitfalls of this new emerging range of systems that can come with many issues along with many benefits.

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What if you could solve two of Earth’s biggest problems in one stroke? UC Riverside engineers have developed a way to recycle plastic waste, such as soda or water bottles, into a nanomaterial useful for energy storage.

Mihri and Cengiz Ozkan and their students have been working for years on creating improved materials from sustainable sources, such as glass bottles, beach sand, Silly Putty, and portabella mushrooms. Their latest success could reduce plastic pollution and hasten the transition to 100% clean .

“Thirty percent of the global car fleet is expected to be electric by 2040, and high cost of raw battery materials is a challenge,” said Mihri Ozkan, a professor of electrical engineering in UCR’s Marlan and Rosemary Bourns College of Engineering. “Using from landfill and upcycling could lower the total cost of batteries while making the battery production sustainable on top of eliminating plastic pollution worldwide.”

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