Lifeboat Foundation

Welcome to a world with electric skies.

Rolls-Royce claims that its all-electric aircraft, called “Spirit of Innovation”, reached a top speed of 387.4 mph (623km/h), making it the fastest electric vehicle in the world, a press statement reveals.

Continue reading “Rolls-Royce’s Electric ‘Spirit of Innovation’ Reached a World Record 387.4 MPH” »

The team has set an internal deadline of 2025.

In a move that could peg it against electric vehicle market leader, Tesla, Apple has begun working aggressively on its fully autonomous electric car, Bloomberg reported. Developing a car has been on Apple’s agenda since 2014 but recent moves within the company signal a push towards making an Apple car a reality.

Given Apple’s history of taking regularly used products and transforming them into their must-have versions using excellent design, it is hardly a surprise. With Steve Jobs at the helm of affairs, Apple made the iPod even when music players were ubiquitous. Then the company revealed the iPhone when Nokia was still selling resistive touch screens as its premium product. And recently, the Apple Watch has become the “it” wearable even though there are other smartwatch options in the market. During a time where electric vehicles are in a surge, it only seems natural that the electric car is Apple’s next target.

By using ‘the holy grail of low drag.’

Business travel is going egg-shaped. Otto Aviation’s Celera 500L was just put through its paces with its first flight tests, a press statement reveals. The aircraft was designed as a business aircraft that is much cheaper to run than today’s options.

To achieve this ambitious goal, the Celera employs an egg-like design that achieves laminar flow — the uninterrupted flow of air — when in flight, vastly reducing drag by allowing air to flow smoothly over the aircraft’s surface.

Sources “familiar with the matter” told Bloomberg that the team in charge of developing the Apple Car was previously stuck choosing between two different developments paths: a more traditional EV with some enhanced driver-assist features similar to what you get from a number of existing vehicles, or a more sophisticated EV capable of a true autonomous driving with no input from its passengers.

Now, based on Bloomberg’s report, it seems Project Titan (Apple’s codename for the Apple Car) and new project leader Kevin Lynch have decided to go the latter route, with Apple looking to create a fully autonomous vehicle with no pedals or steering.

Of course, deciding to make a true self-driving car is easier said than done, as no automaker has yet to release a proper Level 5 autonomous vehicle, defined as a car that can pilot itself without any human intervention under any conditions or driving situations.

The presence of a SECOND Earth in the Proxima Centauri […].

© All Right Reserved Auto DailyZ 2021.

Continue reading “It’s official by now: A Second Earth had been discovered just next door (video)” »

The German plugin vehicle market scored over 54,000 registrations last month, a 12% improvement year over year (YoY), an impressive performance considering the overall market crashed 35%. As a result, last month’s plugin share ended at 30% (17% BEV).

The yearly plugin vehicle share of the market stayed at 24% (12% BEV), an impressive result, especially if we look back to a year ago when the YTD market share was at 10%.

Interestingly, the current disruption is not only hurting gasoline and diesel sales, but is also starting to hit PHEVs, which were down 5% YoY in October. In the same period, BEVs grew 32%, allowing pure electrics to represent 56% of plugin vehicle sales last month, and flipping the YTD numbers to the BEV side (267,000 BEVs vs. 265,000 PHEVs).

On October 21, Sweden’s Jetson Aero launched the Jetson One, a single-seat flying car with 20-minute flight times and a top speed of about 63 mph. It has already sold all 12 of the electric vehicles in its first production run (to be delivered in fall 2022), and it’s now taking orders for 2023.

The vehicles will be delivered about 50% assembled, and customers must finish putting them together themselves.

Continue reading “You can now buy a flying car for $92,000” »

Vehicle retrofit company Orten E-Truck has developed an electric truck that incorporates Blackstone’s solid-state batteries. Blackstone is 3D printing the storage cells.

Five prototypes were tested before the project was shelved.

In what might seem counter-intuitive at first, the U.S. Army supported the development of a helicopter that had no engine. One can even visit the Army’s Aviation Museum at Fort Rucker in Alabama to catch a glimpse of this design by the American Helicopter Company that is fondly called Jet Jeep.

The Jet Jeep was thought of many decades ago as the solution for a light observation needed by the Army. The U.S. Army was looking for a flight-capable option for light surveillance and by that, it meant enough to carry one or two people at the most. This is quite like the problem jet pack makers are trying to solve these days. But this was way back in the 1950s and helicopters and aircraft were largely the way flying worked.

Continue reading “The US Army Built Engineless Helicopters in the ‘50s. Here is Why It Didn’t End Well” »