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Drone flights generally aren’t remarkable, but this one was for a simple reason—the entire time the Hybrid Tiger was in the sky, it drew power from two distinct systems: solar panels in the wings, and a compact hydrogen fuel cell in the body. The flight marked a major milestone for the program from the US Naval Research Laboratory, a sign that the drone is at least half as capable as intended. Hybrid Tiger’s successful day in the air started November 18, 2020, although the Navy announced the success in mid-April. “The flight was effectively a performance test in worst-case conditions: temperatures falling below zero degrees Celsius, winds gusting to 20 knots, and relatively little solar energy as we approached the solar solstice Dec. 21,” said Richard Stroman, a mechanical engineer from the NRL Chemistry Division, in a release. “Despite all of that, Hybrid Tiger performed well.” A typical long-endurance drone, such as an MQ-9 Reaper, stays aloft for hours and hours by burning hundreds of gallons of jet fuel to power an engine, which in turn drives the Reaper’s pusher propeller. Noise from this engine gives the Reaper its distinctive loud buzz, a sound that is conspicuously absent from the Hybrid Tiger.

Yesterday the United States Army announced that it will work with Microsoft on the production phase of the Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) program as it moves from rapid prototyping to production and rapid fielding.  The IVAS headset, based on HoloLens and augmented by Microsoft Azure cloud services, delivers a platform that will keep Soldiers safer and make them more effective. The program delivers enhanced situational awareness, enabling information sharing and decision-making in a variety of scenarios. Microsoft has worked closely with the U.S. Army over the past two years, and together we pioneered Soldier Centered Design to enable rapid prototyping for a product to provide Soldiers with the tools and capabilities necessary to achieve their mission. (from the MSFT blog) "We appreciate the partnership with the U.S. Army, and are thankful for their continued trust in transitioning IVAS from rapid prototyping to rapid fielding. We look forward to building on this successful partnership with the men and women of the U.S. Army Close Combat Force."

Watch Matheu Parr, from Rolls Royce Electricals speak to CNN News18 on making the world's fastest electric plane.

When a company commands a valuation many times that of its rivals, despite having a meager fraction of those rivals’ sales, it usually means one thing: The market expects the upstart to eat the incumbents’ lunches as it grows into a dominant powerhouse. Widespread belief that electric vehicles (”EVs”) are destined to replace the internal combustion engine (“ICE”), combined with a highly publicized role in the creation of the global EV market, have convinced many within the investment community, media industry, and general public that Tesla is such a company.  * - Tesla's valuation is 5X that of Volkswagen because the market has concluded that, as the auto industry goes electric, Tesla will not only lead the industry, but dominate it.  The idea that Tesla will hold unprecedented sway in the auto market may sound appealing to some, but it is fundamentally flawed.  In reality, Tesla has no unassailable advantage in the EV space, a fact other automakers have begun to prove with the introduction of their own competitive EV offerings.  * - Competitors are already hounding Tesla at every turn; in every major market – China, Europe, the US – rival offerings are eating into Tesla's market share and even surpassing it. 

The U.S. Marine Corps is looking to equip its infantry units with a man-portable, swarming loitering munition that experts say is part of its shift toward countering China with a light and deadly seaborne infantry force. The so-called “Organic Precision Fires - Infantry Light” program is seeking ground-launched drones that can be deployed with no more than two people, have a range of up to 20 kilometers, loiter for 90 minutes, swarm, be jam resistant and be able to take out enemy troops and materiel, according to a November request for information.  Special operations forces have used small loitering munition drones in combat for some time, said Bryan Clark, a retired submarine officer and senior fellow at The Hudson Institute, pointing to the AeroVironment Switchblade system. But the swarming effect is something that would take the system a step further, he added. “The swarming idea would be, ‘How do I overwhelm the enemy’s defenses and cut off lines of escape,’” Clark explained. “If I’m a Marine unit, I’m generally going after a group of people, not just one or two guys the way SOF might be. But the idea here is to cause an area effect. You want to overwhelm defenses or cause explosions over a wider area to try and herd your adversary or cut off lines of retreat.  “You might create a blast pattern or detonate in some kind of order that herds your adversary into an area that you want to be a kill box. So, swarming for the Marine Corps would be about driving your enemy’s behavior in ways advantageous to yourself.”  Marines might also be able to use a swarm as a decoy and try to get the adversary to look for the unit in the wrong locations.  “You are looking for weapon systems that can maximize the effectiveness of finding and eliminating a target while minimizing the logistical burden on the unit,” he said. “And you want to maximize the range and any intelligence that system can deliver to you. If I have a man-portable unmanned system that I can launch with a camera, it’s small in size so its detectability is reduced, it can send that information back to the unit and it can also hit a target with great precision: That’s an awesome capability to have.” The swarming capability makes it even more lethal, Wood said, because the drones can communicate with each other to maximize the effectiveness of the strike by attacking from different axes.  Both Clark and Wood agreed that this isn’t a science fiction project but technology that exists today, which means it could be available much more quickly than a typical long-duration DoD acquisition program.  “It’s another indicator of the Marine Corps looking for current technologies that can allow small units to operate autonomously with a low logistical burden,”. 

Hyundai is teasing the first interior photos of the Ioniq 5 ahead of its world premiere on February 23rd. It’s Hyundai’s first EV to utilize the Electric-Global Modular Platform (E-GMP) — the same platform that Apple is said to have been interested in for its oft-rumored self-driving car. E-GMP’s flat battery and long wheelbase allows for a more spacious and customizable interior for both passengers and cargo.

The big design flourish teased today is a sliding center console inside the Ioniq 5. The so-called “Universal Island” moves out of the way so that the driver or passengers can easily enter and exit either side of the car when parked in a narrow spot, for example.  Hyundai says that the driver and front-passenger seats are equipped with leg rests to relax while the vehicle recharges. The seats can also be repositioned so that adults in the front can care for pets and children seated in the rear. Hyundai notes that the Ioniq 5’s interior will be clad with eco-conscious materials.  The Ioniq 5 appears to have Tesla’s Camp Mode in its sights with a feature that effectively turns the car into a rolling generator with 3.5 kW of Vehicle to Load (V2L) power. That’s enough juice to power beefy 110V/220V appliances like a full-sized oven, treadmill, or five giant speakers, as Hyundai’s already teased. Teslas can’t do that without hacking an inverter into the circuitry and possibly voiding your warranty. The Ioniq is fitted with V2L outlets on the inside and outside of the car. 

First-time filings for unemployment insurance were expected to total 760,000 last week, according to economists surveyed by Dow Jones, now its 793,000 

Elon Musk is going to pay $100 million towards a prize to come up with the best carbon capture technology. The richest person in the world’s tweet brings attention to an often-overlooked technology that has been around since the 1970s but has mostly been relegated to niche corners of the energy community.  “Mr. Musk’s announcement reflects a maturation in the private sector around climate change and investment,” Julio Friedmann, a senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, “As in the past, Mr. Musk’s announcement has shaken up the gumball machine.” - While trees and other plants can remove some carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, most climate change experts agree we can’t plant enough, fast enough, to do the job alone.  -  Carbon capture technology has been around for decades, and is used to strip carbon out of factory emissions as well as remove carbon that’s already in the air.  -  But it’s expensive, and until the cost of releasing carbon into the air rises, there’s little economic incentive to use it.

Tesla received a new patent last week for “estimating object properties using visual image data.” Elon Musk estimated that Tesla would release a version of FSD (Full Self Driving) Beta in April. At the time, he also mentioned that Tesla was going for pure vision and suggested that it would not even use radar sensors in the future.

“According to their patent, this invention aims to address the increasing cost and complexity of vision sensors for mass-market autonomous vehicles. This method enables a vehicle to detect and interpret the distance to its surroundings using the vehicle’s image data and machine learning,” explained law firm Founders Legal to Teslarati.  Tesla’s patent describes an invention using two neural networks to gauge the distances of objects using only image data. The first neural network can determine the distance of objects from images captured by the cameras around a vehicle. The other neural network creates training material in the form of annotated images for the first neural network.

In the end, Shaw makes it clear that there are certainly savings to be had by switching to an EV. However, he also says that a crossover like the Model Y is expensive, and compared to a similarly equipped gas car, you're probably not going to see an overall savings over a short period of time. Perhaps that will change over time, and it's different for each person. Over the longer term, for example, owning an EV for 5 years, you may start to really see the savings add up.

Singapore has built a floating solar power station off its coast in the Johor Strait. The complex with 13,000 panels was completed in January 2021 as part of the land-scarce city state's push to harness more solar energy and lower greenhouse gas emissions. Singapore’s per capita carbon dioxide (CO2) emission rates are among the highest in Asia.

There are four all-electric crossovers but which one is best for you?  The Tesla Model Y, Ford Mustang Mach-E, Volkswagen ID.4, and Hyundai Ioniq 5 are all fantastic electric crossover – at least based on what we know so far – but for different reasons. Each one may satisfy different car shoppers' priorities. The YouTube video may help you decide which one best suits you.   There's the  Tesla Model X, Audi e-tron and Jaguar I-Pace, but are all quite expensive. The Hyundai Kona Electric and Kia Niro EV are both solid options for electric crossover shoppers, but are simply electrified versions of gas-powered platforms.  The Tesla Model Y has become quite popular, but it has multiple competitors. Ford's Mustang Mach-E, which is more similar to the Model Y than any other vehicle thanks to its sleek styling and stellar performance.  The Volkswagen ID.4 as far as we understand is not a performance SUV like the Model Y and Mach-E, but it has a lot to offer, especially for shoppers focusing on comfort, practicality, space, and interior quality. The Hyundai Ioniq 5 is the latest competitor to be unveiled, so not much information is available. However, if the all-electric CUV comes to market offering everything Hyundai suggests it will, it stands to be a home run for the segment.

Intel Corp’s Mobileye, maker of self-driving technologies, has set up a strategic collaboration with two French-based firms to jointly develop and deploy commercial autonomous shuttles for public transportation services in Europe in 2023 and then globally.  The agreement is with France’s Transdev Autonomous Transport System (ATS), part of the Transdev Group, a private-sector public-transport operator, and the Lohr Group, a maker of car-transport and other vehicles. The companies will integrate Mobileye’s self-driving system into the i-Cristal electric shuttle, manufactured by Lohr Group, with plans to integrate it into public transportation services powered by fleets of self-driving shuttles across the globe, starting in Europe.
A pilot for the testing of the shuttles will start next year in France, the companies said in a statement on Thursday, with commercial services, the deployment of self-driving shuttles in public transportation networks, expected a year later in Europe.  

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board confirmed late Feb. 21 that two fractured fan blades are among the damage found in its probe of a catastrophic engine failure which forced a United Airlines Boeing 777-200 to return to Denver International Airport on Feb. 20 shortly after takeoff. Meanwhile, the FAA was finalizing an emergency inspection order targeting the blades, and Boeing is calling for operators not to operate affected aircraft until the new protocols are in place.  Boeing said operators of PW4000-powered 777s should keep them out of service until the U.S. agency acts.  "While the [National Transportation Safety Board, or NTSB] investigation is ongoing, we recommended suspending operations of the 69 in-service and 59 in-storage 777s powered by Pratt & Whitney 4000-112 engines until the FAA identifies the appropriate inspection protocol,” the manufacturer said late Feb. 21. Boeing’s statement came after the only U.S. operator, United Airlines, pulled its 24 affected aircraft from service, and Japan’s regulator ordered its airlines to ground them. Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism ordered all PW4000-powered 777s flown by its country's airlines grounded until further notice.

1st, it shattered. then, it took a nosedive onto the highway.  You’d expect Sentry Mode and Teslacam to protect your EV against vandals and unfair accident claims, but Julie McCuen learned these video recording features also help customers against Tesla itself. After the right rear window in her 2019 Model 3 SR+ shattered spontaneously and fell out of the car onto the middle of a freeway, Teslacam was her only resource to get Tesla to repair her vehicle under warranty.  If the story seems familiar, that’s because it is. We have been covering spontaneous glass-shattering in Model 3 units since March 2020, and most of them have happened on the right rear window. However, this is the first case in which the problem occurred at highspeed.   McCuen received a “sound alert" about the problem, so to speak.  The video above seems to start when she received the "warning." You can see McCuen trying to change lanes and a Kia Sorento to the right suddenly slows down. The SUV is forced to make a brisk maneuver to avoid the shattered window on the ground. It dropped on the asphalt as a single piece because it had window film..Service from Tesla -  “I have been there three times now. All three times were bad experiences. After the second time, my husband and I said we would never go there again. Still, this incident happened a few miles from there so they were the closest location to get to safely. There was still broken glass in the window sill even after most of it fell out.”Her prior visits to the Service Center were due to a persistent humming noise that still has not sorted out. McCuen replaced the rubber window trim close to the A-pillar. That solved the issue for some days, but the problem came back.

The GM's Chevy Bolt is quickly becoming obsolete and sales have been anemic since the release of the Tesla Model 3 in 2018, which has dominated the EV market worldwide. The Bolt’s compact hatchback size is not what most US buyers are looking for, adding a recent recall of 2017-2019 model year Bolts related to a flawed battery certainly hasn’t helped GM’s image problems with the EV.  However General Motors unveiled two new versions of the Bolt on Sunday: an updated Bolt EV hatchback with longer range and new high-tech features, and the brand new Bolt EUV — essentially a compact SUV — with more legroom room and less range than the Bolt EV.  Due out this summer, the refreshed Bolt EV will sell for $31,995 — or about $5,000 less than the current model year Bolt EV.   A limited-edition “Launch” version, with unique wheels, special badging, and an illuminated charge port, will be available for $43,495.  1st introduced in 2016, the Chevy Bolt was intended to be GMs’ first stab at a mass-market, purely battery-electric vehicle with 200-plus miles of range and an affordable price tag. . Both the Bolt EV and Bolt EUV will be built on GM’s BEV2 platform, which is distinct from the new “Ultium” battery pack announced in early 2020.  

Apple is working with TSMC to develop ultra-thin and energy-efficient micro OLED displays for its upcoming augmented reality devices, Nikkei Asia is reporting. The R&D project is said to be in a trial production stage, focusing on displays that are smaller than one inch in size and “several years” away from commercialization. Apple is also said to be developing MicroLED displays at the same Apple lab in Taiwan.  According to Nikkei, the micro OLED displays in development are able to be so thin and compact because they’re built directly onto chip wafers, rather than glass like traditional OLED or LCD screens. News of the project follows reports that Apple has both VR and AR headsets in development. It could release its first VR headset (codenamed N301) as early as next year, while a more lightweight pair of AR glasses (codenamed N421) could follow in 2023. N301 reportedly features two 8K displays and a fabric exterior to cut down on its weight, while future headsets could eventually use this new panel technology to become slimmer and lighter.