Lifeboat Foundation

Tesla has started to push a new Full Self-Driving Beta software update with a series of improvements ahead of the v12 update, which is supposed to take the system out of beta.

FSD Beta enables Tesla vehicles to drive autonomously to a destination entered in the car’s navigation system, but the driver needs to remain vigilant and ready to take control at all times.

It originally launched in October of 2020 and Tesla has been expanding the program to more vehicles in North America with every software update since.

You may be eagerly waiting for the much-delayed Tesla Cybertruck, but while you wait, we found something at the LA Auto Show that might satiate you: meet the Robotruck from a new startup called Aitekx.

We hadn’t heard of Aitekx before, which has a small booth in the West hall of the Auto Show. In recognition of the hot tech buzzword of the year, the company says that its name represents its focus on the AI mobility future – AI + Tech + X. And it just unveiled its upcoming vehicle, which it calls Robotruck (yes, really), and says that it plans to have it out in 2025.

The company claims some rather optimistic specs, including a 550-mile EPA range (though it wouldn’t tell us how many kWh its battery is – though with a range like that, it would have to be 200kWh or more), 0–60 in 3.5 seconds, and a top speed of 125mph.

Plans to produce a €25,000 car in Berlin Gigafactory are afoot.

It was inevitable. Amazon, which got its start selling books, is getting into the car business.

The e-commerce giant along with new partner Hyundai announced Thursday at the 2023 LA Auto Show that it will start selling vehicles on its website in the second half of 2024. Hyundai vehicles will be the first vehicles sold on Amazon.com’s U.S. store with other brands following later in the year.

The Amazon car sales section will allow customers to shop for vehicles in their area based on a range of preferences, including model, trim, color, and features, choose their preferred car, and then check out online with their chosen payment and financing options. Customers will be able to buy a vehicle online and then pick it up or have it delivered by their local dealership, according to Amazon.

A Zaha Hadid-designed property in Hong Kong will have AI-powered lifts that generate their own energy.

An urban oasis with next-gen elevators

The new structure replaces an old car park to create an urban oasis filled with gardens boasting many plants and trees. Getting to these gardens requires taking Henderson’s next-generation AI-powered lifts.

Continue reading “These AI-powered lifts will generate energy on their own” »

Joby Aviation achieves a historic milestone with the first manned eVTOL air taxi flight in New York City, showcasing its commitment to quiet, emissions-free urban air travel.

Joby Aviation.

The demonstration at the Downtown Heliport in Manhattan showcased Joby’s commitment to revolutionizing urban air travel.

Continue reading “Joby’s milestone: Quiet electric air taxi takes flight over Manhattan” »

Now that’s cool but you will probably only see rich people flying in it for a while, if it comes to be.

The supersonic, nuclear-powered plane concept flies nearly twice the speed of Concorde and could get from London to New York in less time than a soccer game.

Scientists from the UK and South Korea have discovered a way to create laser pulses 1,000 times stronger than currently possible. Using computer simulations, they have discovered that a new way of compressing the light can drastically increase its intensity to such an extent that it can extract particles from a vacuum. This new technique could open up doors for important discoveries into the very nature of matter.

Uncover the nature of matter

Continue reading “Scientists find new way to supercharge lasers by a million times” »

A new method of creating laser pulses, more than 1,000 times as powerful as those currently in existence, has been proposed by scientists in the UK and South Korea.

The scientists have used computer simulations in joint research to demonstrate a new way of compressing light to increase its intensity sufficiently to extract particles from vacuum and study the nature of matter. To achieve this the three groups have come together to produce a very special type of mirror—one that not only reflects pulses of light but compresses them in time by a factor of more than two hundred times, with further compression possible.

The groups from the University of Strathclyde, UNIST and GIST propose a simple idea—to use the gradient in the density of plasma, which is fully ionized matter, to cause photons to “bunch,” analogous to the way a stretched-out group of cars bunch up as they encounter a steep hill. This could revolutionize the next generation of lasers to enable their powers to increase by more than one million times from what is achievable now.