Elon Musk Shares First Look at Boring Company’s Tunnel Under L.A.

The Boring Company and Elon Musk have completed about 152 meters of their tunnel project
under the city of Los Angeles.  Musk posted a photo of the tunnel's progress on his Instagram
on Saturday.

As reported by Futurism: After almost five months, Elon Musk’s Boring Company has finally finished a portion of the tunnel they’re digging under Los Angeles. Musk proudly posted a photo of the tunnel on his Instagram, simply captioned with “The Boring Company tunnel under LA.” The tunnel is a clear demonstration of how Musk’s tunnel-digging venture has evolved from the initial idea first floated on Twitter to reality.

The Boring Company started with a 49-m (160-ft) tunnel test path under SpaceX’s Hawthorne headquarters earlier this summer. In August, the company sought permission from the city government to expand the tunnel for 3.2 km (2 miles), a path that would travel to the local airport. Musk’s photo shows a portion of this 3.2-km tunnel, which he said is some 152 m (500 ft) long.

“Should be 2 miles long in three or four months and hopefully stretch the whole 405 [north to south] corridor from [Los Angeles International Airport] to the 101 in a year or so,” Musk added in a tweet, confirming a previously laid out plan.

Not Your Average Tunnel
While the photo doesn’t really distinguish it from other similar infrastructures, the Boring Company’s tunnel will ultimately be quite different in function. As Musk previously revealed, cars and people would be ferried under the Boring Company’s network of tunnels using an electric skate or sled. These sleds come from above ground, through special platforms located along the route of the tunnels. Using a special elevator, cars and “people pods” are brought down into the tunnel, where the sleds can travel up to 242 k/h (150 mph).

The fairly futuristic concept could certainly disrupt city transportation, but perhaps even more interesting is the potential of these tunnels to become tubes designed for a Hyperloop — Musk’s concept for a super-fast future train pods which the CEO first spoke about back in 2012.

At any rate, the Boring Company is building tunnels designed to bypass heavy traffic in congested urban areas, such as L.A., and provide faster access to the city’s airport. And L.A. isn’t the only one — other municipal governments have expressed interest in having a similar tunnel network under their cities.

Alphabet’s Waymo Will Test Self-Driving Cars in Snowy Detroit - But Colorado Would be a Better Location

Based on reporting from BloombergTechnology: The self-driving cars Google designed are going to the snow -- and the seat of the car industry.

Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo, the vehicle arm of Google’s parent, announced on Thursday that it will start testing its autonomous Chrysler minivans on roads in the greater Detroit area. Michigan will be the sixth state where Waymo has run its vehicles on public roads. But the region is the first with a winter dominated by snow and ice, the kind of inclement conditions that pose hurdles for vehicle sensors.

“Having lived through fourteen Michigan winters, I’m confident that there are few better places that will prepare our self-driving cars for winter conditions,” John Krafcik, Waymo’s chief executive officer and a former Ford Motor Co. executive, said in a statement. Waymo opened a testing facility in suburban Detroit last year.

The hometown automakers are already there. Ford has tested self-driving cars in the state (including some for pizza delivery). General Motors Co.’s Cruise Automation is experimenting there as well. 

Waymo has compiled 3.5 million miles of public road testing since 2009. It’s widely seen as the front-runner in driverless car technology, which could upend the auto market if and when it arrives. Yet Waymo has sworn off manufacturing its own vehicles, and hasn’t disclosed how it plans to spread its package of self-driving sensors and software to a commercial fleet.

Starting in April, Waymo began testing a free service with select passengers in Phoenix, using some of its 600 minivans from Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV. A Waymo spokesman declined to specify how many vehicles would be used in Detroit.

However, Colorado is also the home of several car testing locations - including Pike's Peak for brake systems, and uphill racing for a range of vehicles including EVs. There are also natural canyons, large swaths of area with no wireless communications, and tunnels where GPS signals are blocked.  Successfully navigating snowy conditions on steep treacherous mountain roads, while avoiding snow and rock falls, as well as other drivers on I70 to Breckenridge may be the final authoritative test for some self-driving car systems.

NVIDIA CEO Says We’re 4 Years Away From Fully Autonomous Cars

At their GPU Technology Conference event in Taipei on Thursday, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang
predicted that fully autonomous vehicles would be available on the roads in the next four
years.  Self-driving cars could be saving lives sooner than you might expect.

As reported by Futurism: Earlier this month, computer systems developer and chip manufacturer NVIDIA announced a new artificially intelligent (AI) computer which they claimed was capable of supporting fully autonomous vehicles. This probably explains why, on Thursday, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang said that AI would enable fully automated cars four years from now.

“It will take no more than 4 years to have fully autonomous cars on the road. How long it takes for the vast majority of cars on the road to become that, it really just depends,” Huang told the press after an NVIDIA event in Taipei, according to Reuters.

Under the standards set by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), a fully autonomous vehicle falls under a Level 5 ranking. Most, if not all, of today’s driverless vehicles are below Level 3, not being fully autonomous. Tesla CEO and founder Elon Musk has said that Tesla would reach Level 5 soon, which General Motors has said is impossible.

From Gamer to Game Changer
Everyone who’s played a video game in recent years is likely familiar with NVIDIA as the maker of the advanced graphics processing unit (GPU) chips that gave your games a more realistic look. The company has since ventured into a wider world of chip technologies, including AI, self-driving cars, virtual reality, and high-performance computing.

NVIDIA has been investing in AI chips for automated systems, which has become a valuable move since the biggest names in tech have all begun to reshape their business models to focus on AI. “There are many tasks in companies that can be automated… the productivity of society will go up,” Huang noted.

Self-driving vehicles and the automated systems that move them are just one of the more immediate applications of this technology. NVIDIA’s powerful chips could make driverless cars more capable of making roads safer by reducing or even completely eliminating human error.

Tesla is Officially Restoring Power to Hospitals in Puerto Rico

Elon Musk's effort to bring electricity back to Puerto Rico has finally proven
successful.  A local children's hospital had its power restored thanks to a
combination of solar energy and Tesla's Powerwall energy storage batteries.

As reported by Futurism: The first of Elon Musk’s solar energy-Powerwall projects has successfully restored power to a local hospital in Puerto Rico, according to a tweet from Tesla earlier this week. Hospital del Niño, a children’s hospital in San Juan, Puerto Rico, is among those working with Musk. The Tesla CEO and founder offered to provide a few hundred energy storage batteries to facilitate the Caribbean island’s efforts to restore energy after its grid was devastated by Hurricane Maria.

Hospital del Niño is first of many solar+storage projects going live. Grateful to support the recovery of Puerto Rico with @ricardorossellopic.twitter.com/JfAu11UBYg

— Tesla (@Tesla) October 24, 2017

Tesla isn’t the only one working to return electricity to Puerto Rico. A similar effort is also being made by a two-year-old company from Montana called Whitefish Energy. The company signed a $300-million contract with Puerto Rico’s Electric Power Authority to complete infrastructure work that will provide energy to key industrial facilities needed to kick-start the island’s disrupted economy.

Puerto Rico has taken a rather unique approach to restoring power after Hurricane Maria. Instead of rebuilding the existing energy grid, government officials seek to redo it altogether. The move has drawn flak from both experts and members of the U.S. Congress, particularly with regard to the use of relief funds. Tesla’s success with the Hospital del Niño, however, proves that a combination of renewable energy and storage batteries is an effective and efficient way of providing much needed power to disaster-struck areas.

Tesla Lands Deal to Build an EV Factory in Shanghai

It could be crucial to selling cars in a hot market.

As reported by Engadget: It's difficult for foreign car makers to crack the Chinese market. Unless they're willing to partner with a local brand (and thus give up both profits and technology), they have to pay for shipping vehicles and swallow a 25 percent import duty fee. That clearly won't cut it for Tesla, which has wanted a deeper presence in China but also doesn't want to give up its fierce independence. However, it looks like Elon Musk's outfit may have reached a compromise: Wall Street Journal sources claim that Tesla has a deal to build a factory in Shanghai's free trade zone. Tesla would still have to pay the 25 percent import duty, but it would retain full control and could likely offset the tariff with lower production and shipping costs.

Tesla has so far declined to comment besides restating what it said in June, where it vowed to "clearly define" its manufacturing plans in China before the end of 2017. The company had confirmed that it was talking to Shanghai's government about a factory at the same time.

If the deal is in place, it could be the ticket to igniting Tesla's Chinese sales -- and the company as a whole. While the automaker has sold its EVs in China for years, sales have sometimes struggled in a country where it faces an uphill battle between its outsider status and apartment-focused living (you can't buy an EV if there's nowhere to charge it). A Shanghai factory would not only make Tesla's vehicles more palatable, but could help it satisfy demand now that the Chinese EV market is truly heating up. And this is especially important for the Model 3. It's the cornerstone of Tesla's expansion into the (relative) mainstream, and anything it can do to both lower costs and improve availability should make a significant impact on sales.

This Material Could Allow NASA Planes to Cross the Country in Under an Hour

A team of researchers from NASA and Binghamton University have identified
boron nitride nanotubes as a material that could be used to boost aircraft travel to
hypersonic speeds.  The problem, however, is that a gram of the material costs $1,000.

As reported by Futurism: Within the next decade, planes could be capable of traveling across the country by hypersonic flight in less than an hour—all it would take is some boron nitride.

A key factor for a vehicle to maintain extremely high speeds is the intense amount of heat generated during travel; for example, the now-retired supersonic Concorde aircraft experienced temperatures of up to 260°F at its lazy cruising speed of 1,534 miles per hour. As such, the materials used to build these aircraft must also be able to withstand very high heat, in addition to being structurally stable and lightweight. A study conducted by researchers from NASA and Binghamton University investigated the properties of nanotubes made using boron nitride, a combination of boron and nitrogen. The study revealed it could potentially be used to make hypersonic travel—speeds above 4,000 miles per hour—possible.

Currently, carbon nanotubes are used in aircraft due to their strength and ability to withstand temperatures up to 400 degrees Celsius (752 degress Fahrenheit). Boron nitride nanotubes (BNNTs), however, can withstand up to 900 degrees Celsius (1652 Fahrenheit). They can also handle high amounts of stress, and are much more lightweight than their carbon counterparts.

The Price of Air Travel
The problem with using BNNTs is their cost. According to Binghamton University Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering Changhong Ke, coating an aircraft with BNNTs would run a very high price tag.

“NASA currently owns one of the few facilities in the world able to produce quality BNNTs,” said Ke. “Right now, BNNTs cost about $1,000 per gram. It would be impractical to use a product that expensive.”

Despite the high production cost, it’s possible prices will decrease, and production increase, after more studies detail the material’s usefulness. Carbon nanotubes were around the same price 20 years ago, but are now between $10 and $20 per gram. Ke believes something similar will happen with BNNTs.

That said, don’t expect the first application of BNNTs to be for commercial aircraft. They’ll probably be used for military fighter jets first, with commercialized flights to follow after. Hopefully by then, we’ll other other ways to travel quickly: be it by hyperloop, Elon Musk’s BFR rocket, or China’s plans to build the fastest “flying train.”

Boeing Invests in Near Earth Autonomy to Accelerate Development of Autonomous Aircraft

Boeing's HorizonX division has invested in autonomous tech company Near Earth
Autonomy.  It's the first investment the company has made since being formed in
2016, and it comes alongside a partnership with Near Earth to explore "urban
mobility" products.

As reported by Futurism: Earlier this month, Boeing acquired Aurora Flight Sciences, demonstrating the company’s commitment to incorporating autonomous technology into aircraft designs. Now, the aviation company’s HorizonX Ventures division has announced its investment in Near Earth Autonomy — a company that focuses on technologies that enable reliable autonomous flight — further solidifying its support for these burgeoning technologies.

The move marks the first investment HorizonX Ventures has made since its creation last year, but the relationship between Boeing and Near Earth doesn’t end there. In addition to this investment, the companies are partnering to work on future applications for autonomous tech in sectors like urban mobility with vehicles like flying taxis.

“This partnership will accelerate technology solutions that we feel will be key to unlocking emerging markets of autonomous flight,” said Boeing HorizonX Vice President Steve Nordlund in a statement. “We are excited to begin this partnership with a company with such a depth of experience in autonomy so we can leverage the scale of Boeing to innovate for our customers.”

Near Earth Autonomy's Pedigree
Near Earth Autonomy is led by Sanjiv Singh, the company’s acting CEO. He co-founded the company alongside Marcel Bergerman, Lyle Chamberlain and Sebastian Scherer. Combined, they have over 30 years of experience with autonomous systems designed for land and air vehicles. Two of their most notable achievements include partnering with the U.S. Army in 2010 to develop full-scale autonomous helicopter flights and working with the Office of Naval Research to design an autonomous aerial cargo delivery platform for the U.S. Marines.

“This is an exciting opportunity for Near Earth,” said Singh. “The Boeing HorizonX investment will accelerate the development of robust products and enable access to a broader portfolio of applications for aerial autonomy.”

Flying taxis are becoming increasingly popular in the aerospace industry and many expect that they will change how people get around cities and traffic. At the forefront, we have Dubai, which tested its autonomous flying taxi earlier this year and plans to launch a taxi service before year’s end. Meanwhile, Airbus is aiming to test its electric taxi next year, with German company Lilium hoping to have a series of commercial aircraft released by 2025.

It’s an exciting time for the future of transportation, and it’s possible that soon, the concept of manually driving a car will be a thing of the past.