New York (CNN Business)A computer chip shortage has shut down the Louisville, Kentucky, Ford plant this week, the latest shutdown because of an industry-wide problem that is expected to spread to many other auto plants in the coming months.The Louisville plant employs 3,800 hourly workers, who will receive about 75% of their normal pay during the one-week shutdown. It assembles the Ford Escape and the Lincoln version of that SUV, the Corsair.

[…]

Automakers cut back orders for computer chips early last year when the pandemic slammed the brakes on auto sales and production because of temporary plant closings.When car sales bounced back sooner than expected, it left the industry struggling with a chip shortage. That was exacerbated by increased demand for laptops during the stay-at-home era — and the electronic and computer industries snapping up the excess supply of chips, said Kristin Dziczek, vice president of research at the Center for Automotive Research, a Michigan think tank.

[…]

Source: Ford shuts down a plant because it can’t find enough computer chips

The computer chip shortage is taking a bigger bite out of General Motors’ production plans than the company originally expected.Last week GM announced that three of itsNorth American plants — the Fairfax plant in Kansas City, Kansas, the CAMI plant in Ingersoll, Ontario and the San Luis Potosi plant in Mexico — would be shuttered this week due to the chip shortage. But on Tuesday the automaker said it would extend the shutdown through at least mid-March, at which time it will reassess its production plans.

[…]

Last week Ford said that its first quarter production would be cut by between 10% to 20% because of chip scarcity, which if it extends into the second quarter could cost the company between $1 billion and $2.5 billion in 2021. The problem for the industry cannot be fixed quickly according to Kristin Dziczek, vice president of research at the Center for Automotive Research, a Michigan think tank. “The magnitude of the impact of the semiconductor issues continues to grow week-to-week,” she said. “It looks like while the industry will resolve the shortages in 2021, the production impact may stretch into the third quarter.”

[…]

The Fairfax plant has about 2,000 hourly workers and 230 salaried staff. They will get about 75% of their normal pay during the shutdown through a combination of unemployment benefits and supplemental pay from GM.

[…]

Source: GM extends shutdown at three plants due to chip shortage

Tesla is shutting down a Model 3 production line at the Fremont, California, factory for two weeks amid an industrywide microchip shortage.

According to a new report from Bloomberg, Tesla has informed employees from a Model 3 production line at the Fremont factory that their line is being shut down until March 7:

Workers on a Model 3 production line in Fremont were told their line would be down from Feb. 22 until March 7, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Impacted staff were told they would be paid for Feb. 22 and Feb. 23 and not paid for Feb. 28, March 1, 2 and 3. They were advised to take vacation time, if they had it.

The employees in question weren’t informed of the reason behind the shutdown, which remains unconfirmed.

Unlike Model S and Model X production at the Fremont factory, Tesla is not making any significant update to the Model 3 program, which received a refresh late last year.

[…]

The entire auto industry is currently dealing with a global shortage of microchips.

The shortage has already resulted in many vehicle production lines behind halted around the world. GM, Ford, Nissan, Toyota, Volkswagen, Suburu, and Fiat Chrysler have all announced halted or decelerated production lines due to the issue.

[…]

With the cold weather resulting in frequent power outages in Texas last week, Samsung was forced to shut down its semiconductor plant in Austin, which likely affected Tesla’s chip supply.

[…]

Source: Tesla shuts down Model 3 production line for 2 weeks amid chip shortage

China’s electric car startup Nio will shut down for five days due to the global semiconductor shortage, the company announced on Friday in a press release. The five day shutdown will start on Monday and will mean the company produces slightly fewer cars this year than it had planned.

“The overall supply constraint of semiconductors has impacted the Company’s production volume in March 2021,” Nio said in a statement. “The Company expects to deliver approximately 19,500 vehicles in the first quarter of 2021, adjusted from previously released outlook of 20,000 to 20,500 vehicles.”

Nio makes several different models, including a seven-seater electric SUV, a two-seater sports car, and has plans to produce a minivan in 2022. But Nio isn’t the only car company around the world feeling the pinch from the computer chip shortage. CNBC estimates the global auto industry as a whole will lose as much as $US60 ($79) billion from the lack of chips this year as it ripples around the world.

[…]

China is the largest EV market in the world, though Norway outpaces China in EV sales as a percentage of the country’s total car market. An estimated 1.3 million electric vehicles were sold in China last year, representing roughly 40% of all EVs sold around the world, according to research by Canalys. The U.S. market represented just 2.4% of all EV sales in 2020.

Source: Electric Car Company Nio Shuts Down Temporarily in China Over Global Chip Shortage

his week, Tesla finally gave in to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s request to recall its Model S sedans and Model X SUVs over flash memory failures that will cause the cars’ signature 17-inch portrait-oriented central touchscreens to fail after a certain length of time—but not without pushback on the very definition of the word “defect,” according to a letter from Tesla’s legal department made public today.

Addressing federal regulators, Tesla Vice President of Legal Al Prescott made the case that the touchscreen failures didn’t constitute a defect worthy of a recall because the parts were only expected to last five to six years in the first place, which is certainly a novel strategy.

[…]

“[The eMMC flash memory] is inherently subject to wear, has a finite life (as NHTSA itself acknowledges), and may need replacement during the useful life of the vehicle…While the wear rate is heavily influenced by the active use of the center display system, even more so when the vehicle is in drive or charging, given a reasonable average daily use of 1.4 cycles, the expected life would be 5-6 years. NHTSA has not presented any evidence to suggest that this expected life is outside industry norms.”

Further, Prescott argued that it was wrong for the NHTSA to assert that the touchscreen “should last at least the useful life of the vehicle, essentially double its expected lifespan.” The fact that the average age of vehicles on U.S. roads hit an all-time high of 11.6 years in 2020, per CNBC.

He went on to call the eMMC “state of the art” for the time when it was designed and claimed the NHTSA’s regulations around defective parts were “anachronistic,” pushing back further on the NHTSA’s lifespan expectations

[…]

The fact that the flash memory device was only rated to handle half the lifespan of the average vehicle on the road raises numerous questions around new vehicles’ technology and planned obsolescence. If this was only expected to last five or six years, what else on the roads could fail earlier than consumers expect?

As the Washington Post notes, the way in which Teslas’ high-tech components wear could have dire consequences on the vehicles’ resale value. Unless there’s a way to recycle and reuse these throwaway components, the disposable nature of them could also leave a bad taste in eco-conscious consumers’ mouths.

Furthermore, why should consumers be expected to think that an internal component that’s required to access key safety features of the car should be a wear item? While Tesla has since added alerts that warn owners of a pending eMMC failure, a processor embedded in the internal components of a car isn’t something you can easily check on like a set of brake pads or tires, nor is it something that most consumers know to watch out for after so many miles of use.

The recall includes 134,951 Model S and Model X cars, making it Tesla’s biggest recall to date. It encompasses 2012 through 2018 Model S sedans as well as 2016 through 2018 Model X crossovers. This is fewer than the 158,000 cars requested by the NHTSA for recall, as Tesla excluded the vehicles that have already had memory upgrades or touchscreen replacements, reports the Washington Post.

Failures of the recalled memory chips are not the only issues that have dogged Model S and Model X touchscreens. Tesla CEO Elon Musk once bragged about sourcing the then-groundbreaking 17-inch screens outside of the usual automotive supply chain to save costs. Unfortunately, the screens weren’t built to handle the vibration loads and temperature fluctuations found in a car’s interior, causing them to prematurely yellow, bubble and even leak.

Source: Tesla Claims Failing Touchscreens in NHTSA Recall Were Only Meant to Last 5-6 Years Anyway

Wow, you really do get a piece of shit for buying a car from the most valuable car company in the world. Whilst Toyota has just stolen the crown from VW for selling the most cars per year.

Boeing Co. will pay $2.5 billion to resolve a Justice Department criminal investigation and admit employees deceived aviation regulators about safety issues that led to two deadly crashes of the 737 MAX, authorities said.

The settlement, which was filed Thursday in Dallas federal court, would lift a legal cloud that has hung over the aerospace company for about two years since the fatal crashes. Federal prosecutors had been investigating the role of two Boeing employees who interacted with the Federal Aviation Administration about the design of the 737 MAX and how much pilot training would be required for the new model.

The settlement includes a nearly $244 million fine as well as almost $2.3 billion in compensation to airline customers and families of the 346 people who perished in two MAX crashes.

The plane maker was charged with one count of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. But it will avoid prosecution on that charge—allowing it to stay eligible for federal contracts—as long as it avoids legal trouble for a period of three years. The deal also calls for Boeing to comply with any ongoing investigations, including probes by foreign law-enforcement and regulatory authorities, and to beef up compliance programs, according to its settlement agreement.

[…]

Source: Boeing Reaches $2.5 Billion Settlement of U.S. Probe Into 737 MAX Crashes – WSJ

t’s no secret that Tesla tends to ship cars to customers with questionable fit and finish. Sometimes components don’t fit the way they should, so fake wood from Home Depot is used to ensure they do. Other times, glass roofs simply detach while driving down the highway. This time, however, it’s not a random Facebook rant or one-off tweet telling us Tesla is selling vehicles of questionable quality, it’s the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), via recalls and service bulletins.

Thanks to Bozi Tatarevic on Twitter, we know about errors numerous enough to warrant a response from the NHTSA, and some of them are pretty bad. They include low-grade rust repair, fixes to bodywork using a dead-blow hammer, and missing fasteners. We’re not talking about a couple of loose lug nuts, either. We’re talking parts missing from the car’s power system that may affect battery charge and discharge, and even nuts missing in the front suspension.

NHTSA

The service bulletins are sort of humorous in their official language of very basic fixes to really obvious issues with these cars. If the “DC link busbar” bolts are missing in the Model 3, replace them! If the charging door isn’t sitting flush—this defect is present on the 3 and Y—hit the non-flush panel with a hammer until it sits right. But if you start roleplaying as the village blacksmith and take it just a tad too far, replace the entire panel. Also, if you mess up the paint when you do this, make sure you touch it up. It looks like there’s a little bit of rust forming in that area anyway, so it’s probably a good idea to do that in any case.

The most alarming one of these issues is the self-locking nylon nut that’s straight-up missing from the front suspension. Apparently, this issue is widespread enough on the Model Y to warrant a service bulletin. If this bolt fell out during driving—which it would if there was no nut holding it on—one side of the front suspension would just collapse. Obviously, that’s something you don’t want to happen while you’re driving, and could lead to a serious accident and bodily injury. Possibly even worse.

Reading through other complaints on the NHTSA’s page for the Model 3, it seems like suspension issues are very common. Problems with ball joints snapping seem to be by far the most common issue. It’s safe to read clearly inflammatory messages with a little bit of skepticism, but looking through wrecked Model 3s on Copart, it seems like that is at least a somewhat common issue.

Unfortunately, this just sort of seems like business as usual for Tesla. Its vehicles are known to have these sorts of issues, and they aren’t doing a ton to attempt to shed this image. There is certainly something to be said for the strides the company has made with battery technology and drivetrain design, but quality control has to catch up with those innovations. Making advanced cars is one thing, making safe and reliable cars is entirely another.

Source: These Repair Bulletins for Tesla’s Quality Problems Are Downright Embarrassing—and Serious

When passengers board airliners, they expect everything to be sorted with the aircraft. Decades of safety innovations and regulations have made flying the safest form of travel. But as revealed in an explosive report by the Los Angeles Times, planes are filling up with toxic fumes, injuring crew and passengers alike, while the Federal Aviation Administration and airline industry do nothing.

In July 2015, Spirit Airlines Flight 708 landed in Boston and parked at its designated gate. However, there was one problem: the captain and co-pilot had no memory of landing or taxiing the Airbus A319. From the Los Angeles Times report:

The plane had begun its descent into Boston. Inside the cockpit, the captain was slumped in his seat. Sitting beside him, copilot Eric Tellmann was starting to pass out. Tellmann managed to strap on his oxygen mask, then grabbed the captain’s arm and forced him to follow suit. Reviving slowly, the captain looked at Tellmann through his mask, and his eyes grew wide with fear.A strange smell had permeated the plane that day. Passengers and flight attendants were coughing and wiping teary eyes. The pilots briefly lifted their masks and could still smell the odor as the runway drew nearer.

Tellmann and the captain parked the Airbus A319 at the gate. But they had no memory of landing or taxiing Spirit Airlines Flight 708. Tellmann went to the hospital for treatment and spent the next week at home in bed, vomiting and shaking and feeling “like a freight train had run over us,” he said in a letter to his union about the July 2015 event.

A mysterious smell. Strange symptoms. A trip to the emergency room.

The signs were all there: Something had gone seriously wrong with the plane’s air supply.

The air you breathe on a commercial jet airliner is known as bleed air. Bleed air comes from the engines and provides pressure for the cabin and air for the environmental control system. When it’s working as designed, it’s harmless. However, when there’s a problem like bad seals, hot engine oil and hydraulic fluid can leak into the air system, potentially releasing toxic fumes into the cabin.

When this happens it’s called a fume event. While the airlines and safety regulators have known about them for decades, they maintain these events aren’t common, and the levels of chemicals aren’t high enough to pose serious medical risks.

However, the Times’ investigation revealed some frightening data that suggests fume events are far more common than airlines admit:

But a Times investigation found that vapors from oil and other fluids seep into planes with alarming frequency across all airlines, at times creating chaos and confusion: Flight attendants vomit and pass out. Passengers struggle to breathe. Children get rushed to hospitals. Pilots reach for oxygen masks or gasp for air from opened cockpit windows.

Such events are documented in airport paramedic records, NASA safety reports, federal aviation records and other filings reviewed by The Times.

Tellmann, the Spirit Airlines pilot, was one of hundreds of airline crew members and passengers who reported being sickened or impaired on flights in recent years. A Times analysis of NASA safety reports from January 2018 to December 2019 identified 362 fume events that airline crew members reported to the agency, with nearly 400 pilots, flight attendants and passengers receiving medical attention. During at least 73 of those flights, pilots used emergency oxygen. Four dozen pilots were described as impaired to the point of being unable to perform their duties.

Because they’re made voluntarily, the NASA safety reports are the “tip of the iceberg,” according to a recent study by a researcher from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

Holiday travelers are flouting COVID-19 warnings while airlines tout the HEPA filters in aircraft. These filters, N95 masks and surgical masks don’t protect passengers from toxic fumes, however. Before the coronavirus pandemic, about five flights a day in the U.S. experienced a fume event, according to the Times.

So how did we get here? With weak regulations that favor private companies over people’s lives, of course. From the Times again:

Airlines have been asking Boeing to install air sensors for years. But the company decided against developing the technology. Senior Boeing engineers worried that data from sensors would prove damaging in lawsuits by sick passengers and crew members, according to internal emails and sworn depositions obtained by The Times.

An internal Boeing memo described it as a “risk” to give air sensors to even one airline, according to a deposition of a Boeing executive.

“Flight attendant, pilot unions, and congressional supporters could use this effort as evidence that sensors are needed and … to drive their agenda forward to have bleed air sensors required on all aircraft,” said the 2015 memo, which Boeing turned over in litigation.

[…]

The industry’s regulator, the Federal Aviation Administration, declined to comment on The Times’ findings and provided a statement saying it “currently has no plans” to require air sensors or filters.

“Studies have shown cabin air is as good as or better than the air found in offices and homes,” the FAA said.

But those studies looked at normal flights in which no fume events were reported. No major research has ever measured the chemicals in fume events as they occur.

In 2003, Congress ordered the FAA to measure the toxic chemical levels in such events, but the airlines refused to let flight attendants carry air samplers aboard, according to an FAA-funded research report.

Airbus, the world’s other major manufacturer of airliners, told the Times that the odors aren’t harmful and don’t pose any major risk to passengers and crew. Of course, without sensors or testing during a fume event, there’s no way to know that the air is indeed safe. It’s a vicious cycle, where lack of testing reinforces ignorance of risk. And while Federal authorities have never attributed any commercial airline crashes to fume events, they do keep forcing airliners to make unscheduled landings.

Oh, you thought it couldn’t get worse? Well, guess what: airlines aren’t required to tell passengers if a fume event has occurred or what chemicals they may have been exposed to. In fact, one of the main reasons sensors aren’t installed on planes is concern over lawsuit liability over injured parties:

A Boeing senior engineer, George Bates, acknowledged in a 2018 deposition that there were internal concerns that sensors would collect data that could be used by sick passengers or crew members in litigation against Boeing. “The biggest impeding factor is the legal issues,” Bates wrote in a 2008 email.

Bates elaborated in an internal email in 2011: “How long will it take until the readings have to be recorded and available not only for maintenance, but for the lawyers?” he wrote. Another Boeing engineer on the email chain agreed that making sensor data available was “crazy!”

Bates had expressed concern about fume events in the past when he noticed that Boeing 757s were being diverted about once every two weeks. Engine seals, he said, were leaking so much oil that crews complained of “blue smoke” thick enough that flight attendants couldn’t see halfway down the aisle.

“Given the number of … events for the 757 … I would have thought the FAA would have forced the issue,” Bates wrote in an email to colleagues. “Bottom line is I think we are looking for a tombstone before anyone with any horsepower is going to take interest.”

While most people recover from the effects of a fume event within a few days, others have been diagnosed with life-altering health conditions, some of which spelled the end of careers.

Source: Toxic Fumes On Planes Are Knocking Out Pilots And Making Passengers Sick

An absolute legend

Fully driverless robotaxis are now a practical reality on Chinese roads. AutoX has become the first company to put a fleet of the completely driver-free vehicles on the country’s streets, with the cars now roaming Shenzhen. They’re not yet available to the public, a spokesperson told TechCrunch, but it’s still a significant move.

AutoX claims this is possible thanks to a “5th generation” autonomous driving system that includes a pair of LiDAR sensors on the sides, “4D” radar sensors and thorough blind spot sensing. The robotaxis can react to even the smaller objects around them, and the company is touting a battle-tested platform that knows how to navigate everything from illegally-parked cars through to unprotected U-turns.

The firm’s machines have been in testing in other places, including California, but a “much larger number of road users” in China helped it rapidly refine its technology.

Self-driving taxis are still far from becoming ubiquitous. Regulations in the US and many other parts of the world have yet to adapt, and the cars themselves are unsurprisingly using exotic, expensive hardware. AutoX’s rollout is a large step forward, though, and it might just be a question of when you hop into an unoccupied taxi rather than “if.”

Source: China’s first fully driverless robotaxis hit the streets of Shenzhen | Engadget

Is one of Tesla’s infotainment systems defective by design? That’s a question the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration hopes to answer. It has started an engineering analysis after hundreds of customer complaints of bricked systems resulted in a preliminary investigation in June.

NHTSA thinks it knows what the problem is: an 8GB eMMC NAND flash memory chip with a finite number of write cycles, fitted to its Media Control Unit. The MCU regularly writes logs to this chip and, within three or four years, reaches the lifetime number of cycles. At this point the touchscreen dies, taking with it functions like the car’s backup camera, the ability to defog the windows, and also the audible alerts and chimes for the driver aids and turn signals.

After the regulator’s Office of Defects Investigation received 537 complaints, it asked Tesla if it knew of any more problems with the Nvidia Tegra 3-based system, which is fitted to approximately 158,000 Models S (2012-2018) and X (2016-2018). Tesla did, handing over 2,399 complaints and field reports, 7,777 warranty claims, and 4,746 non-warranty claims.

The finite—and short—lifespan of these infotainment systems is a relatively well-known problem within the Tesla community. A video on the popular YouTube channel Rich Rebuilds that delved into the problem in May 2019 has racked up more than 669,000 views:

As that video notes, and as Tesla told NHTSA, the time to failure for an MCU depends on how much its car has been in operation. Daily drive time, daily charge time, and streaming music over the Internet are all factors, Tesla told the regulator.

This isn’t the first time that Tesla’s choice of consumer-grade electronics, as opposed to automotive-grade, has gotten it in trouble. A separate problem affects the 17-inch touchscreen, which can fail due to high temperature—the kind of temperature experienced inside a parked car during summer, as opposed to an air-conditioned office.

Source: After 12,523 replacements, Feds investigate Tesla Media Control Unit failures | Ars Technica

Well done cutting corners, Elon Musk

Worn-out NAND memory chips can cause a whole host of problems with some Tesla cars, ranging from the failure of the rearview camera to an absence of turn signal chimes and other audio alerts, a watchdog warned this month.

Some 159,000 Tesla Model S and Model X vehicles built between 2012 and 2018 are at risk, we’re told. These all use an infotainment system powered by Nvidia’s Tegra 3 system-on-chips that include 8GB of eMMC NAND storage, which is typically found in phones and cheap laptops. The trouble is that these flash chips are wearing out, having hit their program-erase cycle limits, and are unable to reliably store data, causing glitches in operation. The storage controllers can no longer find good working NAND blocks to use, and thus fail.

According to a probe [PDF] by investigators for Uncle Sam’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), at least 30 per cent of the infotainment systems made in “certain build months” are failing due to the eMMC flash being worn out, typically after “three to four years in service.”

According to the safety administration, this storage breakdown can “result in loss of rearview/backup camera, loss of HVAC (defogging) setting controls (if the HVAC status was OFF status prior to failure.) There is also an impact on the advanced driver assistance support (ADAS), Autopilot system, and turn signal functionality due to the possible loss of audible chimes, driver sensing, and alerts associated with these vehicle functions.”

This is based on 16,000 complaints and infotainment hardware replacement requests submitted by Tesla owners to the automaker. T

[…]

Source: Worn-out NAND flash blamed for Tesla vehicle gremlins, such as rearview cam failures and silenced audio alerts • The Register

Nice one, Musk

Flying is a highly controversial topic in climate debates. There are a few reasons for this.

The first is the disconnect between its role in our personal and collective carbon emissions. Air travel dominates frequent travellers’ individual contributions to climate change. Yet aviation overall accounts for only 2.5% of global carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions. This is because there are large inequalities in how much people fly – many do not, or cannot afford to, fly at all [best estimates put this figure at around 80% of the world population – we will look at this in more detail in an upcoming article].

The second is how aviation emissions are attributed to countries. CO₂ emissions from domestic flights are counted in a country’s emission accounts. International flights are not – instead they are counted as their own category: ‘bunker fuels’. The fact that they don’t count towards the emissions of any country means there are few incentives for countries to reduce them.

It’s also important to note that unlike the most common greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide, methane or nitrous oxide – non-CO₂ forcings from aviation are not included in the Paris Agreement. This means they could be easily overlooked – especially since international aviation is not counted within any country’s emissions inventories or targets.

How much of a role does aviation play in global emissions and climate change? In this article we take a look at the key numbers that are useful to know.

Global aviation (including domestic and international; passenger and freight) accounts for:

• 1.9% of greenhouse gas emissions (which includes all greenhouse gases, not only CO₂)
• 2.5% of CO₂ emissions
• 3.5% of ‘radiative forcing’. Radiative forcing measures the difference between incoming energy and the energy radiated back to space. If more energy is absorbed than radiated, the atmosphere becomes warmer.

The latter two numbers refer to 2018, and the first to 2016, the latest year for which such data are available.

---

Aviation accounts for 2.5% of global CO₂ emissions

As we will see later in this article, there are a number of processes by which aviation contributes to climate change. But the one that gets the most attention is its contribution via CO₂ emissions. Most flights are powered by jet gasoline – although some partially run on biofuels – which is converted to CO₂ when burned.

In a recent paper, researchers – David Lee and colleagues – reconstructed annual CO₂ emissions from global aviation dating back to 1940.¹ This was calculated based on fuel consumption data from the International Energy Agency (IEA), and earlier estimates from Robert Sausen and Ulrich Schumann (2000).²

The time series of global emissions from aviation since 1940 is shown in the accompanying chart. In 2018, it’s estimated that global aviation – which includes both passenger and freight – emitted 1.04 billion tonnes of CO₂.

This represented 2.5% of total CO₂ emissions in 2018.^3,4

Aviation emissions have doubled since the mid-1980s. But, they’ve been growing at a similar rate as total CO₂ emissions – this means its share of global emissions has been relatively stable: in the range of 2% to 2.5%.⁵

Non-CO₂ climate impacts mean aviation accounts for 3.5% of global warming

Aviation accounts for around 2.5% of global CO₂ emissions, but it’s overall contribution to climate change is higher. This is because air travel does not only emit CO₂: it affects the climate in a number of more complex ways.

As well as emitting CO₂ from burning fuel, planes affect the concentration of other gases and pollutants in the atmosphere. They result in a short-term decrease, but long-term increase in ozone (O₃); a decrease in methane (CH₄); emissions of water vapour; soot; sulfur aerosols; and water contrails. While some of these impacts result in warming, while others induce a cooling effect. Overall, the warming effect is stronger.

David Lee et al. (2020) quantified the overall effect of aviation on global warming when all of these impacts were included.⁶ To do this they calculated the so-called ‘Radiative Forcing’. Radiative forcing measures the difference between incoming energy and the energy radiated back to space. If more energy is absorbed than radiated, the atmosphere becomes warmer.

In this chart we see their estimates for the radiative forcing of the different elements. When we combine them, aviation accounts for approximately 3.5% of net radiative forcing: that is, 3.5% of warming.

Although CO₂  gets most of the attention, it accounts for less than half of this warming. Two-thirds (66%) comes from non-CO₂ forcings. Contrails – water vapor trails from aircraft exhausts – account for the largest share.

We don’t yet have the technologies to decarbonize air travel

Aviation’s contribution to climate change – 3.5% of warming, or 2.5% of CO₂ emissions – is often less than people think. It’s currently a relatively small chunk of emissions compared to other sectors.

The key challenge is that it is particularly hard to decarbonize. We have solutions to reduce emissions for many of the largest emitters – such as power or road transport – and it’s now a matter of scaling them. We can deploy renewable and nuclear energy technologies, and transition to electric cars. But we don’t have proven solutions to tackle aviation yet.

There are some design concepts emerging – Airbus, for example, have announced plans to have the first zero-emission aircraft by 2035, using hydrogen fuel cells. Electric planes may be a viable concept, but are likely to be limited to very small aircraft due to the limitations of battery technologies and capacity.

Innovative solutions may be on the horizon, but they’re likely to be far in the distance.

Towards zero-carbon transport: how can we expect the sector’s CO₂ emissions to change in the future?

Appendix: Efficiency improvements means air traffic has increased more rapidly than emissions

Global emissions from aviation have increased a lot over the past half-century. However, air travel volumes increased even more rapidly.

Since 1950, aviation emissions increased almost seven-fold; since 1960 they’ve tripled. Air traffic volume – here defined as revenue passenger kilometers (RPK) traveled – increased by orders of magnitude more: almost 300-fold since 1950; and 75-fold since 1960 [you find this data in our interactive chart here].⁷

The much slower growth in emissions means aviation efficiency has seen massive improvements. In the chart we show both the increase in global airline traffic since 1950, and aviation efficiency, measured as the quantity of CO₂ emitted per revenue passenger kilometer traveled. In 2018, approximately 125 grams of CO₂  were emitted per RPK. In 1960, this was eleven-fold higher; in 1950 it was twenty-fold higher. Aviation has seen massive efficiency improvements over the past 50 years.

These improvements have come from several sources: improvements in the design and technology of aircraft; larger aircraft sizes (allowing for more passengers per flight); and an increase in how ‘full’ passenger flights are. This last metric is termed the ‘passenger load factor’. The passenger load factor measures the actual number of kilometers traveled by paying customers (RPK) as a percentage of the available seat kilometers (ASK) – the kilometers traveled if every plane was full. If every plane was full the passenger load factor would be 100%. If only three-quarters of the seats were filled, it would be 75%.

The global passenger load factor increased from 61% in 1950 to 82% in 2018 [you find this data in our interactive chart here].

Source: Climate change and flying: what share of global CO2 emissions come from aviation? – Our World in Data

The “Baby Boom” is finally here. After six years of development, Boom Supersonic is unveiling its XB-1 demonstrator. The craft is the company’s first supersonic plane, designed to prove the technology ahead of a full-size airliner, Overture.

[…]

As we reported on back in August, Boom is looking to build the first supersonic civilian airliner for half a century. The first step on that road is the construction of a demonstrator plane that can be used to test the various components and designs a supersonic airliner would need. Say hello to the single-seater XB-1, tail number N990XB.

The XB-1’s carbon-composite frame (for added heat-resistance) measures 71 feet long, with a delta wing shake that, the company says, has been optimized for maximum efficiency. It’s powered by a trio of General Electric J85-15 engines, rated to provide more than 12,000 pounds of thrust. The J85 is a warhorse engine that has been powering craft since the 1950s, including the supersonic T-38 Talon training plane. Boom says that the engine has been tweaked to improve its efficiency, important given the company’s focus on a carbon-neutral test program.

NATHAN LEACH-PROFFER

Boom has looked to lean on new manufacturing methods to reduce costs and dramatically shrink its production time. It leaned heavily on 3D-printing, both for prototyping and to make parts for the XB-1 itself. Boom worked with both Stratasys and Velo 3D to produce prototypes, parts and tooling for the process and the craft itself. Mike Jageman, manufacturing head, said that several parts were built this way “right here, in the hangar.”

One other big technical innovation involves abandoning one of Concorde’s most famous features, its drooping nose. Rather than employ a system like that, XB-1 uses a high-resolution video camera in the nose to help pilots navigate the tricky landing. The company says that the result is to offer a “virtual window through the nose,” although we’ll have to wait for testing to see if that’s a fair claim.

NATHAN LEACH-PROFFER

Naturally, the real work begins now, ensuring that XB-1 is ready to begin test flights in the Mojave Desert next year, everything-else-going-on permitting. As founder Blake Scholl says, XB-1 is “an important milestone towards the development of our commercial liner, Overture.” The company expects the first manufacturing facility to be built by 2022, and the first Overture to be completed by 2025. It’s a very ambitious goal, especially given that the company hopes to have the first passenger flight in the air by 2029.

Source: Boom unveils the XB-1, its supersonic testbed | Engadget

Amazon received federal approval to operate its fleet of Prime Air delivery drones, the Federal Aviation Administration said Monday, a milestone that allows the company to expand unmanned package delivery.

The approval will give Amazon broad privileges to “safely and efficiently deliver packages to customers,” the agency said. The certification comes under Part 135 of FAA regulations, which gives Amazon the ability to carry property on small drones “beyond the visual line of sight” of the operator.

Amazon said it will use the FAA’s certification to begin testing customer deliveries. The company said it went through rigorous training and submitted detailed evidence that its drone delivery operations are safe, including demonstrating the technology for FAA inspectors.

“This certification is an important step forward for Prime Air and indicates the FAA’s confidence in Amazon’s operating and safety procedures for an autonomous drone delivery service that will one day deliver packages to our customers around the world,” David Carbon, vice president of Prime Air, said in a statement. “We will continue to develop and refine our technology to fully integrate delivery drones into the airspace, and work closely with the FAA and other regulators around the world to realize our vision of 30 minute delivery.”

Amazon added that while the Prime Air fleet isn’t ready to immediately deploy package deliveries at scale, it’s actively flying and testing the technology.

[…]

Source: Amazon Prime Air drone delivery fleet gets FAA approval

We propose a prototype design of a propulsion thruster that utilizes air plasma induced by microwave ionization. Such a jet engine simply uses only air and electricity to produce high temperature and pressurized plasma for jet propulsion. We used a home-made device to measure the lifting force and jet pressure at various settings of microwave power and the air flow rate. We demonstrated that, given the same power consumption, its propulsion pressure is comparable to that of conventional airplane jet engines using fossil fuels. Therefore, such a carbon-emission free thruster could potentially be used as a jet thruster in the atmosphere.

[…]

n this report, we consider a microwave air plasma jet thruster using high-temperature and high-pressure plasma generated by a 2.45 GHz microwave ionization chamber for injected pressurized air. We propose a simple prototype plasma jet thruster that can generate approximately 10 N of thrust at 400 W using 0.5 l/s for the airflow, corresponding to the lifting force of 28 N/kW and a jet pressure of 2.4 × 10⁴ N/m². At a higher microwave power or greater airflow, propulsion forces and jet pressures comparable to those of commercial airplane jet engines can be achieved.

[…]

When high-power microwave is generated using microwave sources arranged in parallel, higher heat is also generated. At this time, the method of measuring the propulsive force with a steel ball is no longer applicable. How to deal with the impact of high temperature on equipment and how to evaluate the driving force are challenges that require further research

Source: Jet propulsion by microwave air plasma in the atmosphere: AIP Advances: Vol 10, No 5

The Air Force recently proved through a series of tests that its KC-135 Stratotanker aircraft can fly more efficiently just by mounting the cockpit window’s wiper blades vertically instead of horizontally. The potential fuel cost savings: about $7 million per year.

Researchers with the Advanced Power and Technology Office, part of the Air Force Research Laboratory, and the Southwest Research Institute, assessed the KC-135 after similar tests were conducted on a commercial McDonnell Douglas MD-11 cargo airliner. The commercial tests showed the new blade direction reduced its flight drag by 1.2%.

“Across the KC-135 fleet, blades are positioned horizontally on the windshield as part of the aircraft’s original 1950s design,” officials said in a news release. “However, as the understanding of aviation aerodynamics advanced, research indicated placing the wipers vertically when not in use could improve aerodynamic efficiency and optimize fuel use.”

[,,,]

The data collected revealed drag was reduced 0.8% just by moving the blade vertically, and 0.2% for a slimmer wiper design on the cockpit’s window.

“While 1% efficiency may not seem like a lot, it equates to millions of dollars in fuel savings each year, which can then be re-invested into other programs,” Daniel Pike, acquisition manager and chief of future operations for Air Force Operational Energy, said in a statement.

For example, the KC-135 fleet used more than 260 million gallons in fiscal 2019, the service said, citing the Air Force Total Ownership Cost database. That accounts for roughly 14% of the Air Force’s total fuel use across its aircraft fleets.

Source: Air Force Announces it Can Save $7 Million by Adjusting One Plane’s Windshield Wipers | Military.com

You can always count on Koenigsegg to do things differently. Take the Swedish brand’s newest car, the Gemera, a 1700-hp four-seat hybrid grand tourer that can crest 250 mph. In a world filled with more ultra-high-dollar supercars than ever, the Gemera stands out. And perhaps the most interesting thing about the car is its engine.

Related Story

Koenigegg Gemera: 1700-HP Hybrid Four-Seater

Koenigsegg calls the engine the Tiny Friendly Giant, or TFG for short, and it’s an apt name. The TFG is a 2.0-liter twin-turbo three-cylinder that makes 600 horsepower. At 300 horsepower per liter, the TFG’s specific output is far higher than anything ever seen in a road car. Koenigsegg says this is “light-years ahead of any other production three-cylinder today,” and he’s not wrong: The next most powerful triple is the 268-hp engine in the Toyota GR Yaris.

What’s even more unusual is that the TFG doesn’t have a camshaft. Instead, the engine uses technology from Koenigsegg’s sister company, Freevalve, with pneumatic actuators opening and closing each valve independently. I called company founder Christian von Koenigsegg to learn exactly how this unconventional engine works.

Freevalve

The Tiny Friendly Giant was designed specifically for the Gemera. Koenigsegg wanted something compact and lightweight, with big horsepower. Koenigsegg also decided to reverse the setup found in the hybrid Regera, where internal combustion provides the bulk of the total power output. In the Gemera, the majority of the power comes from electric motors, with the Gemera contributing some driving force as well as charging the hybrid drivetrain’s batteries.

Given this criteria, Koenigsegg arrived at a 2.0-liter, three-cylinder configuration. “We were kind of scratching our heads a little bit,” Koenigsegg says. “A three-cylinder is not the most exclusive… but then we realized, per cylinder, this is the most extreme engine on the planet, technically. And why should we have more than we need to make the car as lightweight as possible, as roomy as possible?”

The rest has to do with the engine’s character. “It’s a big-bore, big-stroke engine, and it doesn’t sound puny like some three-cylinders do,” Koenigsegg says. “Imagine a Harley with one more cylinder. That kind of sensation.” Despite the 95mm bore and 93.5mm stroke dimensions, the TFG is quite high-revving. Peak power comes at 7500 rpm and redline is set at 8500. “We have a tendency to engineer these rotating parts lighter than anyone else,” Koenigsegg explains, “but really focusing on strength at the same time. And if you do that, you can rev higher.” The tiny engine also delivers big torque—443 lb-ft from just below 3000 rpm all the way to 7000.

The sequential turbo setup is ingenious. The TFG has two exhaust valves per cylinder, one of which is dedicated to the small turbo, the other to the big turbo. At low revs, only the small-turbo exhaust valve opens, giving sharp boost response. Past 3000 rpm, the big-turbo exhaust valves start opening, building huge boost and lots of midrange power and torque. (Even without the turbos, the TFG is impressive: Koenigsegg says, in theory, a naturally aspirated TFG could make 280 horsepower.)

“It’s called Freevalve for a reason,” Koenigsegg says. “Each individual valve has total freedom. How much to open, when to open, how long to stay open.” At low loads, only one of the two intake valves per cylinder opens, distributing atomized fuel more evenly. With the Freevalve system constantly fine-tuning intake valve lift and duration, there’s no need for a conventional throttle, and the engine can shut down individual cylinders on the fly. Freevalve also allows the TFG to switch between traditional Otto cycle and Miller cycle operation, where intake valves are left open longer to help reduce pumping losses, increasing power and efficiency. And that’s not even the craziest thing. “With the help of the turbos, this engine can run two-stroke up to somewhere around 3000 rpm. It’ll sound like a straight-six at 6000 rpm,” Koenigsegg says. Beyond 3000 rpm, the TFG would have to switch back to four-stroke operation, because there’s not enough time for gas exchange at higher revs. This is just in theory, though—the company hasn’t tested the TFG in two-stroke mode yet. Koenigsegg says it’s still “early days.”

Koenigsegg is also working with a Texas artificial intelligence company, SparkCognition, to develop AI engine management software for Freevalve engines like the TFG. “The system will learn over time the best ways to operate the valves, what’s most frugal, what’s cleanest… It will eventually start doing things we’ve never thought of,” Koenigsegg says. “It’ll float in and out of different ways of combusting by itself, eventually in ways not completely understandable to us.” But that’s way out. Koengisegg says that the TFG will rely on human-coded valve operation for now.

The TFG makes “only” about 500 horsepower on regular pump gas. This is a flexible-fuel engine optimized to burn alcohol—ethanol, butanol, or methanol, or any combination thereof. Alcohol fuels are great for performance, but Koenigsegg says their use is also a key part of making the TFG clean, since they generate fewer harmful particulates than gasoline. And with sustainably-sourced fuel, the TFG can be effectively carbon-neutral.

Of course, a complex system like Freevalve is more expensive than a conventional cam setup—but Koenigsegg points out that the system uses less raw material, offsetting some of the cost and shaving weight from the engine. All in all, the TFG engine is about half as costly to build as Koenigsegg’s 5.0-liter twin-turbo V-8.

Koenigsegg

The rest of the Gemera drivetrain is equally unconventional. The TFG sits behind the passenger compartment, driving the front wheels through Koenigsegg’s outrageous direct-drive system, no gearbox necessary. When asked about the unusual mid-engine front-drive setup, Koenigsegg replies, “Why do many traditional cars have an engine in the front, a propshaft, and drive on the rear axle?” An electric motor/generator attached to the TFG’s crankshaft charges the hybrid drivetrain’s batteries and contributes up to 400 hp of additional power, while each rear wheel is driven by a 500-hp electric motor. Peak total output is 1700 hp.

“Koenigsegg cars are mid-engine cars,” the founder explains. “We don’t make pure electric cars because for the time being, we think they’re too heavy, and they don’t make a cool sound. And as long as we can be CO2 neutral and frugal and clean comparatively, we will push the combustion engine.”

Koenigsegg

The TFG is a technology showcase, an alternate vision for the automotive future. Koenigsegg posits that with some left-field thinking, the internal-combustion engine can still have a place in the electrified automotive world. “In my mind, it’s kind of the engine,” Koenigsegg says. “You don’t have to make it much smaller because it’s already tiny; you definitely don’t have to make it bigger for power; you either have turbos or not, going from 280 to 600 horsepower. And if that’s not enough, you put an electric motor on it, then you have a hybrid with [more than] 1000 horsepower.”

Koenigsegg once again has produced something remarkable with the Tiny Friendly Giant. And I think you’ll agree, the name is apt.

Source: How Koenigsegg’s 2-Liter No-Cam Engine Makes 600 Horsepower

researchers from Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology IWS, aircraft manufacturer Airbus, and the Dresden University of Technology in Germany have co-developed a better way to keep planes free of ice and snow. It uses a technology called Direct Laser Interference Patterning (DLIP), where a laser is split into multiple beams that overlap each other creating complex etched patterns on a surface where the beams are focused.

By adapting the DLIP technique to create three-dimensional structures at the microscopic level, the laser etching technique is able to turn an airplane’s wing into a material with reduced surface area that ice simply has a hard time holding onto. As a result, after reaching a certain thickness and weight, built up ice simply falls off a wing all on its own. It could not only reduce the need for de-icing procedures at airports, but it could also remove the need for antifreeze and other chemical agents altogether.

Waiting for ice to spontaneously fall off on its own isn’t always an option, like when you’re cruising along at 500+ miles per hour, 30,000 feet in the air. So additional testing by the researchers found that while it took over a minute for ice to melt off a wing surface with 60 watts of heat applied, the same material, treated with the laser etching process, saw ice completely vanish after just five seconds with the same amount of heat. Not only does it mean an aircraft could be cleared of ice much faster without the use of chemicals, but it also means that aircraft manufacturers could include smaller heating systems that were just as effective, but with drastically reduced fuel consumption.

The new use for the DLIP technology isn’t only useful for keeping aircraft safe and free of ice, it could be applied to everything from the blades on giant power-generating windmills, to the hulls of ships braving icy waters. The biggest benefit could be applying it to the windows of a car, making scraping them clean on a cold winter’s morning as easy as wiping away raindrops—assuming, of course, that the etching process still lets you actually see through the glass.

Source: Blasting Airplane With Lasers Makes It Harder For Ice to Stick

What would happen if everyone in the world had access to nuclear reactor blueprints? We’re about to find out. A mechanical engineer-turned-tech entrepreneur has plans to, well, empower people around the world to build their own 100-megawatt nuclear power reactors. That’s much larger than some of the modular reactors designed by nuclear startups, but still much smaller than operating nuclear power plants in the U.S.

The Energy Impact Center (EIC) is an energy nonprofit that engineer Bret Kugelmass founded in 2017. The organization’s goals are similar to other groups working toward carbon neutrality or negativity, except Kugelmass has decided “cheap nuclear” is the only avenue he wants to pursue. By doing that, he’s essentially operating a startup model, and for his technology to take hold, a new paradigm for nuclear power plants will have to be installed.

“Today, we offer reference plant schematics and a platform to compile ongoing design work. With the help of our partners and the National Labs, these drawings will evolve into a fully detailed, ready-to-build blueprint,” the project website says. It seems like EIC exists to feed new technology into the nuclear startup development pipeline, with the lampshade that nuclear is considered a cleaner power source in the carbon interregnum.

The details of Kugelmass’s plants are exciting. “This standardized pressurized water reactor (PWR) power plant is sized at 100MWe output to fit within project finance and timetable constraints,” he writes. “It is detailed enough for any utility to begin early site studies with +/- 20 [percent] cost predictability. It is abstract enough to allow for site-specific engineering details to be added, with a 50M dollar budget allocated per plant for such efforts.”

Source: Small Nuclear Reactors | Nuclear Reactor Types and Designs

One of the less-considered side effects of car features moving from hardware to software is that important features and abilities of a car can now be removed without any actual contact with a given car. Where once de-contenting involved at least a screwdriver (or, if you were in a hurry, a hammer), now thousands of dollars of options can vanish with the click of a mouse somewhere. And that’s exactly what happened to one Tesla owner, and, it seems many others.

[…]

The car was sold at auction as a result of a California Lemon Law buyback, as the car suffered from a well-known issue where the center-stack screen developed a noticeable yellow border.

When the dealer bought the car at auction from Tesla on November 15, it was optioned with both Enhanced Autopilot and Tesla’s confusingly-named Full Self Driving Capability; together, these options totaled $8,000.

[…]

It’s also worth noting that those repairs on the disclosure were not actually made, which is why Alec took his car to a service center in January.

Let’s recap a little bit at this point: A Model S with Enhanced Autopilot (which includes the Summon feature) and FSD “capability” is sold at auction, a dealer buys it, after the sale to the dealer Tesla checks in on the car and decides that it shouldn’t have Autopilot or FSD “capability,” dealer sells car to customer based on the specifications they were aware the car had (and were shown on the window sticker, and confirmed via a screenshot from the car’s display showing the options), and later, when the customer upgrades the car’s software, Autopilot and FSD disappear.

Source: Tesla Remotely Removes Autopilot Features From Customer’s Used Tesla Without Any Notice

When Elon Musk unveiled the Tesla Cybertruck last week, things didn’t go according to plan when lead designer Franz von Holzhausen tested the durability of the Cybertruck’s “armor glass.” He managed to smash two of the vehicle’s windows onstage with a metal ball, soon after smacking the door with a sledgehammer (unlike the glass, it was fine). We have now learned that, according to Musk, it was this sledgehammer impact that damaged the glass, which is why the windows subsequently smashed when hit by the ball. The Verge reports: This seems plausible, especially as Musk also shared a slow motion video of von Holzhausen performing the same exact test before the event, with the ball bouncing harmlessly off the window. The combined impacts likely weakened the glass, setting the stage for the eventual smash. (Though why the back window broke as well isn’t clear: the passenger door didn’t get whomped by the sledgehammer.) At any rate, the smashed glass was just one moment in an event which gave viewers plenty to talk about without the on-stage mishaps. The divisive design and impressive specs of the Cybertruck have caught the world’s attention, and since the unveiling Musk has been drip-feeding bits of information on Twitter to keep people engaged.

Source: Elon Musk Explains Why Tesla’s Cybertruck Windows Smashed During Presentation – Slashdot

A Boeing whistleblower has claimed that passengers on its 787 Dreamliner could be left without oxygen if the cabin were to suffer a sudden decompression.

John Barnett says tests suggest up to a quarter of the oxygen systems could be faulty and might not work when needed.

He also claimed faulty parts were deliberately fitted to planes on the production line at one Boeing factory.

Boeing denies his accusations and says all its aircraft are built to the highest levels of safety and quality.

The firm has come under intense scrutiny in the wake of two catastrophic accidents involving another one of its planes, the 737 Max – the Ethiopian Airlines crash in March and Lion Air disaster in Indonesia last year.

Mr Barnett, a former quality control engineer, worked for Boeing for 32 years, until his retirement on health grounds in March 2017.

[…]

In 2016, he tells the BBC, he uncovered problems with emergency oxygen systems. These are supposed to keep passengers and crew alive if the cabin pressurisation fails for any reason at altitude. Breathing masks are meant to drop down from the ceiling, which then supply oxygen from a gas cylinder.

Without such systems, the occupants of a plane would rapidly be incapacitated. At 35,000ft, (10,600m) they would be unconscious in less than a minute. At 40,000ft, it could happen within 20 seconds. Brain damage and even death could follow.

Although sudden decompression events are rare, they do happen. In April 2018, for example, a window blew out of a Southwest Airlines aircraft, after being hit by debris from a damaged engine. One passenger sitting beside the window suffered serious injuries and later died as a result – but others were able to draw on the emergency oxygen supplies and survived unharmed.

[…]

Mr Barnett says that when he was decommissioning systems which had suffered minor cosmetic damage, he found that some of the oxygen bottles were not discharging when they were meant to. He subsequently arranged for a controlled test to be carried out by Boeing’s own research and development unit.

This test, which used oxygen systems that were “straight out of stock” and undamaged, was designed to mimic the way in which they would be deployed aboard an aircraft, using exactly the same electric current as a trigger. He says 300 systems were tested – and 75 of them did not deploy properly, a failure rate of 25%

Mr Barnett says his attempts to have the matter looked at further were stonewalled by Boeing managers. In 2017, he complained to the US regulator, the FAA, that no action had been taken to address the problem. The FAA, however, said it could not substantiate that claim, because Boeing had indicated it was working on the issue at the time.

Source: Boeing whistleblower raises doubts over 787 oxygen system – BBC News

Using some relatively inexpensive and readily available technology you can find at any well-stocked electronics store, Alaina Gassler, a 14-year-old inventor from West Grove, Pennsylvania, came up with a clever way to eliminate the blind spot created by the thick pillars on the side of a car’s windshield.

[…]

Her solution involves installing an outward-facing webcam on the outside of a vehicle’s windshield pillar, and then projecting a live feed from that camera onto the inside of that pillar. Custom 3D-printed parts allowed her to perfectly align the projected image so that it seamlessly blends with what a driver sees through the passenger window and the windshield, essentially making the pillar invisible.

Her invention was part of a project called “Improving Automobile Safety by Removing Blind Spots,” which Gassler presented at this year’s Society for Science and the Public’s Broadcom MASTERS (Math, Applied Science, Technology, and Engineering for Rising Stars) science and engineering competition.

Source: 14-Year-Old Genius Alaina Gassler Solves Car Blind Spots

Crouchley’s idea, which just won second place in the annual 3M Young Scientist Challenge, is to build pneumatic tubes next to existing train tracks.

Magnetic shuttles would travel through these vacuum tubes, connected via magnetic arm to trains traveling on the existing tracks.

This system would utilize current train tracks, thereby cutting infrastructure costs and, Crouchley says, eradicating the potential safety risk posed by propelling passengers in a vacuum.

There’d be no need for trains to use diesel or electric motors, making the trains lighter and more fuel-efficient.

This is important to Crouchley, who aims to devise active solutions to the climate crisis.

“I pinpointed transportation as something I wanted to work on because if we can make trains more efficient, then we can eliminate the amount of cars, trucks and buses on the road,” Crouchley tells CNN Travel.

Real world inspiration

[…]

“Hyperloop is very high risk,” says Crouchley.

“My design can be less expensive and more efficient than current train technology that’s out there already. It’s also safer than Hyperloop.

My design can rely on 100% renewable energy, so it eliminates the need for a diesel engine or an electric motor, which makes the train lighter, so it can move faster.”

Source: New Hyperloop design comes from the mind of a 13-year-old scientist | CNN Travel

A young Dutch inventor is widening his effort to clean up floating plastic from the Pacific Ocean by moving into rivers, too, using a new floating device to catch garbage before it reaches the seas.

The 25-year-old university dropout Boyan Slat founded The Ocean Cleanup to develop and deploy a system he invented when he was 18 that catches plastic waste floating in the ocean.

On Saturday he unveiled the next step in his fight: A floating solar-powered device that he calls the “Interceptor” that scoops plastic out of rivers as it drifts past.

“We need to close the tap, which means preventing more plastic from reaching the ocean in the first place,” he said, calling rivers “the arteries that carry the trash from land to sea.”

[…]

Three of the machines have already been deployed to Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam—and a fourth is heading to the Dominican Republic, he said.

Izham Hashim from the government of Selangor state in Malaysia was present at the launch and said he was happy with the machine.

“It has been used for 1 1/2 months in the river and it’s doing very well, collecting the plastic bottles and all the rubbish,” he said.

Slat said he believes 1,000 rivers are responsible for some 80% of plastic pouring into the world’s oceans and he wants to tackle them all in the next five years.

[…]

The vessel is designed to be moored in rivers and has a shaped nose to deflect away larger floating debris like tree trunks. The interceptors work by guiding plastic waste into an opening in its bow, a conveyor belt then carries the trash into the guts of the machine where it is dropped into dumpsters. The interceptor sends a text message to local operators that can come and empty it when it’s full.

Slat showed off how it worked by dumping hundreds of yellow rubber ducks into the water at the launch event in Rotterdam’s port. The interceptor caught nearly all of them.

The machines currently cost about 700,000 euros ($775,600), but Slat said the cost will likely drop as production increases.

Source: Dutch inventor unveils device to scoop plastic out of rivers