Car-Sharing, GPS Data Changing Transportation Patterns

As reported by the Daily Bulletin: Why drive a car when you can tap out a ride on your smartphone and get picked up in minutes. Need to drive? Rent a car by the hour and then leave it on the street when you’re done with it.

But if you must own a car, one California automaker is betting it won’t use gasoline. The company’s sole mission is making the internal combustion engine go the way of the horse and buggy and is currently working on an affordable, battery-powered model that travels 245 miles on a single charge.

These innovative transportation models — being played out today in the California marketplace by new, successful companies — are part of what one UCLA urban transportation expert calls “a brave new world” that puts traditional transportation thinking on its ear.

“Technology is affecting transportation, and we need to be thinking about that. The change can be tectonic,” said Brian Taylor, director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA, during a gathering of 400 city mayors, staffers and experts in Indian Wells on Thursday and Friday as part of the Southern California Association of Governments regional conference on mobility, technology and economic opportunity.

Taylor compared the changes to the placement of wooden wheels on trolley carts in the 19th century — the beginning of mass transit that resulted in suburban enclaves around city centers.

“It is an exciting time. It’s like an impressionist painting, you can’t see it up close but only when you step back,” he said.

Emerging companies include: Lyft, a ride-matching company that has grown from outlets in 36 cities to 60 cities; Car2go, a rental service accessible via smartphone app that allows one-way car rentals for as little as a minute or an hour; Tesla, the all-electric car company started by Silicon Valley entrepreneur Elon Musk working on a cheaper model; Google, which is testing its driverless car for a possible 2017 release; and Fehr & Peers, a big data gathering firm that uses cellphone data and Twitter posts to calculate a younger generation’s travel patterns.

“We all know something this is changing. What is exciting about this is that this has all come up on its own and we don’t know where it is headed,” Taylor said after a session on technology and transportation.

The Obama administration supports the advances in technology through its Grow America Act, a multi-billion-dollar proposal that sets aside a minuscule amount, about $108 million a year up to $113 million a year for four years for technological advances in transportation.

Assistant Secretary of the Department of Transportation Greg Winfree said the DOT can’t support private companies but is making the money available to universities to study people and goods movement.

Taylor just finished a study examining teenagers and transportation. Taylor said teenagers don’t plan out trips in advance like baby boomers but instead make decisions in real time.

“We are changing the way we behave. But this is how they’ve started out. These kids have never known a world without mobile technology. That terrifies transportation planners,” Taylor said with a smile.

For example, cellular data in downtown Sacramento showed where drivers went to dinner before the basketball game and where they drove to after the game, said Ron Milam with Fehr & Peers. And Twitter posts in Seattle helped a bus agency better adjust routes and service.

“One tweet we got was kind of scary. It was from a man on the bus who overheard a conversation between a rider getting on the bus and the driver: ‘Man on my bus: ‘I’m broke. I just got out of jail. Can I get a ride.’ Bus driver: ‘Sure.’ Me: So scared.” Milam said the bus company was made aware of the tweet as part of the survey information it commissioned from his firm.

Big data can be used to help cities and transit agencies better plan new bus and rail service as well as new stadiums. The data is cheap and available, he said.

Milham was asked if personalized data from a car’s dashboard computer or a cellphone reveals a person’s identity.

“It is all anonymized,” he said. “We don’t know who the data is associated with. It is aggregated in quite a large geographic area so we don’t know where a person lives.”

The cities of Pasadena and San Diego are cooperating with a freeway and roadway data program sponsored by the Department of Transportation, Winfree said. One project, the Integrated Corridor Management System, will give drivers on the 210 Freeway access to weather and real-time traffic patterns on their smartphones. The project has not yet been completed.

Lyft, a 2-year-old company that serves area including Los Angeles and the Inland Empire, matches passengers needing a ride to drivers with extra seats using a smartphone app. Drivers are given background checks and must pass scrutiny to join the program, said Emily Castor, Lyft director of community relations who spoke at the conference.

Mostly the drivers are using their four- or five-seater car as a money-making tool by giving rides. But Castor said the company is beginning to see drivers give rides as part of their daily routine.

Dan Sturges, a transportation designer for the private firm Team Red US, said the bundling of car-sharing and matching services could be enough for a couple or family to sell their second car. The result would be an economic saving of $4,000 a year, plus less emissions released into the air.

Castor estimated that 80 percent of seats on the road go empty every day.

“Wouldn't it be amazing to use technology to fill those seats?” she asked the audience.

Delegates from smaller cities in Los Angeles County said car-sharing and car-pool matching services work better in more dense, urban areas. “It seems like more populated cities, more urbanized cities are doing it ... rather than outlying cities,” said Diamond Bar Mayor Carol Herrera, a SCAG member.

Castor disagreed, saying Lyft has been successful in sprawling exurbs in Orange County and the Inland Empire.

“Put car-sharing in the neighborhood and near work centers and with public transit, you create a bundle. So you don’t need a second car,” Sturges said.

Planners like Sturges and Milam are looking at traffic gridlock in new ways. Many say building new freeways is no longer a possibility. And that building subways under Los Angeles is expensive.

But social engineering — using smartphone and big data — can be an effective traffic-fighting tool and one that is becoming more acceptable.

“We are not going to solve these problems by working the way we have the last 20 years. We will solve these problems by working in a new way and by being inventive,” Sturges said, to a round of applause.

Meet Jeane: A Far-Fetched But Brilliant Idea To Begin Networking Our Cars

As reported by GigaOM: We’re starting to see a lot of car gadgets and apps designed to make us better drivers. Automatic, Zubie, Dash, Mojio and Zendrive all have built mechanisms to monitor our braking and acceleration and warn us when we’re driving a bit too recklessly.  

But a new Kickstarter project called Jeane goes beyond the audio alerts generated by plug-in gadget or smartphone and brings those warnings directly to the steering wheel in the form of haptic feedback. Jeane is basically a fancy steering-wheel cover that lets you know when you’re driving with a lead foot.

But the most interesting thing about the project is that Jeane isn't designed to act in isolation. It’s intended to communicate with other Jeanes in the cars around it. Using a Bluetooth Low Energy connection, it can link cars together long before suchvehicle-to-vehicle communications technology becomes standard in cars that roll off the assembly line. Jeanes in the cars around you will instantly notify your Jeane when their cars are braking, sending a vibration to your fingertips that will help you instantly react even if your eyes aren't on the brake lights in front of you.

To be honest, there’s very little chance that the networking aspect of Jeane will ever be useful to ordinary drivers. As a Kickstarter project, there’s only the slimmest chance that you’ll every get close to another Jeane on the highway to ever take advantage of its vehicle networking capabilities. And its reliance on Bluetooth LE means you’d have to be dangerously close to another car for it work.

But credit should go its inventor Arjun Iyer for envisioning a very compelling concept. As autonomous driving technologies make it into future cars we’ll be seeing just this type of scenario: cars platooning in close proximity, drafting off each other’s slip stream, packing themselves onto crowded highways and reacting to each other’s driving patterns.

Jeane may be ahead of its time, but one day a technology like Iyer proposes will be a necessity. As networked and autonomous cars make their way on the road, there will be plenty of cars that don’t have the luxury of a vehicle-to-vehicle link. We’ll need to have after-market technologies like Jeane that bring those older cars into our highway networks.

Volvo Testing Autonomous Cars in Sweden

As reported by Motor Authority: While in the U.S. Google is making strides in the development of autonomous cars, overseas major automakers such as Mercedes-Benz, Nissan and Volvo are also at an advanced stage and hope to have the technology ready for the mainstream by as early as the end of this decade. 

Volvo recently launched a pilot project in the city of Gothenburg, Sweden, where its self-driving cars are being tested on real public roads among other, non-autonomous traffic.

Volvo calls the project "Drive Me – Self-driving cars for sustainable mobility", a joint initiative between the automaker, the Swedish Transport Administration, the Swedish Transport Agency, Lindholmen Science Park and the City of Gothenburg. Initially, a handful of cars are being used in the project, and already in this early stage of the project the cars and their autonomous technology are performing well.

“The test cars are now able to handle lane following, speed adaption and merging traffic all by themselves,” Volvo engineer Erik Coelingh said in a statement. “This is an important step towards our aim that the final Drive Me cars will be able to drive the whole test route in highly autonomous mode.”

Volvo sees numerous benefits to the technology--improving emissions in city centers, alleviating traffic, and making driving more relaxing. But most importantly it sees it improving safety. As Volvo explains, a majority of vehicle accidents caused today are due to human error.

The goal for the Drive Me project is to deliver 100 autonomous cars to customers in Gothenburg by 2017. These customers will drive the cars in everyday conditions on approximately 31 miles of selected roads in and around Gothenburg. These roads are typical commuter arteries, including motorway conditions and frequent queues.

NASA Developing Unique Robotic Satellite Refueling System

As reported by Network World: Refueling aging satellites that were never meant to be refueled is the goal with a emerging NASA system that could save millions.

NASA this week said since April 2011, engineers have been working to build robotic satellite servicing technologies necessary to bring in-orbit inspection, repair, refueling, component replacement and assembly capabilities to spacecraft needing aid. The project could also lead to life extension or re-purposing in Earth orbit or Earth-bound application like robotically fuel satellites before they launch, keeping humans at a safe distance during an extremely hazardous operation., NASA said.

Two of NASA's leading development groups -- Kennedy Space Center and the Goddard's Satellite Servicing Capabilities Office (SSCO) teamed on the most recent advancement.  Specifically SSCO demonstrated that a remotely operated robot - with supporting technologies - could transfer oxidizer into the tank of another orbiting spacecraft not originally designed to be refueled. Kennedy's propellant transfer system was an essential part of this Remote Robotic Oxidizer Transfer Test, or RROxiTT.

Satellite fuel, known as hypergolic propellants, includes fluids such as hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide are the most frequently used fuel and oxidizers for maneuvering satellites in Earth orbit, NASA noted.

According to NASA, the team at Goddard shipped an industrial robotic arm to Kennedy for the test. From 800 miles away in Maryland, the team remotely controlled the robotic arm with its attached SSCO oxidizer nozzle tool to connect with a propellant fill and drain valve on the simulated satellite's servicing panel. 

Downstream, the Kennedy-provided propellant transfer system and hose delivery assembly flowed oxidizer through the tool into the client fill-drain valve, with all hardware located in the Kennedy facility in Florida.
Hypergolic propellant was controlled remotely at various flight, pressures and flow rates to prove the concept worked, NASA stated. 

"This is a unique test that's never been done, as far as we know, anywhere in the world," said Brian Nufer, a fluids engineer in the Fluids Engineering Branch of NASA Engineering and Technology.

The full contingent of operating spacecraft is right around 1,000 with more than 400 in the geosynchronous (GEO) Earth orbit belt some 22,000 miles above Earth. GEO is home to more than 400 satellites, many of which deliver such essential services as weather reports, cell phone communications, television broadcasts, government communications and air traffic management.


By developing robotic capabilities to repair and refuel GEO satellites, NASA said it hopes to add years of functional life to satellites and expand options for operators who face unexpected emergencies, tougher economic demands and aging fleets. NASA also hopes that remote refueling technologies will help boost the commercial satellite-servicing industry that is rapidly gaining momentum.

Toyota Combustion Engine That Generates Electricity Directly

As reported by Green Car Reports: Despite the recent advent of usable, talented electric vehicles, combustion engines are likely to persist for quite some time, often as a component in plug-in hybrid and range-extended electric vehicles.

The onus then is on refining combustion power to work harmoniously with increasingly electrified vehicles--and Toyota's new Free Piston Engine Linear Generator (FPEG) could be one solution.

The idea of a linear engine is nothing new--engineers and research departments have been developing them for years.

Linear engines eschew the rotating crankshaft of conventional engines in favor of a single chamber, in which a piston moves forward and backward.

Combustion is largely similar, operating in a chamber at the piston's top. At the bottom, a gas-filled chamber provides the return motion usually provided by the crankshaft-driven motion of connecting rods.
The benefit of a crankshaft is that your piston's linear motion can be transferred into more usable rotating motion--not possible in a linear generator.


Instead, kinetic energy of the piston's back-and-forth movement is used to generate power.
Previously, that's been the work of the air springs. In Toyota's FPEG, writes Green Car Congress (via Charged EVs) it's down to the movement of an unusual W-shaped piston within a special chamber.
The center of the 'W' sits in a combustion chamber, that works on a two-stroke cycle--burned gas is scavenged out through ports in the cylinder head during the exhaust phase, while fresh air is brought in through a port in the cylinder liner.

Meanwhile, the sides of the 'W' feature a magnetic 'mover', and the walls of that chamber contain stator coils. As the permanent magnets on the piston pass the coils, electrical charge is generated--and you have your linear motor.

While this sounds complicated in concept, the unit itself is actually very compact, easy to cool and easy to lubricate. And as the gas spring chamber features a pressure regulating valve, the stiffness of the return 'spring' can be altered, for different operating parameters.

That's all well and good, but what could it be used for?

Essentially, its compact size makes it ideal as a generator for range-extended electric vehicles.
Toyota's test units are only 10 kW (13 horsepower), but a pair of them generates enough electricity for a Yaris or Corolla-sized vehicle to cruise on the highway at 75 mph.

If that sounds unimpressive, consider that one early BMW i3 reviewer struggled to maintain safe highway speeds in the range-extended version, when the two-cylinder engine was unable to sufficiently maintain battery charge.

A linear generator could cause vibration issues, but this is countered, as it is in any other combustion engine, by using more than one FPEG in a horizontally-opposed layout.

Toyota Central R&D Labs Inc. presented the concept at the recent SAE 2014 World Congress in Detroit.

It's still a way from production reality, but it shows that future range-extended vehicles may not be limited by the size, weight and power-generation constraints of conventional piston engines.

BMW Has The Most Efficient Electric Car in the US

As reported by Green Car Reports: Well, the numbers are in, courtesy of a quickly-photographed window sticker, and now we know the range and efficiency ratings for the 2014 BMW i3 electric car.

The EPA-rated range is 81 miles, and its efficiency is a record-breaking 124 MPGe combined (138 MPGe city, 111 MPGe highway).

That confirms the lightweight electric BMW i3 subcompact as the most efficient battery-electric car sold in the U.S. today.

The nearest competitor is the 2013 Scion iQ-EV, an electric minicar with 38 miles of range that's not available to the generic public; it's rated at 121 MPGe.

The competitor with the best rating that can actually be purchased by the public is the 2014 Chevrolet Spark EV, with a combined efficiency rating of 119 MPGe and a rated range of 82 miles.

The Spark EV, however, is a compliance car sold only in quantities sufficient to comply with California's zero-emission vehicle rules.

BMW would appear to have grander aspirations for the i3 electric car, although sales numbers will tell the story within a year or two.

(A "mile per gallon equivalent" is a measure created by the EPA that gives the distance a vehicle can cover electrically on the same amount of energy as contained in 1 gallon of gasoline.)

SpaceX Wins Injunction To Stop USAF From Buying Russian Rocket Engines - Russia's Deputy PM Suggests Getting To Space on a Trampoline

As reported by Reuters: A U.S. Court of Federal Claims judge issued an injunction late Wednesday prohibiting a joint venture between Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing from proceeding with plans to buy Russian-made rocket engines used to send U.S. Air Force satellites into space.

Space Exploration Technologies, the privately held company known as SpaceX, won the temporary injunction against the U.S. government and contractors Boeing and Lockheed operating as United Launch Alliance.

The U.S. Air Force and United Launch Alliance are prohibited "from making any purchases from or payment of money to NPO Energomash", Federal Claims Court Judge Susan Braden wrote in the order.
The preliminary injunction does not extend to any purchase orders placed or money paid to Russian rocket engine maker NPO Energomash prior to the date of the order.

Lawmakers on Wednesday called for a program to develop a next-generation liquid-fuel rocket engine within five years, proposing legislation aimed at reducing U.S. dependence on Russian engines to launch military and spy satellites.



Moscow's annexation of neighbor Ukraine's Crimea region and the massing of Russian troops near the border have left East-West relations more tense than at any time since the Cold War.

SpaceX, which manufactures and launches rockets and spacecraft, last week filed a lawsuit to protest the Air Force's award of a multibillion-dollar, non-compete contract for 36 rocket launches to a partnership of the two biggest U.S. weapons makers.

The company wants the Air Force to reverse the sole-source award of 36 boosters to United Launch Alliance and open the procurement to commercial competition.

United Launch Alliance, the U.S. Air Force and NPO Energomash were not available for immediate comment.

SpaceX, co-founded by investor Elon Musk who also heads electric car company Tesla, says its rockets are U.S. made.

In related news: Russia's Deputy PM Suggests Using A Trampoline To Get To Space

Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin has become one of the most vocal critics of the United States in the past few months, often using his English-language Twitter account to fire off insults against the economic policies which he himself is personally targeted by.

On Tuesday, Rogozin lashed out again, this time at newly announced U.S. ban on high-tech exports to Russia.

"The U.S. introduced sanctions against our space industry. God knows, we warned them: we respond to declarations w/ declarations, to actions w/ actions," Rogozin tweeted, later adding: "After analyzing the sanctions against our space industry, I suggest the U.S. delivers its astronauts to the ISS [international space station] with a trampoline."

Rogozin does actually have a point, although his threats carry much less weight than he may hope.

It's true that Russian shuttles are currently the only option for getting U.S. citizens to get to the space station, and the United States pays Russia some $71 million per person they get up there. In fact, Russia is due to get a $457.9 million payment for its services soon. If it really wanted to, Russia could stop U.S. astronauts from reaching the station, despite the fact that the United States funded as much as $100 billion of the space station's $160 billion price tag. Worse still, it could refuse to let the two U.S. citizens currently on the space station return home.

Thankfully, that seems a remote possibility – $457.9 million a lot of money for Russia's aerospace industry, and few believe that Russia would actually give it up. Plus, as Jeffrey Kluger noted at Time Magazine last month, Russia may not want to push the United States into the hands of SpaceX and Orbital Sciences, two private American companies that hope to be able to send passengers to the station soon. So, while things may be a little awkward for a while, don't expect a change to the status quo.

Rogozin's comments on Tuesday are just his latest criticism of U.S. sanctions. At the beginning of April, he mocked Western attempts to targeted his foreign assets, tweeting, "Have you found my accounts, money transfers, real estate, luxury cars, yachts, etc?"

His criticism is legitimate – asset seizures only work if there are foreign assets to seize (or if those can be found), and, as The Post's Michael Birnbaum recently reported, there are few signs of sanctions on the street in Russia. However, when Rogozin asked those who sanctioned him to "send me your teeth ground in impotent rage," he may have gone a bit far.