Lifeboat Foundation

BHL Cryotanks have demonstrated a 75% mass reduction compared to existing state-of-the-art aerospace cryotanks (metal or composite), enabling hydrogen aircraft and eVTOL makers to store as much as 10 times more liquid hydrogen fuel without adding mass. As a result, aircraft can travel longer distances without refueling.

GTL has fabricated and tested multiple BHL Cryotanks at a range of scales and has been demonstrated to be leak-tight even after repeated cryo-thermal pressure cycles. This technology has achieved TRL 5+ and is compatible with a variety of cryogenic propellants, including liquid oxygen, liquid methane, and liquid hydrogen.

The BHL Cryotank pictured here measures 2.4 meters long with a 1.2-meter diameter and weighs 12 kilograms (roughly 26 pounds). With the addition of a skirt and vacuum dewar shell, the total system weight is 67 kilograms. This particular tank system can hold over 150 kilograms of liquid hydrogen, giving it a hydrogen storage ratio of at least 50% (the weight of stored hydrogen fuel relative to total system weight), which is as much as 10 times greater than current state-of-the-art fuel tanks. HyPoint estimated that an aircraft equipped with GTL dewar tank technology could achieve as much as four times the range of a conventional aircraft using aviation fuel, cutting aircraft operating costs by an estimated 50% on a dollar-per-passenger-mile basis.

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This adorable looking bot can park your car for you.

Attackers could gain access to printers and manipulate designs of parts such as aircraft propellers in ways that are difficult to detect.

Crucially, the Nissan-NASA partnership is also focusing on batteries that don’t rely on rare metals, like cobalt (of which more than half the global supply is in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as highlighted in an episode of the New York Times Daily podcast last month), nickel, or manganese.

But getting rid of those metals means finding materials with comparable properties to replace them, which will be no simple task. Here’s where NASA’s computing chops will lend the partnership a much-needed hand. They plan to create an original material informatics platform—that is, a massive database that runs simulations of how various materials interact with one another. When the platform narrows countless options and combinations down to a few prime candidates, researchers can then start testing them.

Nissan has targeted 2028 as the year to roll out its proprietary solid-state batteries. How realistic that timing turns out to be remains to be seen (Toyota is even more ambitious, aiming to have its own vehicles with solid-state batteries on the market by 2025), b ut Nissan is putting its money where its mouth is with plans to open a pilot plant in Japan in 2024. How this plays out will be revelatory, as scaling up manufacturing of solid-state batteries has produced unexpected complications in the past. Encouragingly, startup Solid Power ha s also targeted 2028 for comm ercializing its solid-state batteries.

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An automated system called Guardian is being developed by the Toyota Research Institute to amplify human control in a vehicle, as opposed to removing it.

Here’s the scenario: A driver falls asleep at the wheel. But their car is equipped with a dashboard camera that detects the driver’s eye condition, activating a safety system that promptly guides the vehicle to a secure halt.

That’s not just an idea on the drawing board. The system, called Guardian, is being refined at the Toyota Research Institute (TRI), where MIT Professor John Leonard is helping steer the group’s work, while on leave from MIT. At the MIT Mobility Forum, Leonard and Avinash Balachandran, head of TRI’s Human-Centric Driving Research Department, presented an overview of their work.

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