Electric Vehicles & Cars - Page 37

Australia is a great country, but the states, cities, and towns aren't connected well enough - but this could all change with the introduction of Hyperloop, from Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk. Rob Lloyd, former Cisco boss, now runs Hyperloop One, with engineers from companies like NASA and Boeing, with them working on "passive magnetic levitation technology".

Hyperloop One is an LA-based company that secured $80 million earlier this year, publicly teasing its propulsion system, the closest yet that we've been to Musk's vision of transportation for the future. Hyperloop One's VP for Worldwide Business Development, Alan James, talked with The Australian, where he said: "We're very keen to explore the potential for doing proof of operations in Australia and the reason for that is there's a clear long-term need for ultra-fast transport on the Australian east coast".

Hyperloop has been teased at taking passengers across distances that would otherwise take hours upon hours, at speeds of up to 621mph (1000kmph), all in freight pods that zoom across large distances in low-pressure tubes. James continued: "Melbourne to Sydney is the third busiest air corridor in the world and we can give you Melbourne downtown to Sydney downtown in 55 minutes. So we would be looking, either in NSW or Victoria, or possibly in ACT, to develop the first section of that route, to prove the operation of Hyperloop, to get regulatory approval".

We've been hearing lots of nuggets of information on Volta, NVIDIA's next generation GPU architecture, and now the company has just pushed its first Volta-based product out with the announcement of Xavier, its new supercomputer designed for autonomous cars.

NVIDIA unveiled Xavier out of the blue at its GPU Technology Conference in Amsterdam, with the Volta-based system-on-a-chip wicked fast, thanks to the new 512 cores from the next-gen Volta architecture. Volta allows the Xavier chip to support dual 8K HDR video inputs, with NVIDIA saying in the past that Volta would be much more memory bandwidth efficient, and smaller than previous designs.

Xavier also supports NVLink thanks to the Volta GPU, with the GPU being joined by IBM's upcoming Power9 chips, with both being installed into the U.S. Department of Energy's Summit supercomputer in 2018. NVLink is 7-10x faster than PCIe 3.0, so the Summit supercomputer will be a huge chunk faster than ever thanks to NVIDIA's new NVLink tech.

Google's self-driving car was involved in yet another accident and this one was the worst so far. The autonomous Lexus sustained major damage in an accident involving a commercial van.

According to the report, the van driver ran a red light and collided with the modified Lexus SUV. The van hit the passenger side of the door and damaged it heavily but no one was hurt. The accident occurred in Mountain View and Lexus had to be towed from the scene.

Thought your expensive new Tesla Model S electric vehicle was safe? Think again, as Chinese hackers have broken into a Model S vehicle that was 12 miles away, where they could even play around with the braking system on the car.

The hackers were from the company Keen Security Lab, which displayed they could hack into a Model S by creating a Wi-Fi hotspot that the car connected to while browsing the web. Once the connection is established, the hackers could use the car's CAN bus (Controller Area Network) which is the system that oversees the systems inside the Tesla.

Once the CAN was controlled, the hackers could close the car doors, slide the seats back and forward, move the side mirrors, adjust the windshield wipers - and the worst, play around with the braking system. The hackers alerted Tesla to the security hole, with the electric car maker pushing out an over-the-air update to protect Tesla owners.

This is something I didn't think I'd be typing, but Toyota has been working on a car that runs on your poop. The company has turned human waste into renewable hydrogen fuel to power its new electric car.

Chief Engineer of Toyota's Hydrogen Fuel Cell Car, Yoshikazu Tanaka, said that human waste is expected to solve Toyota's big 'chicken or the egg' problem. Toyota has said that nobody wants to buy their hydrogen cars when there are no hydrogen fuel stations, adding that no one wants to build a hydrogen fuel station when there are not a mass amount of hydrogen cars on the road.

Toyota is now producing the human waste-based fuel in a wastewater treatment plant in Fukuoka, Japan. How does it work? The sewage is separated into solids and liquid, with the solid waste called sewage sludge. In order to break down the solid waste, microorganisms are added, creating a biogas - which is around 60% methane, and 40% carbon dioxide.

The electric car market is heating up, but the mainstream market needs to adopt them, and won't do that until they begin appearing for less than $50,000 - and much less. Chevrolet's upcoming Chevy Bolt electric vehicle will be priced starting at $29,995 after a federal tax credit of $7,500.

General Motors announced the news that its first electric car will be capable of over 200 miles on a single charge, for under $30K. Future owners of the Chevy Bolt will have to pay at least $7,500 in federal income tax in order to be eligible for the full tax credit, as it's not a refundable purchase, reports The Verge.

Before the credit, the Chevy Bolt will cost $37,495 for the LT trim model, while the higher-end Premium trim starts at $40,905. The base trim features a bunch of standards like 10.2-inch touchscreen, a 60kWh battery that should have you driving around 238 miles, and a powertrain that pushes out 200 horsepower, and 266 pound-feet of torque.

Apple has reportedly made swift changes to its Project Titan car project, with sources of The New York Times stating "dozens" of layoffs have taken place.

The New York Times isn't the only outlet with information, with a Bloomberg report stating that under new leadership with Bob Mansfield, Apple's focus on the automotive industry has changed from its own car, to just autonomous driving technology. The NYT reports that the layoffs were internally pushed as being part of a reboot of the project, while Apple works out what it wants to do.

Apple has been ripping employees away from the likes of Tesla and EV battery makers, so these new plans might leave some of those staff who left their jobs out in the lurch.

Almost four months after being spotted in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, self-driving Uber cars have shown up in the streets of San Francisco, California, according to an SFist report.

The vehicles in question sport the sensor array and Uber ATC logo, indicating they are the real deal.

The company is not publicly listed as having a testing permit in the state, so either a permit has been required very recently and the information has not been updated, or it's circumventing laws, as it's been known to do before. Uber declined to comment on the reports.

Volkswagen has been in the headlines throughout 2016 for all of the wrong reasons, but the German automotive giant has just te ased that it will be pushing into electric vehicles in a big way in the future.

The company has just teased its first next-gen electric vehicle, with VW set to officially debut the EV at the Paris motor show in October. VW promises a Golf-like sized electric vehicle with an interior that is similar to the Passat, with recharge speeds on the battery being rather impressive - just 15 minutes of charge will provide around 300 miles of driving.

VW Group CEO Matthias Müller confirmed the news with Autocar, adding that the price tag would be lower than a comparable combustion engine vehicle. Volkswagen should have the EV on the road towards the end of 2018, or early-2019, but we might not see it released in a global way until 2025.

Tesla has just announced a new, even faster version of its Model S electric vehicle; the P100D. The new P100D is capable of going from 0-60mph in just 2.5 seconds, with Tesla adding its the third-fastest production car ever. The only ones that beat it are the Ferrari LaFerrari, which costs a huge $1.4 million, and the Porsche 918 Spyder, which costs $845,000.

Tesla's new P100D starts at only $135,000 and it's quicker than a huge list of expensive cars, something that most people wouldn't have thought was possible a few years ago. The new P100D has a range of 315 miles, up from the 294 miles on the 90kWh battery, an increase of around 7%. The new Model X P100D is capable of 289 miles, up from 250 miles on the previous Model X P90D. The larger battery will be made available exclusively for the all-wheel drive model with the Ludicrous Mode option.

There are small changes and improvements with the P100D, including some upgrades made to the wiring harness and other small differences, but the drivetrain remains the same. The new 100kWh battery uses the same cell technology, but Tesla executives have teased the advancements in the battery pack technology being a leap in itself. Tesla CTO JB Straubel explains: "It's a pretty big change in the battery module and pack technology. It's a complete redo on the cooling architecture".

Tesla is in the headlines again with another Model S owner experiencing an Autopilot hiccup, where Model S owner Mark Molthan enabling Autopilot on the highway in "ideal weather conditions", reports BGR - but during a bend in the road, the Model S didn't adjust for the turn, slamming into a guard rail.

Bloomberg reported that Molthan said in the seconds leading up to the crash, he reached into his glove compartment to get a piece of cloth to clean his dash - you know, as you do when the car is in autonomous mode, you can do stuff. With the Autopilot mode enabled, you're meant to have your hands close to the wheel in case of emergencies - but this was just a few seconds. Also, you'd think that having Autopilot enabled, it would've been able to detect a simple turn - and it didn't, imagine if that was another car or a guard rail next to a cliff.

Molthan said: "I used Autopilot all the time on that stretch of the highway, but now I feel like this is extremely dangerous. It gives you a false sense of security. I'm not ready to be a test pilot. It missed the curve and drove straight into the guardrail. The car didn't stop - it actually continued to accelerate after the first impact into the guardrail".

Ford has announced plans to have a fully autonomous car on the road by 2021, which will be used in a ride sharing service. Ford CEO Mark Fields said that autonomous cars will be just as important to Ford as the assembly line. The company says there will be no steering wheel, no gas or brake pedals will be found in the fully autonomous car.

Fields said: "We're designing the first generation of autonomous vehicles specifically for ride sharing and ride hailing", and elaborated during the event "today we're no longer just an auto company, we're also a mobility company." Ford isn't putting all of its focus into autonomous cars, with its regular vehicles still being manufactured and sold, instead the company is seeing the value in the future of autonomous cars and is deciding to put large resources into it.

Ford CTO Raj Nair said that instead of the company overthinking the smaller steps into autonomous technology and instead head first, "We abandoned the stepping stones of driver assist technologies and decided to take the full leap to fully autonomous," explains Nair. He added that Ford will have three times its development fleet by the end of the year, from 10 to 30 vehicles, to 90 vehicles in the next year.

Tesla's autonomous driving technology continues to improve, but as with all new things that are ahead of their time, the media dives into full panic mode when something goes wrong. But what about when something goes right?

Joshua Neally from Branson, Missouri was driving his Model X electric car when the Autopilot feature helped him get to a hospital without crashing his car, or worse. Slate reports: "Neally was about 5 miles out of Springfield, near a set of interchanges just beginning to clog with merging vehicles, when he felt something coil and stiffen in his abdomen. At first he thought it was a pulled muscle. But the pain forked upward from his stomach, he said, until it felt like "a steel pole through my chest." When it refused to subside, Neally remembers calling his wife and agreeing through gasps that he should probably go to the emergency room".

When Neally experienced the pain, he was quick to react by enabling the Model X's Autopilot technology, which helped him get through the heavy traffic. Tesla's autonomous driving technology only works on highways for now, so Neally needed to drive the shorter distance to the hospital, while Autopilot handled over 20 miles of highway driving.

Tesla founder Elon Musk has said that the company is working on some exciting stuff in its autonomous technology sector, with Musk saying: "Full autonomy is going to come a lot faster than anyone thinks it will. And what we've got coming is going to blow people's minds. I mean, it blows my mind".

The company has increased the production of electric vehicles to 2000 per week, with the company making 14,402 vehicles in Q2 2016, an increase of 43% over the same three-month period of 2015. Around 2/3 of those vehicles were the Model S vehicles, while 4638 of those sales were the higher-end Model X SUV models. For the whole of 2016, Tesla has made 18,345 electric vehicles, short of their 20,000 goal by the first half of the year.

Tesla's upcoming Model 3 is planned to hit the production line on July 1, 2017 but it might get pushed back a few weeks or a month through issues with suppliers.

Tesla has committed to its plans of being the world leader in electric vehicle and battery technology, and has now increased that power by acquiring Solar City for $2.6 billion.

The new merged business will sell solar panels, Powerwall batteries that store the collected energy from the sun, and the electric cars like the Model S. Elon Musk did promise in his "Master Plan Part Deus" two weeks ago that we would see an "end-to-end clean energy" solution - doing what no other companies are doing right now.

Solar City recently said it will introduce an "integrated solar and storage offering", and a new solar product that is "focused on the 5 million new roofs installed each year in the US". Musk has said that any merger wouldn't cause issues for its plans on the Model 3 EV and Gigafactory, with the latter just opening recently.

7-Eleven has just delivered its first package of goods with a drone, in the first FAA-approved drone delivery taking place in Reno, Nevada earlier this month.

On July 11, Flirtey flew an autonomous drone a mile from a 7-Eleven to a private home in Reno, with the delivery including a chicken sandwich, donuts, coffee, candy, and Slurpees - awesome, huh? The goods were packaged into two containers, which were flown separately. When they arrived, each contained was lowered to the ground by the drone, and then the homeowners grabbed the goods.

The drone flew autonomously to the Reno home, using the on-board GPS to navigate. Flirtey chose a store to delivery from, surveying consumers within a one-mile radius to see if they wanted to be part of the initial drone delivery program.

Facebook's first test flight for Aquila - the solar-powered plane that beams internet to remote regions -- was a success. Beginning on June 28 in Arizona, it went even better than expected: total flight time was about 288 minutes, much longer than the planned 96 minutes.

The plane -- developed by subsidiary company Ascenta in Bridgwater, Somerset - has the wingspan of a typical airline plane, but weighs less than a car, and consumes just 5,000 watts of energy.

"We're encouraged by this first successful flight, but we have a lot of work ahead of us," says Facebook head of engineering and infrastruture Jay Parikh. "In our next tests, we will fly Aquila faster, higher and longer, eventually taking it above 60,000 feet."

Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed the company's master plan in 2006, which was essentially to sell a low volume, expensive car, then a medium volume less expensive car, then a high volume affordable car, with each funding the one after it. 10 years later and with those lofty goals nearly accomplished, the time has come to pull the curtain on master plan part two, a key tenet of which includes your car making you money.

Self-driving safety in Tesla vehicles is largely determined by "fleet learning", the cumulative data derived from its self-driving vehicles and their experiences on the road. Turns out they're willing to pay you for that data: in the future, tapping a button on the Tesla app will add it to the "shared fleet", and you can set it to self-drive and provide data while you're at work or on vacation. The income is no paltry sum, either: Musk says it could potentially exceed the monthly loan or lease cost of the vehicle.

Further on the self-driving front, the vision is that once it's fully approved by regulators, you'll be able to 'summon' your Tesla from nearly anywhere (presumably with the app).

Tesla has found massive success in its Model X 75D electric vehicle, but the $83,000 starting price turns most people away. Well, the company has just unveiled its new Model X 60D, with a starting price of $74,000.

The new Model X 60D has a 60kWh battery that provides an EPA-estimated 200-mile range, which is around 37 miles less than the more expensive model. It has the same performance as the 75D, with a top speed of 130mph and acceleration of 0-60 in 6 seconds.

It looks like Tesla could be pushing out the new Model X 60D with gimped software, introducing the 60D model as a slightly less powerful 75D, all done with software. You can order the new Model X 60D right here, with delivery starting in September.

Tesla Motors and SpaceX boss Elon Musk has teased on Twitter over the weekend that he's working on 'Top Secret Tesla Masterplan, Part 2' which he's hoping "to publish later this week".

What the hell is Tesla's master plan? Well, BGR reports that on August 2, 2006 Musk published the first part of Tesla's Masterplan. The first part of Tesla's Masterplan was titled "The Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan (just between you and me)" and outlined Musk's vision for electric vehicles, where he detailed the specific steps his company was planning in order to bring an electric car that was affordable, to the masses. If you look at Musk's detailed plan, he has pretty much completed his goals bit by bit:

So, in short, the master plan is: