Electric Vehicles – Page 13

Aviation, Electric Vehicles, new technology, Science & Technology News, Transportation

Pulse eVTOL concept drops its cabin onto an autonomous car chassis

May 31, 2020

The EmbraerX Pulse features a stylish glassed-over cabin that slots into both electric car and eVTOL bodies for seamless multi-mode end-to-end transport

Here’s one we missed from several months ago: Brazilian eVTOL innovator EmbraerX put forth a fun video showing how a multi-mode 3D transport system might work, with an eVTOL air taxi carrying a detachable glassed-over cabin that it delivers straight onto a self-driving car chassis.

The coming new breed of eVTOL air taxis are nearly all, at this stage, designed to work as part of a multi-mode transport scheme. The flying taxis themselves will travel from skyport to skyport, meaning you’ll need other means to get yourself to the takeoff point and something else again at the other end for the last mile. It’s simply not practical to expect eVTOLs to drop you off right at your destination.

Companies like Uber are salivating at the thought of being able to offer the whole service as a single sale, co-ordinating a car at each end to minimize travel time, but that starts looking like a bit of an annoyance when you consider the hope is that people will use these things for the daily commute. Four taxis and two eVTOLs every day is a pain.

And so we get this concept from Embraer’s flying taxi division EmbraerX. The Pulse system has a single, shared, glassed-over luxury cabin that can click into an eVTOL airframe or clip onto a skateboard electric car chassis, something like what REE makes.

Continue reading… “Pulse eVTOL concept drops its cabin onto an autonomous car chassis”

Automobiles, Batteries, Electric Vehicles, Energy, Science & Technology News

Peer-to-peer highway EV charging would use telescoping cables between moving cars

May 26, 2020

Imagine a future where your EV was getting low on charge on a highway road trip – so you deploy a telescoping charging cable to another EV and borrow a few kilowatt-hours. An engineering professor at the University of Florida believes it’s not far-fetched.

We’ve seen a host of mobile EV charging van concepts. And there are proposed solutions for stationary robots to connect a vehicle to a charger, like what Kuka Robotics demonstrated last year (shown above).

The new idea is to merge the two so EVs on the move can connect with one another and with mobile charging stations. (Apple filed a patent for something similar in 2018.)

A few weeks ago, Swarup Bhunia and his colleagues at UoF’s electrical and computer engineering department posted a paper explaining how it would work. Here’s part of the Abstract:

We propose Peer-to-Peer Car Charging (P2C2), a highly scalable novel technique for charging EVs on the go with minimal cost overhead. We allow EVs to share charge among each other based on the instructions from a cloud-based control system.

Continue reading… “Peer-to-peer highway EV charging would use telescoping cables between moving cars”

Automobiles, Electric Vehicles, Energy, government, Green Friendly, Science & Technology News

A no-brainer stimulus idea: Electrify USPS mail trucks

May 26, 2020

Electric vehicles for the US Postal Service would reduce noise, air, and carbon pollution in every community.

With the US trapped in a historic lockdown, everyone agrees that enormous federal spending is necessary to keep the economy going over the next year and beyond — and everyone has their own ideas about how, exactly, that federal spending should be targeted. A whole genre of essays and white papers devoted to clever stimulus plans has developed almost overnight.

I’ve contributed to that genre: Go here for my ideal recovery/stimulus plan, here for what I think Democrats’ bottom-line demands should be in stimulus negotiations, here for my take on the wisdom of investing in clean energy, and here for why devoting stimulus money to fossil fuels is short-sighted.

Now I want to offer a much more modest idea — a fun idea, even. It’s a win-win-win proposal that would be worth doing even if the economy were at full employment, but a total no-brainer in an economy that needs a kickstart. The cost would be a tiny rounding error amid the trillions of dollars of stimulus being contemplated, and it would produce outsized social benefits in the form of improved public health, more efficient public services, and lower climate pollution.

I’m talking about electrifying mail trucks.

Continue reading… “A no-brainer stimulus idea: Electrify USPS mail trucks”

Automobiles, Aviation, Electric Vehicles, Entertainment, Science & Technology News

Get ready for all-electric flying car races, they’re coming

April 29, 2020

The Formula E electric-vehicle racing series was conceived in 2011. Nearly a decade later, EVs are well on the way to mass commercialization. Airspeeder, the first motorsports program for electric flying cars, this week announced raising a seven-figure sum to launch its series. Founders of the flying EV series believe it could accelerate progress toward mainstream sustainable, electric air mobility.

The company announced it had secured funding from two of Australia’s leading technology venture capital firms, Saltwater Capital and Jelix Ventures. Alauda, the tech company behind the series, is based in Adelaide, South Australia. Other investors include EQUALS, a financial firm, and the German logistics company DHL.

Continue reading… “Get ready for all-electric flying car races, they’re coming”

Aviation, Electric Vehicles, new technology, Science & Technology News

This new all-electric VTOL is the airplane-helicopter combo the future always promised

April 18, 2020

The Jaunt Journey Is a Combination Helicopter and Airplane Jaunt Air Mobility

Jaunt Air Mobility says the Journey will have 175-mph cruise speed and be 65 percent quieter than a traditional helicopter, all with a silky-smooth ride.

With Uber Elevate’s announcement that it plans to start its first urban air mobility network in 2023, the electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) race is on. Uber’s partnership with Joby is big news, as is Joby’s electric four-person aircraft, but Jaunt Air Mobility could be an equally important partner.

Jaunt has introduced the Journey, a radically different type of “compound aircraft” that combines what it sees as the best features of helicopters and fixed-wing airplanes. Technically, it’s called a gyrocopter, an aircraft type that has been around since the mid-‘30s.

Continue reading… “This new all-electric VTOL is the airplane-helicopter combo the future always promised”

Driverless vehicles, Electric Vehicles, Science & Technology News, Shopping, UPS

UPS orders 10,000 electric delivery trucks, plans driverless truck test

April 10, 2020

ATLANTA – UPS ordered 10,000 electric delivery trucks from electric vehicle maker Arrival, in what it calls a move to accelerate electrification of the fleet.

It is the largest single order for electric vehicles from the shipping giant based in Sandy Springs.

The two companies are working together to develop electric vehicles with advanced driver assistance systems, including the potential for automated movement in UPS warehouses, technology that it will test starting this year.

UPS also announced that it is partnering with Waymo to test autonomous vehicle package pickups in the Phoenix area. UPS said Waymo’s Chrysler Pacific minivans will transport packages from UPS stores to a UPS sorting facility, with a driver on board to monitor operations. The technology allows the company to test subsequent pickups at UPS stores.

Continue reading… “UPS orders 10,000 electric delivery trucks, plans driverless truck test”

Coronavirus, Electric Vehicles, Food, Science & Technology News, Transportation

Illegal e-bikes OK’d in NYC as food delivery lifeline amid coronavirus crisis

April 9, 2020

New York City’s ban of electric bicycles has been shelved to help support food delivery during the coronavirus crisis.

Despite the growing popularity of electric bicycles, they have been outlawed in New York City.

The issue has largely been centered around throttle e-bikes, which use a hand throttle similar to a motorbike and don’t require the user to pedal to engage the electric motor.

These types of electric bicycles were the go-to method of transportation for NYC’s approximately 40,000 food delivery workers, according to the New York Post. The crackdown on these workers, who are mostly from foreign and minority backgrounds, has long been considered discriminatory by many activist groups.

Efforts have been made to legalize e-bikes in NYC, including the popular throttle-powered e-bikes. But after New York Governor Andrew Cuomo vetoed the latest bill seeking their legalization in December 2019, such e-bikes have remained banned.

Many restaurants have now shifted to take-away and delivery-only options, temporarily ceasing in-restaurant dining.

In response, New York City has decided to temporarily suspend its crackdown on electric bicycles like those used by food delivery workers. The suspension in enforcement means that the NYPD will no longer issue tickets or confiscate electric bikes during the crisis.

Continue reading… “Illegal e-bikes OK’d in NYC as food delivery lifeline amid coronavirus crisis”

Automobiles, Batteries, Electric Vehicles, Energy, Science & Technology News

If you’re living with an electric car, what type of house you have is more important than you think

April 8, 2020

If you live in a flat or don’t have off-road parking, running an electric vehicle may be more difficult than you think, writes Sean O’Grady

If there is one hard lesson I have learned about living with an electric car, it is that it is not for everyone. At least not for now.

Sure, there are loads of great things you can say about electrification – all true. When you next get a chance to go to a pub with friends and family, you can argue the toss over whether they are in reality, “well- to wheel” greener than an equivalent vehicle with an internal combustion engine. I’ve seen different versions of that, with different assumptions about the electricity required to manufacture them, the energy need to extract scarce minerals for the batteries, and whether scrapping perfectly sound petrol/diesel/hybrid vehicles. (Generally I think the electrics are, like-for-like still always greener within almost any parameters, and will eventually “break even” over their lifetime in their environmental benefits). You can, over anther pint, enjoy a rational discussion about whether the usual price premium attached electric cars makes sense over any given mileage – balancing price/lease costs with far lower fuel costs and maintenance bills (the more miles you do, the more sensible the electric option can be). You can also take a view on whether they take the “fun” out of driving or not (they don’t, on the whole). And so on.

But the most salient fact is not what kind of electric car you want, but what kind of dwelling you inhabit. If you live in a flat, say, or a terraced house without any off-street parking (and therefore an easy way to charge your vehicle up), the electric car seems to be an impractical proposition. If you do have a way of plugging one in to a faster charging external wall socket, then you’re fine, in principle. It’s about a simple as that. That is why many of the complaints about the very real inadequacy and unreliability of the charging network is a bit beside the point. You shouldn’t need to recharge all that often away from home. You take the car, drive around for a bit, come home and plug it in ready for the next day.

Continue reading… “If you’re living with an electric car, what type of house you have is more important than you think”

Coronavirus, Electric Vehicles, Energy, Environment, Science & Technology News

The coronavirus is showing us how clean the air can be if electric cars were the norm

March 31, 2020

With all the loss of lives and financial destruction that the coronavirus has brought us, it’s hard to look at silver linings from this crisis, but there’s one that’s becoming obvious: cleaner air.

It might not last for long, but it’s giving us a glimpse at what we could experience if the world was to rapidly transition to electric transportation.

With shelter-in-place and stay-at-home orders all over the world, passenger car traffic has been way down and people have been burning way less petrol.

Continue reading… “The coronavirus is showing us how clean the air can be if electric cars were the norm”

Electric Vehicles, Green Friendly, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News

Case unveils all-electric backhoe with 90% lower cost of operation

March 24, 2020

Electrification goes beyond the passenger car industry and it is now starting to take hold in the construction equipment industry.

Case, one of the largest construction equipment companies, has unveiled a new all-electric backhoe, which it claims has up to 90% lower cost of operation.

The company says that the new vehicle, the CASE 580 EV, has equivalent performance as its diesel counterparts:

“The CASE 580 EV (electric vehicle) delivers backhoe power and performance equivalent to its diesel counterpart while also providing instant torque, lower jobsite noise, lower daily and lifetime operating costs, reduced maintenance demands and absolutely zero emissions.”

Continue reading… “Case unveils all-electric backhoe with 90% lower cost of operation”

Automation, Driverless vehicles, Electric Vehicles, Mass Transit, Science & Technology News

Taipei to start uncrewed bus road testing in May

March 23, 2020

DRIVERLESS: Autonomous vehicles are a solution to a shortage of nighttime bus drivers, officials said, with tests being conducted on Xinyi’s dedicated bus lanes

The Taipei Department of Transportation yesterday announced that it would start road tests for autonomous buses in May and allow city residents to take part in the trial services beginning in September.

The city government is looking to automated buses as a solution to the shortage of nighttime public vehicle drivers, officials from the transportation and information technology departments told a news conference.

Following the signing of a letter of intent between the city government and Turing Drive Co last year, the company submitted to the Ministry of Economic Affairs its “trial project for uncrewed vehicles with innovative technology.”

Continue reading… “Taipei to start uncrewed bus road testing in May”

Batteries, Electric Automobile, Electric Vehicles, Energy, Science & Technology News

Era of wireless charging for electric vehicles is coming

March 22, 2020

Wireless charging for electric vehicles is today’s most cutting-edge technology. Why? It is the most efficient, futuristic, scalable–in short–awesome alternative we have to gasoline. While tech giants such as Uber are placing their bets on autonomous cars, major key players such as Jaguar Land Rover are mass-producing electric cars. What’s more, Fordis releasing fully-electric SUV and other market players are on the verge of joining the trend.

The more electric cars roam around the city, the more will be the demand for wireless charging. The global wireless electric vehicle charging market is expected to reach $1.48 billion by 2025, growing at a colossal CAGR of 21.8% from 2018 to 2025.This rapid growth is due to rise in sales of electric vehicles and increase in demand for energy-efficient sources as an alternative fuel.

Continue reading… “Era of wireless charging for electric vehicles is coming”