Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: transportation

Batteries are widely used in everyday applications like powering electric vehicles, electronic gadgets and are promising candidates for sustainable energy storage. However, as you’ve likely noticed with daily charging of batteries, their functionality drops off over time. Eventually, we need to replace these batteries, which is not only expensive but also depletes the rare earth elements used in making them.

A key factor in life reduction is the degradation of a battery’s structural integrity. To discourage structural degradation, a team of researchers from USC Viterbi School of Engineering are hoping to introduce “stretch” into battery materials so they can be cycled repeatedly without structural fatigue. This research was led by Ananya Renuka-Balakrishna, WiSE Gabilan Assistant Professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, and USC Viterbi Ph.D candidate, Delin Zhang, as well as Brown University researchers from Professor Brian Sheldon’s group. Their work was published in the Journal of Mechanics and Physics of Solids.

A typical battery works through a repetitive cycle of inserting and extracting Li-ions from electrodes, Zhang said. This insertion and extraction expands and compresses the lattices. These volume shifts create microcracks, fractures and defects over time.

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Circa 2020

Since electric vehicles first started hitting the mainstream, people have been asking “why doesn’t that have a solar panel roof?” The answer has always been the same: solar panels just don’t generate that much power. That’s not a huge problem for solar racers, with their ultra-light weight and super-aerodynamic shapes, but for the minuscule daily range a solar roof would give you on your typical daily driver, you’re still gonna need to plug it in.

Ah, but what if your daily driver was the closest thing on the road to a solar racer? An EV truly designed with ludicrous levels of efficiency as the primary goal? Something so aerodynamically slippery that it makes a mockery of the production car world? Well, that’s the Aptera. And its manufacturers claim that its 180 small solar panels, making up an area of more than three square meters (32.3 sq ft), will harvest enough energy that many drivers will never have to charge it.

The top-spec Aptera can self-generate as much as 45 miles (72 km) of range per day in ideal conditions, which is more than twice the average daily mileage of American car owners. And that doesn’t have to be a terribly large amount of energy, thanks to its extreme frugality.

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Tesla may be the world’s most valuable automaker but it’s also under a federal investigation over its Autopilot semi-autonomous driving system. Teslas with Autopilot engaged have crashed into police cars and emergency vehicles parked on the side of the road and the National Highway Transportation and Safety Administration (NHTSA) understandably wants to know what’s going on.

On top of this, a pair of US Senators are demanding another investigation over the Autopilot name itself, claiming it’s misleading. Bear in mind Autopilot is rated at only Level 2 whereas Level 5 autonomy requires zero human input. Far too many Tesla owners don’t seem to understand that, hence the Senators’ concerns. And now Elon Musk has confirmed the next stage of the Full Self-Driving Beta will arrive soon.

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When Gigafactory Texas was starting its construction, officials in the area started to fondly describe the project’s pace as the “Speed of Elon” on account of its rapid progress. This “Speed of Elon” seems to have never let up since Giga Texas broke ground about 13 months ago as the first image of a pre-production Tesla Model Y was just shared online.

The image was initially shared on Instagram, and it depicted a black Model Y that looked fresh out of the production line. The post was eventually deleted, but not before the image was shared across platforms such as Twitter and Reddit. It’s difficult not to be excited, after all, considering that Giga Texas broke ground just over a year ago in July 2020.

Based on the recently-shared image, it appears that Giga Texas’ Model Y production facility is now ready to start cranking out the all-electric crossovers, at least to some degree. The vehicle was not alone in the picture either, as another Model Y in the background could also be seen passing through the assembly line.

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Tesla has a number of programs that have the potential to change markets, and one of these is arguably the 4,680 cells. Created using a dry electrode process and optimized for price and efficiency, the 4,680 batteries could very well be the key to Tesla’s possible invasion of the mainstream auto and energy market. If Tesla pulls off its 4,680 production ramp, its place at the summit of the sustainable energy market would be all but ensured.

Unfortunately, Tesla’s publicly disclosed target for the 4,680 cells’ production ramp appears to have been made on “Elon Time.” This means that during Battery Day last year, Tesla’s target of hitting a capacity of 10 GWh by late September2021included some optimistic assumptions. Similar to other projects like Elon Musk’s Alien Dreadnaught factory, however, the pilot production of the 4,680 cells have met some challenges.

Tesla admitted to these difficulties during the Q22021earnings call, when Elon Musk explained that one of the main challenges in the 4,680 cell production ramp was related to the batteries’ calendaring, or the process when the dry cathode material is squashed to a particular height. Partly due to the use of nickel in the 4,680 cells, which are extremely hard, some of the calendar rolls end up being dented.

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As a recent New York Times article highlighted, self-driving cars are taking longer to come to market than many experts initially predicted. Automated vehicles where riders can sit back, relax, and be delivered to their destinations without having to watch the road are continuously relegated to the “not-too-distant future.”

There’s not just debate on when this driverless future will arrive, there’s also a lack of consensus on how we’ll get there, that is, which technologies are most efficient, safe, and scalable to take us from human-driven to computer-driven (Tesla is the main outlier in this debate). The big players are lidar, cameras, ultrasonic sensors, and radar. Last week, one lidar maker showcased some new technology that it believes will tip the scales.

California-based Luminar has built a lidar it calls Iris not only has a longer range than existing systems, it’s also more compact; gone are the days of a big, bulky setup that all but takes over the car. Perhaps most importantly, the company is aiming to manufacture and sell Iris at a price point well below the industry standard.

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These kinds of seaplanes will be mainly used for passenger transport but could also improve search and rescue operations at sea, thanks to the advantage of offering versatile loading and unloading. This multi-purpose flying vessel concept was inspired by the new needs and demands of potential operators worldwide.

History, however, shows that – like everything – the ground-effect marine crafts also have their drawbacks. The ship hovering just above the water is not able to tilt too much during the flight (so as not to hit the water), so any change of flight direction must be planned early enough because its execution takes quite a long time.

RDC Aqualines boasts of being a multinational company specializing in the design, development, and future production of a new generation of marine transportation vessels, using mainly ground effect technology. The “flying ship,” as they call it, is offered in various sizes, from a 3-seater to an ekranoplan-like bike, a hydrofoil speedboat, and the ekranoplan-like ferry described above.

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The California-based startup HyPoint has collaborated with the aircraft developer Piasecki Aircraft Corporation (PiAC) to develop hydrogen fuel cell systems for electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) vehicle applications. The ultimate goal is to deliver a customizable, FAA-certified, zero carbon-emission hydrogen fuel cell system to the global eVTOL market.

Through the partnership, Piasecki will gain an exclusive license to the technology created as part of the partnership, while HyPoint will maintain ownership of its underlying hydrogen fuel cell technology.

HyPoint’s revolutionary approach uses compressed air for both cooling and oxygen supply to deliver a hydrogen fuel cell system that significantly outperforms existing battery and hydrogen fuel cell alternatives. According to the company, the new system will offer eVTOL makers four times the energy density of existing lithium-ion batteries, double the specific power of existing hydrogen fuel cell systems, and that costs up to 50% less relative to the operative costs of turbine-powered rotorcraft.

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Hurray.

Tesla has started to hire roboticists to build its recently announced “Tesla Bot,” a humanoid robot to become a new vehicle for its AI technology.

When Elon Musk explained the rationale behind Tesla Bot, he argued that Tesla was already making most of the components needed to create a humanoid robot equipped with artificial intelligence.

The automaker’s computer vision system developed for self-driving cars could be leveraged for use in the robot, which could also use things like Tesla’s battery system and suite of sensors.

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