Lifeboat Foundation

This is how you really get an industry to change its ways. Bloomberg reports that China’s government has announced that any automaker producing or importing more than 30,000 cars in China must ensure 10 percent of them are all-electric, plug-in hybrid, or hydrogen-powered by 2019. That number will rise to 12 percent in 2020.

In fact, the new regulations are actually more lenient than drafts of the rules had suggested: they scrap a 2018 introduction to give manufacturers more time to prepare, and will also excuse failure to meet the quota in the first year. So, really, the 12 percent target in 2020 is the first enforceable number.

That still doesn’t make it very easy, as the Wall Street Journal notes (paywall). Domestic automakers already make plenty of electric cars (largely at the government’s behest), which means that they should be able to meet the numbers, but Western firms will find it harder. In preparation, some have actually set up partnerships with Chinese companies to help them build electric vehicles in time.

Continue reading “China’s New Electric Car Rules Are Amazingly Aggressive” »

Both automakers are set to make future EVs off of Prius platform.

Autonomous cars are on the radar of the National Highway Safety Administration (NHTSA) and Department of Transportation (DOT), as well as state legislators.

Despite minor gotchas—not glitches—Super Cruise is a powerful tool that is the pinnacle of Level 2 autonomy. You’ll want it on your car.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=woaQdXLb1z0

Hyperloop One announces completion of first successful full-system hyperloop test.

Click on photo to start video.

Singapore gets its first electric vehicle-sharing service, and it comes from France.

Dyson says the car will be unveiled in 2020 and will be ‘radically different’ to other vehicles on the market.

A subscale demonstrator of the SR-72 hypersonic spyplane was reportedly spied at Lockheed’s facilities in California.

A proposed hypersonic reconnaissance and strike aircraft, the SR-72 would serve as a replacement for the famed SR-71 Blackbird, which was retired by the Air Force back in 1998. The SR-71 Blackbird could fly at 2200 mph (over 3 times the speed of sound).

Lockheed has said they are working on a combined-cycle engine. It uses both a turbine and a scramjet to achieve hypersonic speeds. Lockheed Martin is testing Aerojet Rocketdyne from 2013 to 2017. Two combined-cycle engines are planned to power the SR-72, which is designed to be about the same size of the SR-71 and could achieve first flight in the late 2020s.

Continue reading “Hypersonic SR-72 spyplane demo spotted” »