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Following the launch of the limited-edition Pioneer Series electric micro car last month, Micro Mobility Systems AG has now opened up an online configuration tool to Microlino reservation holders and confirmed pricing.

The road to production of the Microlino electric bubble car began with a very Isetta-looking all-electric design at the 2016 Geneva Motor Show. This version didn’t reach production, but underwent a retro-modern redesign in 2020 in collaboration with thousands of reservation holders.

Three Microlino 2.0 series editions were announced last year, followed most recently by the launch of the first 999 vehicles to go into production at the company’s dedication manufacturing facility in Turin, Italy.

BEIJING — As Chinese companies race for a slice of the world’s largest car market, they’re betting heavily on assisted driving technology.

China sold nearly 21.5 million passenger cars last year. That’s roughly the equivalent of sales in the United States, Europe and Japan combined, according to industry data accessed through the Wind database.

Electric cars have grabbed a growing share of that Chinese market. Tesla, start-ups like Nio and traditional automakers have jumped in. After initially competing on battery driving range and in-car online entertainment, companies increasingly emphasize assisted driving capability.

Kaizen Clean Energy (KCE) and ZincFive have come together to develop an integrated distributed energy solution for EV charging, hydrogen fueling and backup power. The new solution is said to provide the lowest delivered cost for hydrogen fueling, as well as up to 2,300 kg/day of hydrogen production, which is equivalent to 38 MWh of usable energy, in a 40-foot, movable containerized solution. It can be islanded or grid-connected, with no risk of battery thermal runaway and a small volume of hydrogen stored on site. The system integrates KCE’s hydrogen generator, ZincFive’s immediate power nickel-zinc batteries, and fuel cells from Power Cell to offer customers modular, scalable economic fueling as a service. Robert Meaney, co-founder of KCE, told pv magazine that the energy input comes from methanol. He said the system is essentially the clean version of a diesel generator. It uses the ZincFive battery for immediate demand response as the methanol-to-hydrogen system ramps up to full production over the first 15 minutes. After entering full production mode, the batteries shut off and the reformer takes over the full power demand. The system is charger agnostic and can support multiple DC fast chargers at once. KCE has started accepting pre-orders and plans to deploy a 20-foot, 150 kW solution with pilot customers in the fourth quarter of 2022.

Lightyear has launched the final design of its long-range, production-ready solar car. The model, which has been renamed “Lightyear 0,” has a Worldwide Harmonized Light Vehicle Test Procedure (WLTP) range of 625 kilometers and consumption of 10.5 kWh per 100 kilometers. However, the Dutch startup claims that a theoretical range of 695 kilometers could be achieved, with a battery pack capacity of 60 kWh. “The optimized solar roof and holistic design mean that the car can drive for weeks, even months, without charging,” the company said. Lightyear is already readying its second solar electric car, which will be available by late 2024 or early 2025.

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed an upcycling approach that adds value to discarded plastics for reuse in additive manufacturing, or 3D printing. The readily adoptable, scalable method introduces a closed-loop strategy that could globally reduce plastic waste and cut carbon emissions tied to plastic production.

Results published in Science Advances detail the simple process for upcycling a commodity plastic into a more robust material compatible with industry 3D-printing methods.

The team upgraded acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, or ABS, a popular thermoplastic found in everyday objects ranging from auto parts to tennis balls to LEGO blocks. ABS is a popular feedstock for fused filament fabrication, or FFF, one of the most widely used 3D-printing methods. The upcycled version boasts enhanced strength, toughness and chemical resistance, making it attractive for FFF to meet new and higher performance applications not achievable with standard ABS.

Over the years, Masset, B.C., master carver Jaalen Edenshaw has advocated for clean energy use on the archipelago, a region that is disconnected from B.C. Hydro’s main electricity grid and mainly reliant on diesel.

Since last October, the Haida carver has been teaming up with brother Gwaai to carve a totem pole in honour of Kaay’ahl Laanas hereditary chief Watson Price (Gaahlaay) at a workshop in Masset powered by 18 solar panels that can generate as much as 40 kWh of electricity a day — enough to fully charge a small electric car.

Edenshaw, a member of the Ts’aahl Eagle Clan, is renowned for his traditional creations, including masks, canoes, and 13-metre high red cedar totem poles that are on display in galleries around the world.

An international team of researchers from the Max Born Institute in Berlin, University College London and ELI-ALPS in Szeged, Hungary, has demonstrated attosecond-pump attosecond-probe spectroscopy to study non-linear multi-photon ionization of atoms. The obtained results provide insights into one of the most fundamental processes in non-linear optics.

The detailed experimental and theoretical results have been published in Optica (“Attosecond investigation of extreme-ultraviolet multi-photon multi-electron ionization”).

Fig. 1: Two intense attosecond pulse trains (white) interact with an atom, resulting in the emission of three electrons (yellow). During this process four photons (blue) are absorbed. The probability of this process can be controlled by varying the temporal and the spatial overlap between the two attosecond pulses. (Image: Balázs Major)

Looking to keep your car interior cool? This list of the best sun shades for 2022 can help you do just that.

Early experiences with the new Tesla Model Y with 4,680 cells and a structural battery pack are showing some impressive potential for faster charging and better energy density.

When Tesla delivered its first made-in-Texas Model Y vehicles, we noted that it was strange that Tesla didn’t reveal any details – like specs and pricing – about the new version of the electric SUV.

Continue reading “Tesla Model Y with new 4680 cells shows impressive potential for faster charging” »

Tesla’s battery research arm based in Canada published a paper earlier this month that provides details of a battery design that could serve us for 100 years, Electrek reported.

As the world looks to reduce carbon emissions, electric transportation is one of the ways that is being touted to achieve emission targets that countries have set themselves. To ensure this can be sustainable, countries need to switch to renewable sources of power, while electric vehicle makers need to ensure that the cars themselves do not become a cause of concern.