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Archive for the ‘sustainability’ category: Page 253

Oct 1, 2021

This New EV Claims To Have The Longest Range For Any Electric Car Ever

Posted by in categories: sustainability, transportation

The automobile industry has recently been inclining towards electrical vehicles and governments are doing everything to support this transition. Tesla has been a pioneer and an example in this field. It has launched smart vehicles and maintained the standard. However, no, the company has a rival, and it might be a threat to Tesla’s models.

Lucid Motors is another automobile company making electric vehicles. It just earned a rating of 520 miles (837 km) from the Environmental Protection Agency for the firm’s model of Air Dream Edition. This makes the Lucid Air the longest-range EV the EPA has ever rated, according to a recent press release.

However, EPA has very specific and low context settings for trials. Hence, the speed and other specifications will perform differently in real road scenarios. This model is the longest-range production EV so far. The company’s CTO and CEO Peter Rawlinson has scored a win as the Air Dream Edition exceeds Tesla’s longest-range vehicle, the Model S Long Range Plus, by a staggering 100 miles (161 km).

Sep 30, 2021

Honda announces plans to build electric VTOLs and telepresence robots

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, solar power, sustainability, transportation

Honda builds much more than cars and trucks — power equipment, solar cells, industrial robotics, alternative fuel engines and even aircraft are all part of the company’s production capacity. On Thursday, Honda announced that it is working to further expand its manufacturing portfolio to include Avatar-style remote telepresence robots and electric VTOLs for inter-and intracity commutes before turning its ambitions to building a fuel-cell driven power generation system for the lunar surface.

For its eVTOL, Honda plans to leverage not only the lithium battery technology it’s developed for its EV and PHEV vehicles but also a gas turbine hybrid power unit to give the future aircraft enough range to handle regional inter-city flights as well. Honda foresees air taxis as a ubiquitous part of tomorrow’s transportation landscape, seamlessly integrating with both autonomous ground vehicles and traditional airliners (though they could soon be flown by robots as well). Obviously, the program is still very much in the early research phase and will likely remain so until at least the second half of this decade. The company anticipates having prototype units available for testing and certification by the 2030s and a full commercial rollout sometime around 2040.

Honda will have plenty of competition if and when it does get its eVTOLs off the ground. Cadillac showed off its single-seater aircar earlier this year, while Joby (in partnership with NASA) already has full-scale mockups flying. In June, Slovakian transportation startup, Klein Vision, flew from Nitra and to the Bratislava airport in its inaugural inter-city flight — and then drove home after the event. But building a fleet of flying taxis is no easy feat — just ask Bell helicopters — and we’re sure to see more companies drop out of the sector before eVTOLs become commonplace.

Sep 29, 2021

Global energy price spikes will get worse before they get better

Posted by in categories: climatology, sustainability

But the global effort to fight climate change is also causing problems. Europe’s wind farms haven’t seen a good breeze in months, and droughts in China and South America have dried up power generation from hydro dams. Meanwhile, surging prices for carbon pollution credits in Europe have made fossil alternatives even more expensive, and Chinese grid operators have come under mounting political pressure to help the country meet its carbon emissions targets by burning less coal.

The energy crisis could imperil political support for climate policies, just as the COP26 climate summit approaches in Glasgow in November. But there are steps governments can take to prevent energy market turmoil leading to sky-high electric bills and breakdowns in the global supply chain.

“What we’re seeing is an unfortunate set of circumstances during a period of transition where we haven’t fully moved from one system to another,” says James Henderson, director of the Energy Transition Research Initiative at Oxford University. “During that period, market risks are enhanced. It’s impossible to envision a world where there won’t be more volatility.”

Sep 29, 2021

Corporations Are Sending Huge Mining Machines to the Bottom of the Ocean

Posted by in categories: existential risks, sustainability, transportation

“DeepGreen is offering a false or dystopian choice,” Deep Sea Conservation Coalition cofounder Matthew Gianni told The Guardian.

Dangling the possibility of widespread electric vehicle adoption by securing the resources necessary to manufacture more and better batteries is certainly tantalizing. But scientists told The Guardian that getting those metals from the seafloor — especially with machines that would cause a poorly-understood environmental impact in an area that’s nearly impossible to monitor and regulate — would come at too great a cost.

“There are some very significant questions being raised by scientists about the impacts of ocean mining,” University of California, Santa Barbara researcher Douglas McCauley told The Guardian. “How much extinction could be generated? How long will it take these extremely low-resilience systems to recover? What impact will it have on the ocean’s capacity to capture carbon?”

Sep 29, 2021

What China’s New Data Rules Mean for Tesla and Other Auto Makers | WSJ

Posted by in categories: information science, sustainability, transportation

China’s new rules on auto data require car companies to store important data locally.

Cars today offer high-tech features and gather troves of data to train algorithms. As China steps up controls over new technologies, WSJ looks at the risks for Tesla and other global brands that are now required to keep data within the country. Screenshot: Tesla China.

Continue reading “What China’s New Data Rules Mean for Tesla and Other Auto Makers | WSJ” »

Sep 29, 2021

Air pollution likely cause of up to 6m premature births, study finds

Posted by in category: sustainability

Air pollution is likely to have been responsible for up to 6 million premature births and 3 million underweight babies worldwide every year, research shows.


Global analysis of indoor and outdoor pollution also finds link to low birth weight.

Sep 29, 2021

New method makes starch from CO₂ faster than plants can

Posted by in categories: chemistry, food, sustainability

Feeding the world uses enormous amounts of land, water, fertilizer, pesticide, and fuel. In a step towards a more sustainable solution, researchers have designed a method to make starches from carbon dioxide more efficiently than plants do (Science 2,021 DOI: 10.1126/science.abh4049).

The new technique, which relies on chemical catalysts and a curated combination of natural and engineered enzymes, converts CO2 to starch 8.5 times as efficiently as corn plants can.


The advance hints at sustainable, efficient factory production of food and industrial chemicals by.

Continue reading “New method makes starch from CO₂ faster than plants can” »

Sep 29, 2021

Now everyone can build battery-free electronic devices

Posted by in categories: computing, solar power, sustainability

Last year, computer engineers from Northwestern University and Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) introduced the world’s first battery-free Game Boy, which harvests both solar energy and the user’s kinetic energy from button mashing to power an unlimited lifetime of game play.

The same team now introduces a new platform that enables makers, hobbyists and novice programmers to build their own battery-free electronic devices that run with intermittent, harvested energy.

Continue reading “Now everyone can build battery-free electronic devices” »

Sep 28, 2021

Space Powered Cooling May Be the Future of Energy

Posted by in categories: energy, space, sustainability

Our cooling systems are heating the Earth as they consume fossil-fueled energy and release greenhouse gases. Air Conditioning use is expected to increase from about 3.6 billion units to 15 billion by 2050. So, how do we exit this cold room trap? What if I told you we could tap into space for electricity free air conditioning and other refrigeration tech?

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Sep 28, 2021

Khaliya — Innovator, Philanthropist, Humanitarian — Solutions For The Global Mental Health Crisis

Posted by in categories: business, health, neuroscience, sustainability

Innovator, philanthropist, humanitarian — khaliya — discussing radical solutions for the global mental health crisis.


Khaliya (https://www.khaliya.net/) is a Columbia University-trained public health specialist and Harvard University-trained specialist in Global Mental Health and Refugee Trauma. She is also a Venture Partner for Gender Equity Diversity Investments (www.gedi.vc), a new female-led VC firm targeting high growth investments that deliver top-quartile returns and measurable impact towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals with a preliminary focus on health.

Continue reading “Khaliya — Innovator, Philanthropist, Humanitarian — Solutions For The Global Mental Health Crisis” »