Lifeboat Foundation

(TNS) — The legal tug-of-war over development of waterfront land in Baltimore’s Westport neighborhood has tilted in favor of a high-speed maglev train operator seeking to build a passenger station on the site where a developer separately proposed housing.

The Court of Special Appeals, the state’s second-highest court, granted the appeal of Baltimore Washington Rapid Rail LLC, which is planning a $10 billion project to link Washington and Baltimore and eventually New York with a superconducting magnetic levitation rail system.

The opinion clears the way for Rapid Rail to pursue its eminent domain lawsuit against Westport property owner Stonewall Capital, prolonging a monthslong dispute.

WASHINGTON, March 10 (Reuters) — U.S. regulators on Thursday issued final rules eliminating the need for automated vehicle manufacturers to equip fully autonomous vehicles with manual driving controls to meet crash standards.

Automakers and tech companies have faced significant hurdles to deploying automated driving system (ADS) vehicles without human controls because of safety standards written decades ago that assume people are in control.

Last month, General Motors Co (GM.N) and its self-driving technology unit Cruise petitioned the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) for permission to build and deploy a self-driving vehicle without human controls like steering wheels or brake pedals.

DUGWAY, Utah — Army Green Berets from the 1st Special Forces Group conducted two weeks of hands-on experimentation with Project Origin Unmanned Systems at Dugway Proving Ground. Engineers from the U.S. Army DEVCOM Ground Vehicle Systems Center were on site to collect data on how these elite Soldiers utilized the systems and what technology and behaviors are desired.

Project Origin vehicles are the evolution of multiple Soldier Operational Experiments. This GVSC-led rapid prototyping effort allows the Army to conduct technology and autonomous behavior integration for follow-on assessments with Soldiers in order to better understand what Soldiers need from unmanned systems.

For the two-week experiment, Soldiers with the 1st Special Forces Group attended familiarization and new equipment training in order to develop Standard Operating Procedures for Robotic Combat Vehicles. The unit utilized these SOPs to conduct numerous mission-oriented exercises including multiple live-fire missions during the day and night.

Ford and Purdue University researchers have developed a new, patent-pending charging system that solves one of the biggest problems with electric vehicles. Of course, we’re talking about the charging time it takes to top off a battery versus spending a few minutes at a gasoline pump.

Aside from range, charging time is one of the biggest problems for current electric vehicles. There’s plenty to love about EVs, but having to sit for 20–30 minutes and wait for the battery to recharge isn’t ideal, which is why Ford’s new cooling cables promise to recharge an electric vehicle in roughly 5-minutes.

Even with DC fast charging appearing at more Tesla stations, most vehicles with ideal battery, charger, and cable conditions still take upwards of at least 20 minutes. The video below explains how most Tesla systems can handle upwards of 520 amps of current, which is quite a lot. However, Ford and Purdue can deliver over 2,400 amps to their vehicles, resulting in drastically faster charging times.

When Google unveiled its first autonomous cars in 2010, the spinning cylinder mounted on the roofs really stood out. It was the vehicle’s light detection and ranging (LiDAR) system, which worked like light-based radar. Together with cameras and radar, LiDAR mapped the environment to help these cars avoid obstacles and drive safely.

Since a then, inexpensive, chip-based cameras and radar systems have moved into the mainstream for collision avoidance and autonomous highway driving. Yet, LiDAR navigation systems remain unwieldy mechanical devices that cost thousands of dollars.

That may be about to change, thanks to a new type of high-resolution LiDAR chip developed by Ming Wu, professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences and co-director of the Berkeley Sensor and Actuator Center at the University of California, Berkeley. The new design appears Wednesday, March 9, in the journal Nature.

There is an exciting branch of battery research that involves combining the strength and durability of next-generation materials with their energy storage potential. This could see car panels double as their batteries, for example, and in a new example of what this could look like scientists have developed a “power suit” for electric vehicles that could not only extend their range, but give them a handy boost in acceleration at the same time.

Sometimes known as structural batteries, we’ve seen some interesting recent advances in this space from research groups and even big-name automakers. Back in 2013, Volvo demonstrated carbon fiber body panels with energy storage potential, and we’ve seen other teams show off similar concepts since. These projects sought to combine the high energy density of batteries with the ultra-fast discharge rates of supercapacitors, in materials strong enough to serve as a car’s exterior.

This new breakthrough continues this line of thinking, with scientists at University of Central Florida and NASA designing a new material featuring unique properties that allow for not just impressive energy storage potential, but also the strength needed to endure a car crash.

The world’s first demonstration device to produce 1,000 tons of gasoline per year from carbon dioxide (CO₂) hydrogenation has completed its technology evaluation and trial operation.

Located in the Zoucheng Industrial Park, Shandong province, China, the project has been jointly developed by the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Zhuhai Futian Energy Technology company. The hydrogenation of CO₂ into liquid fuels and chemicals can not only realize the resource utilization of CO₂ but also facilitate the storage and transportation of renewable energy.

However, activation and selective conversion of CO₂ are challenging. A technology that can selectively produce energy-dense, value-added hydrocarbon fuels will provide a new route to promote the clean, low-carbon energy revolution.

Tesla will sell car insurance, but electric-vehicle insurance and repairs are more expensive than for traditional cars. Here’s why.

The average cost of repairs are nearly 3% higher for a small EV versus a small internal-combustion engine car, says CCC Intelligent Solutions, a data and consulting firm that has examined the impact of EVs on the automotive, insurance and repair industries.

The same researchers found that spending on replacemet parts as a share of the overall repair costs was higher for a small EV despite that EV having 9.1 parts replaced per claim on average, versus 9.6 parts for small ICE cars. Access the full report here.

Continue reading “As prices top $4 a gallon, should you consider an electric vehicle? One consideration: They’re more expensive to insure and repair. Here’s why” »

Details have been disclosed about a now-addressed critical vulnerability in Microsoft’s Azure Automation service that could have permitted unauthorized access to other Azure customer accounts and take over control.

“This attack could mean full control over resources and data belonging to the targeted account, depending on the permissions assigned by the customer,” Orca Security researcher Yanir Tsarimi said in a report published Monday.

The flaw potentially put several entities at risk, including an unnamed telecommunications company, two car manufacturers, a banking conglomerate, and big four accounting firms, among others, the Israeli cloud infrastructure security company added.