VW unveils charging butler robot concept for electric cars

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Volkswagen has unveiled a new concept for a charging butler robot that can charge electric vehicles in a parking garage using mobile battery packs.

The German automaker says that “mobile robots will charge electric vehicles completely autonomously in the future.”

Mark Möller, Head of Development at Volkswagen Group Components, commented:

“The mobile charging robot will spark a revolution when it comes to charging in different parking facilities, such as multistorey car parks, parking spaces and underground car parks because we bring the charging infrastructure to the car and not the other way around. With this, we are making almost every car park electric, without any complex individual infrastructural measures. It’s a visionary prototype, which can be made into reality quite quickly, if the general conditions are right”,

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Our pathetically slow shift to clean energy, in five charts

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We’d better pick up the pace in the 2020s.

By most measures that matter, clean energy had a stellar decade.

The cost of large wind and solar farms dropped by 70% and nearly 90%, respectively. Meanwhile, renewable-power plants around the world are producing four times more electricity than they did 10 years ago.

Similarly, electric vehicles were barely a blip at the outset of the 2010s. But automakers were on track to sell 1.8 million EVs this year, as range increased, prices fell, and companies introduced a variety of models.

But the swift growth in these small sectors still hasn’t added up to major changes in the massive global energy system, or reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions. So far, cleaner technologies have mostly met rising energy demands, not cut deeply into existing fossil-fuel infrastructure, as the charts that follow make clear.

That’s a problem. Cutting emissions rapidly enough to combat the increasing threats of climate change will require complete overhauls of our power plants, factories, and vehicle fleets, all within a few decades.

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General Motors wants to do away with the steering wheel

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Almost all major automakers are gearing up to enter the new era of self-driven cars. Taking this concept further is General Motors, which wants to do away with the steering wheel altogether in its latest self-driven model.

The automaker has put in a request to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to allow it to test self-driving cars sans a steering wheel or other human controls on American roads.

The NHTSA revealed that GM and Softbank-backed startup Nuro petitioned the agency in 2018 seeking exemption from U.S. road safety rules that were written a long time ago and are meant to control cars with human drivers.

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Impossible Foods’ faux pork is just as convincing as its fake beef

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It can be used in dumplings, baos and more.

Last year, Impossible Foods made headlines at CES when it introduced a new formulation of its Impossible Burger. It tasted so close to the real deal that we even gave it a Best of CES award. Now, Impossible Foods is back again at the annual tech event to introduce its latest product: Impossible Pork.

To be clear, this is a different product from the Impossible Sausage that was announced last year. “Sausage is a specific application of meat,” said David Lee, Impossible Foods CFO, to Engadget. “Impossible Pork, however, is one that can be used in any [ground pork] application.” While sausage might be good as a breakfast patty or a pizza topping, said Lee, Impossible Pork is a more general imitation pork product that would be good for dishes like baos or dumplings.

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Hyundai unveils new Uber air taxi design

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Hyundai and Uber team on the S-A1 at CES 2020

Hyundai has used the grand platform of CES 2020 to unveil its take on the future of urban mobility. At the heart of its plans is its S-A1, an electric flying taxi developed with Uber. A concept at this stage, the S-A1 is a four-passenger electric aircraft designed for short urban journeys made possible by helicopter-style vertical take-off and landing.

In the S-A1, Hyundai has become the first partner of Uber Elevate, Uber’s grand plan for transforming urban transportation by taking its ride-sharing business model to the sky. Hyundai’s S-A1 design builds on the design concepts established and shared by Uber Elevate in an attempt to help manufacturers stake a claim in the embryonic air taxi market. The S-A1 also constitutes the first fruit of Hyundai’s Urban Air Mobility (UAM) division. (Though confusingly, Hyundai also refers to its air taxis as UAM.)

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How real estate will radically change in the new decade

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After a roaring decade, real estate is looking a lot less promising in the 2020s.

A sense of gloom hangs in the air. “Bloodbath,” “free fall” and “slump” were just some of the choice idioms deployed by headline writers to describe the New York real estate market during the twilight of 2019. Across the pond, townhouses in central London—long the favored investment vehicle for billionaires from Bahrain to Belarus—have lost 20 percent of their value in a five-year nosedive. Worldwide, according to Savills, a global property consultancy, “everything is trending to zero.”

“This is not a normal cycle,” says Frederick Peters, CEO of Warburg Realty. Even after the global financial crisis, luxury property prices in the world’s capitals recovered fully within two years and went on to smash all records. This time round, brokers and analysts agree, it’s different.

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New battery tech can keep your smartphone charged for five continuous days

h can keep your smartphone charged for five continuous days

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The new high-capacity lithium-sulfur batteries can pave way for cheaper electric cars and solar grids.

Researchers have developed a new solution that is capable of powering smartphones for five continuous days or electric cars to run over 1,000 km without needing to refuel.

The new battery solution does away with the traditional lithium-ion combination in modern batteries that power devices such as smartwatches, smartphones, and even pacemakers. Instead, researchers used lithium-sulfur batteries to achieve ultra-high capacity.

Researchers at Australia-based Monash University said the team could re-configure the design of sulfur cathodes using the existing materials in standard lithium-ion batteries. The reconfiguration helped researchers achieve higher stress levels without registering any drop in overall capacity or performance.

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What is a futurist? 12 things to know about the coolest job you never knew you could have

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When you hear the word futurist, what comes to mind? You might think about those fortune teller stands at the fair — for $50, you can learn at what age you’ll die, if you will ever find true love, and address any other deep-seated insecurities. But where fortune tellers will root their predictions in divine forces and mystical unexplained powers, futurists make their predictions based on stone cold facts. A futurist is a kind of consultant who makes predictions based on future trends they identify. Their point of view can even impact how companies design products or how communities run their outreach, which makes being a futurist officially one of the coolest jobs of all time.

“When I was younger I didn’t know this job existed, so I often ask myself how I ended up with it,” Ford’s in-house futurist, Sheryl Connelly, tells Bustle. “What I really wanted to do was be an artist. But when I look back I feel like it was divine intervention or that it was my destiny.”

Futurists like Connelly spend their days recognizing trends, explaining why they’re recognizing it, and suggests how the trend might make an impact on a global scale — so that brands can take advantage of that forward-thinking insight for their future products. Sound complex? I agree, which is why I was surprised to learn that it’s a field that anyone can fall into — among other mind-blowing facts about this job. Here are 12 things all future futurists should know about this unconventional career path.

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The coming surge of separatism

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Why splittists will be on a roll around the world

FROM CATALONIA to Kashmir, and from Hong Kong to Scotland, separatist movements will make headlines in 2020. At best, this will lead to political turbulence and tension. At worst, it could lead to violence.

Across the world, two types of identity-driven movements are increasingly clashing—and feeding off each other. On the one hand, there are separatist groups that seek to break away from their nation-state and establish new countries; on the other, there is the outraged and assertive nationalism of existing states, determined to crush separatism.

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These are the 6 hottest jobs of 2020

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New year, new job. Maybe even a new career. If you’ve been making promises like this to yourself for years, 2020 may be the time to turn them into reality. After all, with the unemployment rate the lowest it’s been in half a century, job seekers have the upper hand. Not only do employers have to work harder to gain their attention, but in some jobs they have to craft more attractive offers, too.

“Increasing pay is the simplest and most powerful way to attract and retain workers,” says Nick Bunker, an economist at Indeed Hiring Lab. “Money speaks, and it speaks pretty loudly.”

But that’s not the only good news: Hiring managers can’t afford to be as picky either, says Guy Berger, principal economist at LinkedIn.

“Employers who used to demand people who went to top-tier schools are now more open-minded,” he says. Not only that, but “hiring managers are much more receptive to individuals who need to grow into a job or want to try something new.”

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Up to half of developers work remotely; here’s who’s hiring them

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Forty-five percent of developers work remotely at least part of the time – why not? Glassdoor and Remotive have compiled lists of employers actively hiring remote IT workers.

One of the great things about technology work is that it doesn’t really matter where it’s performed. You’re on the network, with minimum latency, regardless if you’re down the hall or on another continent. For employees, working from home — or from a remote office — means greater flexibility and reduced stress from commutes. For employers — and this is extremely important in the IT field — it means being able to draw from a vast, global pool of talent, with no concerns about relocation. In addition, work could even be handed off from time zone to time zone for more rapid turnarounds.

It is estimated that there are between 18 to 21 million developers across the globe. Of this, only about one million — or five percent — are in the United States, so you can see how an employer in the US, or anywhere else for that matter, needs to spread its recruiting and staffing wings.

It’s in the best interest for tech-oriented employers, then, to be open to this global pool of talent. There are a number of companies leading the way, actively hiring globally distributed tech workforces. Glassdoor recently published a list of leading companies that encourage remote work, which includes some prominent tech companies, and Remotive has been compiling a comprehensive list of more than 2,500 companies of all sizes that hire remote IT workers.

Survey data from Stack Overflow, analyzed by Itoro Ikon, finds that out of almost 89,000 developers participating in its most recent survey, 45% work remotely at least part of the time, and 10% indicated they are full-time remote workers. A majority of remote workers, 58%, are regular full-time employees.

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This leaf-shaped bottle cap condenses and collects atmospheric moisture, turning it into drinking water

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Designed to magically ‘turn air into water’, the Limbe is a new sort of dehumidifier that works without electricity, giving its user access to drinking water throughout the day. Its unique leaf-inspired design harks back to how water droplets condense on the surface of leaves, while its 3D printed intricate PET structure helps guide those water droplets down the ‘veins of the leaf’ into Limbe’s central axis which collects the water in your regular plastic drinking bottle.

Fabien envisioned the Limbe as an easy way to allow people with no access to running water, to easily capture atmospheric water vapor for drinking purposes. While the Limbe works best in high-humidity areas, it can work wonders in deserts and drought-struck regions too, gathering condensed fog in the early hours of dawn, filling up a single bottle. Plus, its ability to be printed or even molded at a relatively low cost means anyone can dehumidify air into drinking water… without electricity!

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