The sale of traditional vehicles would have to cease completely by 2038 to reach the government’s target. So where’s the plan to get there?
Photo: The Boring Company.
The Boring Company’s tunnels are the future of transportation and while some people don’t think so, those who have had the opportunity to try them are sure of it. Skeptical, West Coast Editor of Autoweek, Mark Vaughn, went downstairs to figure out for himself what The Boring Co tunnels are all about—and whether they are as important as Elon Musk says.
Vaughn admits that he was a little skeptical before using the tunnel. He suggested that there would be long lines and too few cars, so it would be faster and easier to simply walk from the West Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC) to the far South Hall. However, after the “critic” descended the escalator into the underground tunnels he was a little surprised to find that the wait was only about a minute. Vaughn said he just walked up to the Tesla Model X, greeted the human driver, and immediately after the door closed, they drove away.
Tesla Autopilot is a self-driving assistance system. In plain terms, it’s a capability that enables a Tesla to’see’ the cars and road ahead of it and, to a limited extent, drive itself.
The vehicle is a smart, efficient, and economical way to deliver goods and packages in an urban environment.
The UK’s Reaction Engines has announced a joint venture to create compact, lightweight ammonia reactors it says can be used to decarbonize difficult sectors like shipping and off-grid energy generation – and surprisingly, also aviation.
We’ve written before about ammonia’s potential in the clean transport sector; check out our ammonia clean fuel primer piece from September. Compared against hydrogen, ammonia’s much easier and cheaper to store and transport, and although it only carries about 20 percent as much energy as hydrogen by weight, it carries about 70 percent more energy than liquid H2 by volume.
The weight issue generally rules ammonia out of aviation discussions; at less than half the specific energy of jet fuel it looks less attractive than hydrogen. But hydrogen’s volume issues must also be taken into account. Today’s airliners are built for jet fuel so retro-fitting large-volume long-range hydrogen tanks can mean you lose seats. And anyone who’s flown economy can attest, airlines really like fitting in as many seats as they can.
Battling bias. If I’ve been a little MIA this week, it was because I spent Monday and Tuesday in Boston for Fortune ’s inaugural Brainstorm A.I. gathering. It was a fun and wonky couple of days diving into artificial intelligence and machine learning, technologies that—for good or ill—seem increasingly likely to shape not just the future of business, but the world at large.
There are a lot of good and hopeful things to be said about A.I. and M.L., but there’s also a very real risk that the technologies will perpetuate biases that already exist, and even introduce new ones. That was the subject of one of the most engrossing discussions of the event by a panel that was—as pointed out by moderator, guest co-chair, and deputy CEO of Smart Eye Rana el Kaliouby—comprised entirely of women.
One of the scariest parts of bias in A.I. is how wide and varied the potential effects can be. Sony Group’s head of A.I. ethics office Alice Xiang gave the example of a self-driving car that’s been trained too narrowly in what it recognizes as a human reason to jam on the breaks. “You need to think about being able to detect pedestrians—and ensure that you can detect all sorts of pedestrians and not just people that are represented dominantly in your training or test set,” said Xiang.
It didn’t take long for Tesla to increase the Model Y prices in the U.S. by another $1,000, since the last increase of both Model 3 and Model Y in early November.
$1,000 more in just one week? Sure, why not? Now the entry-level Model Y Long Range AWD starts above $60,000: $58,990 + $1,200 DST is $60,190, which is the bare minimum.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=DSvDf9zUYQI
Tesla rival Rivian stock price was valued at over $100 billion after it was publicized at the world’s largest IPO in 2021.
The Rivian stock price was valued at over $100 billion after it was publicized at the world’s largest IPO in 2021. With this, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has given some warning that Rivian may face.
According to real patent-based renders.
With Apple remaining tight-lipped on the Apple Car, another company decided to bring us the closest thing to an official reveal. Vanarama, a car-lease broker based in the U.K., has developed an incredibly detailed series of renderings of the Apple Car based on real Apple patents, a report from Digital Trends reveals.
The rumor mill surrounding the Apple Car has been going for several years now, though speculation reached new levels last year when reports emerged that the tech giant could produce its own electric vehicle (EV) by 2024. Earlier this year, the announcement of a partnership between EV automaker Fisker and iPhone manufacturer Foxconn added fuel to the fire.
