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Category: transportation – Page 108

Western firms are quaking as China’s electric-car industry speeds up

As Pedro Pacheco of Gartner, another consultancy, points out, Chinese firms are also managed differently. They are less risk averse and move faster than foreign firms, quickly updating tech and introducing new models to keep customers interested. Treating new cars like consumer-tech products, such as smartphones, extends to ditching duds quickly. Li Auto now ceases production of new models in a matter of months if they do not sell well.

EV startups such as Li Auto, NIO and Xpeng were all founded by tech billionaires who, like Tesla’s Elon Musk, regard their firms as tech companies that happen to make cars. In fact, lots of Chinese tech firms are getting involved in the car industry. Whereas Apple has mulled such a venture long and indecisively, Xiaomi, a big Chinese smartphone-maker, unveiled its first vehicle in December (a fancy and expensive saloon). It plans to make cheaper models in future with the immodest goal of becoming one of the world’s top five carmakers in 15–20 years. Huawei, a telecoms firm, and Baidu, a search engine, have also teamed up with car firms to make vehicles.

Fast-charging lithium battery seeks to eliminate ‘range anxiety’

A team in Cornell Engineering created a new lithium battery that can charge in under five minutes – faster than any such battery on the market – while maintaining stable performance over extended cycles of charging and discharging.

The breakthrough could alleviate “range anxiety” among drivers who worry electric vehicles cannot travel long distances without a time-consuming recharge.

“Range anxiety is a greater barrier to electrification in transportation than any of the other barriers, like cost and capability of batteries, and we have identified a pathway to eliminate it using rational electrode designs,” said Lynden Archer, Cornell’s James A. Friend Family Distinguished Professor of Engineering and dean of Cornell Engineering, who oversaw the project. “If you can charge an EV battery in five minutes, I mean, gosh, you don’t need to have a battery that’s big enough for a 300-mile range. You can settle for less, which could reduce the cost of EVs, enabling wider adoption.”

BMW previews early look at its new high-performance i5 M60 Touring EV

BMW’s 5 series is set to expand very soon. The automaker is teasing the new BMW i5 M60 Touring, giving us a sneak peek at what we can expect from the high-performance EV.

After teasing an electric 5 series sedan for over six years, BMW finally unveiled the i5 last May. It’s a slightly larger, all-electric take on its predecessor. BMW included its latest software and tech, including OS 8.5.

The i5 is in the middle of the 3 series and larger 7 series in BMW’s lineup. As its second best-selling vehicle, the 5 series has and will continue to play a key role in the brand’s success.

Engineers develop terahertz imaging system capable of capturing real-time, 3D multi-spectral images

Terahertz waves can penetrate opaque materials and provide unique spectral signatures of various chemicals, but their adoption for real-world applications has been limited by the slow speed, large size, high cost and complexity of terahertz imaging systems. The problem arises from the lack of suitable focal-plane array detectors, components that contain radiation detectors used by the imaging system.

A research team led by Mona Jarrahi, and Aydogan Ozcan, both electrical and computer engineering professors at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, has invented a new terahertz focal-plane to solve this problem.

By eliminating the need for raster scanning, which captures and displays an image point by point, the research team is able to expedite imaging more than 1,000 times faster than current systems. The new array constitutes the first known terahertz that is fast enough to capture videos and provide real-time, 3D multi-spectral images while maintaining a high signal-to-noise ratio.

Cobalt-free batteries could power cars of the future

Many electric vehicles are powered by batteries that contain cobalt — a metal that carries high financial, environmental, and social costs.

MIT researchers have now designed a battery material that could offer a more sustainable way to power electric cars. The new lithium-ion battery includes a cathode based on organic materials, instead of cobalt or nickel (another metal often used in lithium-ion batteries).

In a new study, the researchers showed that this material, which could be produced at much lower cost than cobalt-containing batteries, can conduct electricity at similar rates as cobalt batteries. The new battery also has comparable storage capacity and can be charged up faster than cobalt batteries, the researchers report.

Study probes unexplored combination of three chemical elements for superconductivity

Skoltech researchers and their colleagues from MIPT and China’s Center for High Pressure Science and Technology Advanced Research have computationally explored the stability of the bizarre compounds of hydrogen, lanthanum, and magnesium that exist at very high pressures. In addition to matching the various three-element combinations to the conditions at which they are stable, the team discovered five completely new compounds of hydrogen and either magnesium or lanthanum only.

Published in Materials Today Physics, the study is part of the ongoing search for room-temperature superconductors, the discovery of which would have enormous consequences for power engineering, transportation, computers and more.

“In the previously unexplored system of hydrogen, lanthanum, and magnesium, we find LaMg3H28 to be the ‘warmest’ superconductor. It loses below −109°C, at about 2 million atmospheres—not a record, but not bad at all either,” the study’s principal investigator, Professor Artem R. Oganov of Skoltech, commented.

Biggest aircraft since the Hindenburg cleared for test flights

Airships are essentially rigid, steerable balloons that fly because they’re filled with a lighter-than-air gas. The Hindenburg is probably the most well-known example of an — and also the most-well known example of why filling them with flammable hydrogen is dangerous.

Brin’s plan is to fill hiss with non-flammable helium and then use them to transport tons of cargo hundreds of miles efficiently and cleanly. He also hopes to use them for humanitarian missions, delivering supplies and personnel to places that are hard to access by road.

The Pathfinder-1: In 2015, Brin founded a startup, LTA Research, to help him reach this goal, and the team came up with the Pathfinder-1, a 400-foot-long prototype with electric motors, a carbon-fiber skeleton, and an ultra-light synthetic cover.

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