Lifeboat Foundation

Amazon says it will buy thousands of Ram ProMaster electric vans a year beginning in 2024.

The folks at Inside EVs noticed something in a press package from CES 2022 that most others missed. It said, “As part of a separate agreement with Stellantis, Amazon will be the first commercial customer for Stellantis’ new Ram ProMaster Battery Electric Vehicle launching in 2023. Stellantis, with input from Amazon, designed the vehicle with unique last mile delivery features and Amazon will deploy the vehicles to routes across the United States. Building on the current relationship and as part of the long-term agreement, Stellantis and Amazon will be putting thousands of BEV ProMasters on the road every year.”

Amazon has bought thousands of delivery vans from Mercedes, Ford, and Stellantis to bring packages to its customers in North America for years. Even though it has a 20% ownership stake in Rivian and expects to purchase 100,000 of its electric delivery vans, its need for such vehicles is so massive that it will continue to buy trucks from traditional manufacturers to get the hundreds of thousands of packages it delivers every day from its warehouses — called fulfillment centers — to its customers.

Continue reading “Amazon Will Buy Thousands Of Ram ProMaster Electric Delivery Vans Every Year” »

The MagRail technology makes use of existing tracks to allow use of both magnetic and traditional trains; can later be upgraded for Hyperloop. Expo 2020: Nevomo’s tech upgrades existing railway tracks for high-speed supertrains. Dubai, Expo 2020, Expo 2020 dubai, hyperloop, Nevomo, Railways, Virgin. Business.

Late last year, the popular new auto manufacturer Rivan finally released its R1T electric truck, but now it looks like they’re ready to jump into different market segments. In fact, Rivian could be getting ready to make electric bikes according to its latest trademark filings.

Spotted by TechCrunch, it appears the company wants to expand its Rivian name trademark into the bicycle and electric bike category. Not to mention all the components, structural parts, and the rack system it’ll pair with the Rivian R1T and R1S vehicles.

Companies often file trademarks for products that never see the light of day, but this is a logical step for Rivian. For starters, e-bikes are easier and cheaper to produce at scale than fancy electric trucks, which Rivian is struggling with. The company shipped very few R1T trucks in 2021, mainly to employees, and could be having a hard time keeping up with production and demand.

The car market is changing, and quickly.
it seems combustion engines are declining quickly in popularity, as electric vehicles, led by @Tesla 0, are taking the market by storm, selling as fast as they can be produced, and outselling all but the very cheapest city cars in most markets.

But are they for you?
Do they have the range and can you afford to make the switch?

Continue reading “Electric vs Petrol Car. Which One For You?” »

The researchers used extrusion printing to manufacture the electrodes, interconnects, encapsulation, and insulation. Active layers were then spray painted on at room temperature. All in all, six layers were 3D printed to build a flexible and fully functioning display.

“OLED displays are usually produced in big, expensive, ultra-clean fabrication facilities,” said Michael McAlpine, senior author of the team’s new study. “We wanted to see if we could basically condense all of that down and print an OLED display on our table-top 3D printer, which was custom built and costs about the same as a Tesla Model S.”

You might not have to send your devices in (or buy replacement parts) if the display breaks — you could just make new screens yourself. University of Minnesota Twin Cities researchers have developed what they say is the first fully 3D-printed flexible OLED display. In theory, you wouldn’t have to depend on panels made at large, distant factories to build or repair your gadgets.

The new approach combines two methods of 3D printing to print the six layers needed for a functional display. The team used extrusion printing to make the electrodes, encapsulation, insulation and interconnects, while active layers were spray-painted at room temperature. Past attempts by various teams either had issues with light uniformity (consistency across the whole panel) or relied on techniques beyond 3D printing to put some components in place, such as spin-coating or thermal evaporation.

The prototype was just 1.5 inches wide and used just 64 pixels. Any practical uses would require much higher resolutions (a 1080p display requires over 2 million pixels), and the scientists also want to improve brightness. It might also take a while to adapt the technology for home use. The university used a custom 3D printer that costs as much as a Tesla Model S — it might take a while for the method to be viable on off-the-shelf printers, even including high-end models like FormLabs’ $4,850 3B+.

Cutting the weight of fuel tanks and continuing advances in fuel-cell technologies are key to making hydrogen competitive in aviation.

The vehicle showcased at the event was Model SD-03, which was a demonstration for the autonomous SD-05 which is currently under development. The company is aiming to kickstart its business with the latter after unveiling it as a flying taxi at the World Expo 2025 in Osaka. It is worth mentioning that SkyDrive has been tested for manned flights and recently got certified by the Japanese government. “SkyDrive recently advanced toward commercialization with the Japanese transportation ministry’s acceptance of its type certificate application, a major milestone that no other flying vehicle developers have reached in Japan”, the company said in its statement.

READ | Flying car completes first 35-minute inter-city flight test in Slovakia

The model released by SkyDrive at the CES 2022 is a driver-only vehicle that runs on electricity and is equipped with eight propellers. As per SkyDrive’s description of the vehicle, it can carry a maximum weight of 400 kg and is capable of cruising at 40–50 kilometres per hour for five to ten minutes. The company had revealed the first prototype of its eVTOL in 2018 and conducted the first manned flight in 2020. According to a report by Interesting Engineering, more companies such as Lilium and Volocopter are also planning to kickstart their flying car business this decade.

iSun has won a massive solar canopy order. But who’s buying?

There are not many things I love more than a solar power canopy that charges an EV charging station. It’s all right there — transferring sunlight into electricity and then using that electricity to power a modern electric car; driving on sunshine.

So, it’s quite exciting to see that iSun (NASDAQ: ISUN) has been awarded a contract to provide 1,780 solar power canopies for EV charging stations. The problem is: we don’t have much more detail than that. We don’t know where these charging stations are and don’t know who is procuring the solar canopies.