Lifeboat Foundation

The founding team at H3X have a compelling origin story. The three friends — Jason Sylvestre, Max Liben, and Eric Maciolek — formed a bond as they participarted in an engineering course regarding electric vehicles.

After their careers led them in separate directions, with each finding work in the tech and auto industries, a Department of Energy grant brought them back together to ponder how they could improve electric motors.

Their first-principles mindset and efforts have borne fruit in the form of a new electric motor that can potentially power large commercial flights.

In 1,993 deep underground at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, a few flashes of light inside a bus-size tank of oil kicked off a detective story that is yet to reach its conclusion.

The Liquid Scintillator Neutrino Detector (LSND) was searching for bursts of radiation created by neutrinos, the lightest and most elusive of all known elementary particles. “Much to our amazement, that’s what we saw,” said Bill Louis, one of the experiment’s leaders.

The problem was that they saw too many. Theorists had postulated that neutrinos might oscillate between types as they fly along — a hypothesis that explained various astronomical observations. LSND had set out to test this idea by aiming a beam of muon neutrinos, one of the three known types, toward the oil tank, and counting the number of electron neutrinos that arrived there. Yet Louis and his team detected far more electron neutrinos arriving in the tank than the simple theory of neutrino oscillations predicted.

In a press statement, EdisonFuture said the EF1-T, as well as a van version of the vehicle called the EF1-V, feature “a uniquely designed solar mosaic technology that provides a stunning visual signature while also harnessing the power of the sun to recharge the batteries, enabling work vehicles to continuously charge while in the field.”

Bizarrely, as far as we can tell, the automaker hasn’t actually released any information regarding the battery size, range, or solar charging specifications of the EF1-T, though a prototype of the vehicle is due to go on display at the LA Auto Show in mid-November, so we may learn more information then. EdisonFuture also said it will begin accepting reservations for the pickup during the show.

Continue reading “China’s New EV Truck Recharges While Driving. With a Retractable Solar Roof?” »

Elon Musk has announced the upcoming release of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving Beta 10.4 update as Tesla slows down the rollout.

Earlier this week, Tesla started rolling out Full Self-Driving Beta 10.3.

The update came after a false start last weekend when Tesla pushed the update with some problems and ended up reverting back to 10.2.

Thankfully, there is a growing effort toward AI For Good.

This latest mantra entails ways to try and make sure that the advances in AI are being applied for the overall betterment of mankind. These are assuredly laudable endeavors and reassuringly crucial that the technology underlying AI is aimed and deployed in an appropriate and assuredly positive fashion (for my coverage on the burgeoning realm of AI Ethics, see the link here).

Unfortunately, whether we like it or not, there is the ugly side of the coin too, namely the despicable AI For Bad.

Hertz CEO Mark Fields revealed that its deal to supply Tesla vehicles to Uber includes an option for 100,000 more Tesla Model 3s, which would double its total order to 200,000 vehicles.

Earlier this week, Hertz announced that it ordered 100,000 Model 3 vehicles from Tesla as part of a new plan to electrify its fleet.

In the last few days, we have been learning more about this deal.

The importance of considering the numerous cybersecurity holes likely to be present in AI self-driving cars and seriously seeking to plug them up.

The emission-free aircraft will carry up to 76 passengers.

A new aviation partnership could see commercial hydrogen-electric airliners take to the skies. The parent company of Alaska Airlines, Alaska Air Group, is partnering with zero-emission aviation firm ZeroAvia to develop a hydrogen-electric powertrain for a 76-seater passenger airliner, a press statement reveals.

Continue reading “A New Commercial Hydrogen-Electric Plane Will Boast a 500 Mile Range” »

Self-driving Robots, developed at MIT, set sea in Amsterdam canals.

If you don’t get seasick, an autonomous boat might be the right mode of transportation for you.

Scientists from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and the Senseable City Laboratory, together with Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS Institute) in the Netherlands, have now created the final project in their self-navigating trilogy: a full-scale, fully autonomous robotic boat that’s ready to be deployed along the canals of Amsterdam.

Continue reading “One autonomous taxi, please” »