Nikola Motors Unveils Hybrid Fuel-Cell Concept Truck with 600-Mile Range

A Toyota Tacoma for the fuel-cell crowd.

As reported by Engadget: Minus a patent suit, it's been a while since we've heard from Nikola, the other automaker named after the inventor of alternating current. On Monday, however, the company unveiled a concept for a new electric pickup truck called the Badger.

Nikola plans to offer the Badger as both a purely battery-electric vehicle and as an electric/fuel-cell hybrid. The company claims the hybrid powertrain model will feature a maximum range of approximately 600 miles, while the battery model will be limited to 300 miles. It also claims the pickup will be able to tow up to 8,000 pounds and accelerate from 0 to 60 miles per hour in approximately 2.9 seconds. Those capabilities, if Nikola can deliver on them, would make the Badger mostly comparable to Tesla's Cybertruck.

However, one major issue is the availability of hydrogen stations. Compared to battery charging stations, there aren't many places in the US where you can refill a fuel-cell vehicle. Even in a state like California, they're few and far between outside of major cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles. To solve the problem, Nikola says it plans to build 700 hydrogen filling stations. The company claims it has the first locations secured, but it won't announce them until later this quarter.

As for the truck, the company says it will fully detail the Badger at its upcoming Nikola World 2020 event in September, at which point it will start accepting limited reservations as well. The Badger, if it turns out to be more than a concept, will enter a field that is quickly becoming crowded. Beyond obvious competitors like the Cybertruck, there are vehicles like the upcoming Hummer, Rivian R1T and eventual electric Ford F-150 for Nikola to worry about.

Bill Gates is Reportedly the First to Buy a Hydrogen-Powered 'Superyacht'

The Aqua offers luxury sea travel without the usual environmental guilt.

As reported by Engadget: Bill Gates' investments in eco-friendly tech might include one of the more conspicuous symbols of his wealth. The Telegraph claims former Microsoft chief has tasked Feadship with building a vessel inspired by Sinot's Aqua, the world's first hydrogen fuel cell-based "superyacht." The roughly $644 million, 370-foot boat would have all the trappings of wealth, including five decks, space for 14 guests and 31 crew members and even a gym, but it would run on two 1MW motors fuelled by supercooled hydrogen tanks.

Sinot would even use gel-based fire bowls to keep passengers warm outside instead of burning coal or wood. It wouldn't be a fast mover with a 17-knot top speed (19.6MPH), but its 3,750-mile range should be enough for cross-ocean travel.

The vessel wouldn't be completely eco-friendly, though. As dockside hydrogen filling stations are more than a little rare, the Aqua would have a diesel engine backup to help it reach port.

The Gates Foundation and Gates Ventures both declined to comment to The Telegraph.

Aqua isn't expected to reach the sea until 2024, according to the report. It's easy to bring up criticism of the claimed purchase. Couldn't the money for this yacht go toward funding electric and hydrogen vehicle projects that could have more of an impact than one boat meant for pleasure cruises? Like Gates' investment in the sunlight electricity startup Heliogen, though, this could be as much about symbolic support for zero-emissions technology as anything else -- in this case, proof that powered boats don't have to make a huge dent in the environment.

Note: Sinot has updated its home page to say that reports of selling Aqua to Gates are "incorrect," and that there are no business links between the company and Gates. We've updated our piece accordingly, to treat this as rumor rather than fact.

A $1 Billion Initiative Aims to Bring EV Chargers to Highways and Rural Areas in the US

ChargePoint hopes to fill the gaps that prevent EV adoption.

As reported by Engadget: While Tesla, Electrify America and others technically have nationwide EV charging networks, they don't really provide full coverage -- many rural areas are far from any kind of charger infrastructure. ChargePoint believes it can help close that gap, though. It's teaming with NATSO on a $1 billion effort to bring EV chargers to over 4,000 travel centers and truck stops (which NATSO represents) by 2030, with a particular focus on highways and rural areas. This could both spur EV adoption in rural towns and help with long-distance travel for everyone, ChargePoint said.

The two allies hope to make use of both "public and private" cash to support their initiative, including Volkswagen settlement funds.

There's not much mystery as to why ChargePoint and NATSO are willing to spend on EV chargers. ChargePoint could corner an underserved market and reap the rewards if and when electric cars dominate. For NATSO, meanwhile, this may be a matter of survival. Many travel centers and truck stops are built on the assumption drivers are stopping for gas -- they could lose much of their business if people have few good reasons to make pit stops.

What's Behind Tesla's Neural Network For Autopilot And Self-Driving?

As reported by InsideEVs: Tesla Autopilot may be considered a breakthrough, but there are still concerns about semi-autonomous and fully autonomous vehicle technology. The concerns surrounding Tesla stem from the fact that it already has the tech employed in its cars, albeit in beta form. However, due to this real-world testing, Tesla has recorded over 3 billion miles of Autopilot data for use in its research.

The Autopilot section of Tesla's website explains the technology via several categories, including hardware, neural networks, autonomy algorithms, code foundation, and evaluation infrastructure. We'll be first to admit that we don't have a solid grasp of AI and neural networks, but the information is definitely fascinating. Even more interesting is the latest video, seen below.

The above video is also shown on Tesla's website, along with the section on neural networks. According to Tesla:

"Our per-camera networks analyze raw images to perform semantic segmentation, object detection and monocular depth estimation. Our birds-eye-view networks take video from all cameras to output the road layout, static infrastructure and 3D objects directly in the top-down view. Our networks learn from the most complicated and diverse scenarios in the world, iteratively sourced from our fleet of nearly 1M vehicles in real time. A full build of Autopilot neural networks involves 48 networks that take 70,000 GPU hours to train. Together, they output 1,000 distinct tensors (predictions) at each timestep."