Embark's Semi-Autonomous Trucks are Hauling Frigidaire Appliances

As reported by Engadget: Last year, Otto made a 120-mile beer run. Now Frigidaire and Ryder have partnered with autonomous trucking company Embark to deliver smart fridges from Texas to California. You know, so you have a place to store the brews. Embark thinks that freeways are the ideal test grounds for its autonomous efforts because there aren't any traffic lights, pedestrians or oncoming traffic to deal with. Which makes sense. All a truck needs to do, basically, is stay in its lane, maintain speed and keep a safe distance from other cars.

The Level 2 autonomous semis (think: Tesla's Autopilot and Cadillac's Super Cruise) will have a driver behind the wheel for insurance, of course. But once a Ryder driver drops the trailers at a designated spot in El Paso before the journey begins, Embark's systems will be driving until the load reaches Palm Springs. From there, another Ryder driver will complete the last-mile trip. The reason for this push is one of available manpower. Or, in this case, a steady decline of it. Two years ago, the American Trucking Association estimated that there could be a shortage of 175,000 drivers by 2024.

"More than 50 percent of all drivers will retire in the next two decades and there aren't nearly enough young drivers joining this industry to replace them," Embark CEO Alex Rodrigues said in a statement. "By allowing automation to work together with local drivers to handle less desirable long haul routes, we will be able to increase productivity to address the current 50,000 driver shortage wile also creating new local driving jobs that attract younger drivers for the industry."

The pilot program has already completed a handful of the 650-mile trips as of October, with more expected to follow. Rodrigues says that this is the first time someone had demonstrated an end-to-end autonomous driving system for semis.

Commercial trucking is ripe for innovation. Diesel-maker Cummins announced an EV big rig in late August, and Tesla plans to launch its own alt-fuel variant this week. Given the latter's pushes into autonomous driving, it isn't a stretch to think it'll have self-driving trucks on the road at some point in the future as well. Then there's Otto, Uber's self-driving truck company.

While the company has been embroiled in a lawsuit with Uber over allegedly stolen trade secrets, it has kept plugging away. In June Otto showed off its new trucks built with off-the-shelf 64-channel LiDAR arrays. You know, the type from Velodyne -- not Alphabet.

UPS is Converting Diesel Trucks to Electric for NYC Deliveries

As reported by Engadget: UPS is investing more seriously in electric vehicles, testing out new EV delivery vans in California and snagging some of Mitsubishi Fuso's urban trucks coming to NYC. But what about its existing fleet? The shipping company is partnering with New York State's Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) to convert up to 1,500 of its old diesel trucks to all-electric systems.

With a $500,000 grant provided by NYSERDA, UPS will collaborate with energy transportation company Unique Electric Solutions to innovate methods to switch its vehicles over to electric. Producing a conversion kit is the first milestone, which involves switching out the UPS trucks' chassis for 225kw electric motorized ones designed by UES; The second is developing a process blueprint to transform three vehicles in a day.

If everything goes to plan, the partners will start converting trucks in Spring 2018. The upper estimate on the amount of vehicles affected -- 1,500 -- represents two-thirds of UPS' NYC delivery fleet.

Daimler's Electric School Bus Will Have a 100 Mile Range

It comes with gadget chargers and could provide backup power for neighborhoods.

Most school buses don't scream "high-tech," but they're actually perfect candidates for electrification -- most run two short routes and have long breaks for recharging. Daimler and its Thomas Built Buses division have unveiled an electric bus called the Jouley that should be able to handle that task perfectly. It's got a 160 km (100 mile) all-electric range and can pack up to 81 kids "safely, quietly and emission-free," Thomas said. Should operators need more range, they can add another battery pack.

Mercedes-Benz (Daimler) Citaro bus

Jouley is just a first step in an electric future, Thomas suggested. "We snuck up on our competition, they didn't see it coming," said CEO Caley Edgerly on Facebook. "I've had the pleasure to drive it, it's super smooth, it's going to allow us to develop future electric vehicles."

Thomas points out that it's equipped with both 120 volt and USB charging ports for laptops and cellphones, an obvious must for students nowadays. The company also implied that it might one day serve as a Tesla Powerwall-type device that could, say, backup power for a school or even a neighborhood.

Daimler's Mercedes-Benz, much like other automakers, has said it will greatly expand its electric vehicle range over the next few years with the EQ lineup of electric cars. Daimler is also set to start making its first electric truck deliveries in Japan and the US.

Whether schools will jump on board the Jouley, however, likely depends on the economics. School boards are chronically short of money, so the overall cost would have to be less than regular school buses, unless they're supplemented by local, state or federal governments. In Europe and Asia that's a given, but under the current US administration, the situation is less clear.

Uber Works with NASA to get Flying Taxis Ready by 2020

The company has also announced Los Angeles as a third test city.

As reported by Engadget: They say the best revenge is living well, and so in the midst of its ongoing and messy breakup with London, Uber has proven it's doing just fine thank you very much by signing an agreement with NASA to develop software for its proposed flying taxi project, Elevate.

At a speech at the Web Summit in Lisbon, Uber's head of product Jeff Holden revealed the company has signed a Space Act Agreement with NASA to create the air traffic control system that will manage its low-flying taxi fleet, which it aims to have in the air by 2020. The company also announced that a third test city, Los Angeles, has been added to the program, joining Dallas-Fort Worth and Dubai. According to Uber, its UberAIR service could compress a one and a half hour journey from LAX to the Staples Center during rush hour to under 30 minutes.

Uber released a slick video, seen above, alongside its announcement, illustrating just how it envisions the Elevate service being used. It closes with the line "closer than you think". With NASA's clout behind the project, the idea of a flying taxi service is not only closer, but a whole lot more credible, too.

A Company Hacked a Tesla So It Drives on Hydrogen

Netherlands gas supplier Holthausen Group has taken a Tesla Model S and hacked it
to run on electricity and hydrogen.  Combined with their "Project Hesla" components
the vehicle can travel 1,000km (620 miles) - more than double the
distance of the cheapest Model S.

As reported by Futurism: The Tesla model S is one of the most renowned electric vehicles on the market. The cheapest, 75D model, boasts an impressive range of 416 km (259 miles), while the 100D and P100D have ranges of 539 km (335 miles) and 506 km (315 miles), respectively. What if you wanted your Model S to go farther? Sure, you could stop and charge it at one of Tesla’s supercharger stations, but what if you didn’t have to stop and could instead drive for, say, another 500-600 km? All it would take is a little hydrogen.

As reported by The Drive, a gas supplier in the Netherlands called Holthausen Group managed to boost the maximum range of Tesla’s Model S by essentially hacking in a hydrogen power source. The company’s success at making an electric- and hydrogen-powered Tesla makes them the first in the world to do so. They even gave it an appropriate name: Project Hesla.

Since Tesla wasn’t involved in the process, the Model S was acquired second-hand. Getting the Model S to accept hydrogen as a fuel source wasn’t easy, with Holthausen Group engineer Max Holthausen calling the vehicle’s system “a big maze.” Holthausen had to develop and implement a workaround, which only upped the difficulty of the project.

In the end, the team made it work; the Hesla now utilizes two power sources. The first is the already-installed battery, and the second is the hydrogen stored in tanks installed inside the vehicle. It’s actually fairly simple to understand how this works: hydrogen molecules are pumped into a fuel cell, where an anode removes their electrons, which pass through a circuit to the battery to give it additional charge. The hydrogen (now ions) then pass into a cathode, where they are reunited with electrons, and bind with oxygen to form water, i.e., H2O, and exit the fuel cell. Compared to the Model S P100D’s aforementioned range of 506 km (315 miles), the Hesla’s incredibly efficient fuel cell allow it to travel nearly 1,000 km (620 miles) using a fully-charged battery and full supply of hydrogen.

Is Hydrogen the Way to Go?
Hydrogen has the potential to become a mass-produced alternative to gasoline and even electricity thanks to seawater and a specific aluminum alloy, but don’t go trying to convert your own Tesla — or any electric car — just yet.

First of all the incorporation of hydrogen power costs an inordinate amount of money. According to The Drive, the hydrogen conversion costs upwards of $58,000 dollars — tacked on top of the $79,500 Model S price tag. Then there’s the issue of replenishing the hydrogen supply. It’s not impossible, but not as convenient as recharging an electric car. There are only 39 hydrogen fueling stations in the U.S., with most located on the West Coast — specifically California. The other four are in South Carolina (2 stations), Connecticut (1), and Massachusetts (1).

Despite the scarcity of refueling hydrogen tanks and the cost of the entire process, Holthausen is still moving forward with its Project Hesla. The company aims to perfect its prototype, to acquire more data over the next several months. If these tests provide pertinent information, it could give other companies that have invested in hydrogen-powered vehicles the technical savvy to catch up to the race. Of those presently relevant, Honda is releasing hydrogen cars, Toyota has a hydrogen-powered truck, and Mercedes Benz debuted its hydrogen-fueled SUV in September.

These cutting-edge companies constitute the first big automakers with fully-functional hydrogen vehicles on the road, but Holthausen and the Hesla could prompt still more ambitious parties to invest in hydrogen fuel in the near future.

The Lamborghini Terzo Millennio is a Brutally Fantastic EV Supercar Concept

As reported by Engadget: Supercapacitors, not batteries, power this wild creation.Lamborghini isn't known for bowing to convention. Ever since Ferruccio told Enzo Ferrari where he could stick his temperamental cars, and decided to build his own, it's been going its own way. This car, the Terzo Millennio ("third millenium"), built in collaboration with MIT, is very much a Lamborghini approach to the EV performance car. To begin with, it is obviously nothing else but a Lamborghini. Wild concept car touches aside, it's as wedgy and mean as anything to come out of Sant'Agata (and definitely anything to come out of Cambridge, MA!).

There's some advanced tech here, too, as you might imagine with MIT's involvement. The most notable is the supercapacitor energy storage technology. Supercapacitors aren't ready for primetime yet, being very expensive and not quite as energy dense, although currently they're used in a few niche automotive applications. But MIT and Lamborghini want to produce one that'll work more like a main battery, but with greater ability to recharge and discharge quickly. That's ideal for brutal, explosive acceleration. If Lamborghini and MIT can make a breakthrough here, it'd let the decidedly conventional Lamborghinis of today (naturally aspirated, non-electrified) take a leap into the future on Lamborghini's own terms.

The company is also exploring carbon composite batteries utilizing nanotechnology, which the company claims would reduce weight and increase the discharge capacity of the batteries. So, it seems, the Terzo Millennio might combine the two power storage technologies into the same drivetrain.

Of course, like most modern Lamborghinis there's all-wheel drive, although it's in-wheel electric motor-based rather than the conventional mechanical type. It'd be easy enough to leave off the front motors for a Performante variant, perhaps. Or maybe in-wheel electric motors become the norm in the future. It's too early to tell; for now, this concept is AWD.

The body is carbon fiber, and this concept previews some technology that can detect degradation in the carbon fiber early and potentially repair it with something called "nano-channels" utilizing a form of the technology that allows carbon composite materials to store energy. This technology deserves more explanation than we have room for here, and we'll get a deep dive on it as soon as we can.

Lastly, Lamborghini wants a vehicle like the Terzo Millennio to sound like a Lamborghini. That won't be easy, since there's no V12 or V10 to be found. Frankly, the company doesn't even sound like they've figured out how to solve that particular puzzle, stating that "[a] deep investigation is needed" to determine what it should sound like. That's no easy task, and we suspect the engineers will be busy on that one.

Will you see a Terzo Millennio out on the road? Almost certainly not; this is a pure concept that shows the direction that Lamborghini will take in the future. At least we finally know where Sant'Agata's head is at in terms of post-internal combustion powertrain tech.

Former General Motors Executive: “We Are Approaching the End of the Automotive Era”

Former General Motors VP Bob Lutz foresees the end of human-driven cars and
the automotive industry as we know it.  He expects self-driving cars to completely
take over within the next 20 years, with human drivers legislated off the roads.

As reported by Futurism:
Relinquishing the Driver's Seat
Saying that autonomous cars are slowly increasing in popularity is a bit of an understatement. An idea once relegated to works of sci-fi is slowly becoming a reality, and it’s seemingly only a matter of time before the majority of vehicles on our streets and highways are self-driving and we reach the end of the automotive era as we know it.

A glance at the companies investing in autonomous technologies should tell you everything you need to know about the tech’s expected impact — Tesla, Google, Lyft, Uber, General Motors, and Ford are just a handful of the many companies creating, testing, and deploying autonomous cars.

While figuring out how to sell self-driving cars to consumers might be a more near-term consideration for some of these companies, no doubt others see the possibility that we’re heading toward a future in which people no longer own cars at all or, at the very least, one in which owner-driven vehicles represent just a small minority of those on the road.

Bob Lutz sees such a future on the horizon.

The former VP of General Motors may have retired in 2010, but with 47 years’ worth of experience, few know the automotive industry as well as he does, so when he says we’re approaching the end of the automotive era, it’s in every automaker and car owner’s best interest to pay attention.

“The auto industry is on an accelerating change curve,” Lutz wrote in an article published by Automotive News. “For hundreds of years, the horse was the prime mover of humans, and for the past 120 years, it has been the automobile. Now, we are approaching the end of the line for the automobile because travel will be in standardized modules.”

Lutz expects the transition to autonomous cars to impact consumers fully within the next 15 to 20 years. The “tipping point,” as Lutz put it, will be when roughly 20 to 30 percent of vehicles are self-driving, which will cause society to realize that autonomous cars are safer than those driven by humans. Human-driven vehicles will then be made illegal on roads, and car owners will either have to scrap their vehicles or trade them in for something that can drive itself.

Public Acceptance
Interestingly enough, Lutz doesn’t believe public acceptance will be necessary for self-driving cars to find success. Companies like Uber, Lyft, FedEx, UPS, the U.S. Postal Service, and Amazon will lead the charge, each buying thousands of low-, medium-, and high-end models to advance their businesses.

Those vehicles won’t be branded by their manufacturer, according to Lutz. Instead, they’ll bear the brand of the company using them, so while the autonomous car may look like one of, say, Ford’s models, it’ll be branded “Lyft” or converted into a UPS truck.

Lutz’s prediction that the end of the automotive era is nigh is supported by a number of recent assertions and actions by others.

NVIDIA’s CEO thinks we’re only four years away from fully autonomous cars, and Toyota believes they’ll have intelligent talking cars by 2020. California will allow self-driving cars without human drivers to operate on roads by mid-2018, and Google’s Waymo is expected to launch a self-driving car service within the next few months.

According to Lutz, automakers will be largely okay for the next 10 to 15 years, operating in a manner similar to what they do today. However, within 20 years, the shift to self-driving vehicles will be complete, and the human-driven automobile, repair facilities, and car dealerships will become relics of the past.

“I won’t be around to say, ‘I told you so,’ though if I do make it to [105-years old], I could no longer drive anyway because driving will be banned,” mused Lutz in his article. “So my timing once again is impeccable.”

"The automobile is dead.  Long live the automobile."