E+T Off The Page: Is the electrification of the world's car fleet just an electric dream?
Is the electrification of the world's car fleet just an electric dream?
Is the electrification of the world's car fleet just an electric dream?
Labour has swiftly moved to scrap the de facto ban on onshore wind originally introduced under the Conservatives in 2016. Government policies over the past decade have mostly hampered the roll-out of onshore wind power in the UK. In 2015, then-Prime Minister David Cameron instituted an effective ban on the infrastructure after pressure from Conservative MPs worried about the impact of wind turbine damage on rural communities. The Cameron government updated the National Policy Planning Framework to include footnotes that meant new onshore wind projects were blocked if they faced a single objection. Critics of the rule said it led to higher bills for households and delayed net zero efforts. In its manifesto, Labour committed to entirely decarbonising the UK’s electricity grid by the end…
The costs of putting on a modern Olympics has spiralled out of control. Paris is using clever engineering and technology to put on a spectacle that is both safe and environmentally responsible. Let the Games begin!
Motorola Solutions has announced it is opening a new R&D centre in Cork, Ireland, focused on designing software for the company’s comprehensive land mobile radio (LMR) portfolio. The US multinational telecommunications company builds technology solutions for mission-critical communications. It is credited with building the first car radio, was involved in the Apollo missions and was responsible for bringing broadband applications to a two-way radio. Over the past decade Motorola Solutions has invested over $12bn in R&D to build technologies centred on safety and security. LMR systems have become a core focus of this technology portfolio. LMR systems – which encompass both analog and digital radios – provide reliable, secure and immediate communication. Governments, emergency responders…
Data from the EU’s climate monitoring service shows that June 2024 was the hottest on record, marking a 13-month streak of unprecedented global heat. So far 2023 has been a year of extremes, from flooding in China, Brazil and Kenya to heatwaves in India, the US, Saudi Arabia and Mexico. Hurricane Beryl, the earliest category five Atlantic hurricane on record, also tore a path of destruction through several Caribbean islands. Is this extreme weather down to global warming? The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), managed by the European Commission, aims to provide information about temperature rises to support climate change policies. Using datasets including ERA5, the fifth-generation European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts atmospheric reanalysis of the global climate…
ABB and Nascar have revealed a new electric vehicle (EV) prototype at the recent Chicago Street Race, as well as announcing a partnership that will help Nascar decarbonise its operations as it “pursues achieving net zero operating emissions over the next decade”. Nascar – which stands for National Association of Stock Car Racing – was founded in 1948 as a professional motorsport organisation in which purpose-built stock cars race against one another. The very first car modified for a Nascar race was a 1939 Ford Coupe. Fast forward 76 years and Nascar has grown to be one of the largest spectator sports in North America. The day before this year’s Chicago Street Race, which is part of Nascar’s Cup Series and took place on 7 July 2024, the organisation debuted its first electric racecar. …
The Labour Party entered office on Friday after winning the general election in a long-expected landslide. Leader Keir Starmer swiftly appointed his cabinet and held their first meeting over the weekend. But who are the key appointments for the engineering and technology sectors, and how will they tackle the broad array of challenges currently facing the UK? Keir Starmer as Prime Minister Starmer was previously the Brexit minister under Jeremy Corbyn and hasn’t directly led any engineering or technology-relevant departments. But as party leader he has played a large part in creating the Labour manifesto, which pledges to renationalise rail and launch a state-run energy firm called Great British Energy that will invest in green energy. E+T has previously dissected Labour’s engineering and…
Four crew members involved in a Nasa experiment designed to test the human impact of a year-long Mars mission have finally emerged from their craft after 378 days inside. The first of three Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA) missions began in June last year and was designed to test how humans could live and work on the Red Planet. The mission was contained in a hangar at the Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas, and forced the participants to contend with limited resources, simulated equipment failures and a 22-minute delay in communications. Other activities include simulated spacewalks or ‘Marswalks’ outside the habitat – some using virtual reality technology – and robotics operations, alongside habitat maintenance, personal hygiene, exercise and crop growth. …
Japanese retailer Aeon opened its first robotic warehouse powered with Ocado’s technology a year ago. With another warehouse already in the works, the pair have now announced that a third will be built. Long before the pandemic made online home-delivery groceries mainstream, Ocado Technology was developing innovative solutions to streamline the whole process. For two decades this technology company, which holds a 50% share of Ocado Retail in the UK in a joint venture with Marks & Spencer, has been developing end-to-end online grocery fulfilment solutions. Groceries are picked, packed and then delivered directly to the customer’s doorstep from centralised warehouses. These warehouses feature cutting-edge technology – including robotics and AI – along with automation. Fleets of bots …
A new team is heading up the UK government. Such are our publishing timescales I cannot know if this is a rejig of old personnel or a full change of administration. And we are not alone – 2024 is a year of elections around the world and it will feel equally momentous for every one of those countries. But do we, as global citizens, all have the same priorities? Some countries will be subject to local issues such as conflict or disasters, but most others will be focused on issues like economics, health, education and policing. But where does engineering fit in? Short-termism has always been a recurring bugbear in a sector where projects (and their consequences) can last for decades. Big infrastructure projects in transport and energy need a long-term vision and commitment, and shouldn’t fall…
With Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party having won the 2024 general election in a landslide victory, all eyes will now turn to its manifesto pledges. The IET has welcomed the new Labour government and looks forward to working with it. As Ed Almond, IET’s chief executive, said: “This is a chance for the new administration to work with experts and provide strong leadership to address some of the key challenges and seize the huge opportunities that the UK will face over the course of the next parliament. “In particular, the opportunities around decarbonising to reach net-zero and ensuring a competitive and resilient innovation sector through an industrial strategy backed by a secure skills pipeline,” he added. Transport In its manifesto, one of the standout commitments in terms of transport…
All new vehicles sold in Europe – including Northern Ireland but not Great Britain – will be required from now on to have intelligent speed assistance technology installed. From 7 July 2024, every vehicle sold in the EU and Northern Ireland will need to be fitted with a range of technical safety features as standard. The most notable of these is the Intelligent Speed Assist (ISA) or speed limiter. Those vehicles already registered or in circulation are exempt, but any existing unregistered cars on forecourts will have to be retrofitted with a speed limiter before they can be sold. This ISA mandate comes after the European Commission’s legislation that made it a legal requirement for all new vehicles sold in Europe to be fitted with a speed limiter from 6 July 2022. The difference is…
Painting roofs white or covering them with a reflective coating is a more effective way to cool buildings in cities like London compared to vegetation-covered ‘green roofs’, University College London (UCL) researchers have said. As the climate changes, residents within cities are particularly vulnerable to warming temperatures. Cities generally trap heat, inducing the urban heat island effect that can lead to greater discomfort and mortality for residents during hot spells. The study used a three-dimensional urban climate model of Greater London to test the thermal effects of different passive and active urban heat management systems, including painted ‘cool roofs’, rooftop solar panels, green roofs, ground-level tree vegetation and air conditioning during the two hottest days of the summer…
The UK’s steel industry has urged the incoming Labour government to cut wholesale electricity prices to help it compete with Europe. An analysis from UK Steel showed that domestic electricity wholesale prices are more than double the cost of French and Spanish electricity over the past three months. Price data suggests that UK producers faced average wholesale prices of almost £66 per megawatt hour (MWh) in the past three months compared to France’s £27/MWh and Spain’s £28/MWh. The industry is heavily reliant on electricity for its manufacturing processes, and this demand is expected to grow as new electric arc furnace (EAF) technology comes online. EAFs are considered to be a necessary technology for steel manufacturing to move towards net zero carbon emissions, but the switch is expected…
Two years after the Japanese government declared “a war on floppy disks”, their use has finally been eliminated. In 2011, Sony ceased production of the floppy disk. As a form of media on which to save documents, the 3.5-inch floppy disk was a mainstay of PC software almost three decades ago. According to PCMag, by 1996 five billion ‘floppies’ were in use, with each one accommodating up to 1.44MB of data. While the floppy disk has since been overtaken by advancements in other forms of storage media including CDs, DVDs, USBs and the cloud, floppy disks continue to be used in Japan. The Japanese government has for many years required residents to use floppy disks or CD-ROMs to submit more than 1,900 official documents to the government. However, while Japan had for a number of years said…
Kobo Libra Colour Kobo’s latest colour e-reader fills a niche that has surprisingly still not been met by Amazon’s Kindle range. But maybe there is a reason for that. Although the technology has been on the market for more than 10 years, some basic hurdles are still to be overcome – and Kobo’s offering is no exception. Muted colours and poor contrast ratios have long plagued devices relying on displays such as this. When compared to the high-quality LCD and OLED screens everyone has become accustomed to, colours consistently fail to ‘pop’ on e-ink displays. But while the technology still needs work, Kobo should be given some credit for what they’ve done with the Libra Colour. I tried Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One – a well-regarded classic for graphic novel fans – and the experience…
The United States Air Force (USAF) has revealed a new reconnaissance drone that is capable of operating for up to 80 hours in the air without refuelling. The Unmanned Long-endurance Tactical Reconnaissance Aircraft (ULTRA) was conceived by the Air Force Research Laboratory Center for Rapid Innovation and developed in conjunction with DZYNE Technologies Incorporated. In tests, ULTRA was capable of carrying over 180kg of payload while flying for 80 hours continuously. The USAF said this makes the drone an “economical” option compared to other surveillance operations that can require multiple aircraft to ensure continued coverage. The drone houses a variety of electro-optical/infrared, radiofrequency and other low-cost sensors to aid in intelligence collection, and can be controlled anywhere…
Luis Gallego – chief executive officer of International Airlines Group (IAG), which owns British Airways – has said airlines in Europe will be forced to raise prices to fund the cost of cutting carbon emissions. This comes as Lufthansa recently announced a ticket surcharge to cover the “steadily rising additional costs” of new environmental fuel requirements. Aviation accounts for approximately 3% of total CO2 emissions worldwide. It is considered a hard-to-abate sector because of a lack of technologically mature alternatives to traditional jet-fuelled engines such as electric or hydrogen-fuelled aircraft. As a means to cut emissions, the focus is on the adoption of sustainable aviation fuels (SAF). Earlier this year, the UK government confirmed that the SAF mandate will come into force…
The Elizabeth line has received 4G and 5G mobile connections for the first time between Liverpool Street and Paddington stations. After all stations on the line got mobile coverage earlier this year, Transport for London (TfL) and Boldyn Networks, TfL’s partner in delivering the connectivity, have now introduced coverage within the tunnels from the Royal Oak portal to the west of Paddington to Liverpool Street station – approximately five miles. All four mobile network operators – Three UK, EE, Vodafone and Virgin Media O2 – are taking part in the roll-out. TfL said further tunnelled sections to Whitechapel, Canary Wharf and Woolwich will be connected across the summer, building on all Elizabeth line stations getting mobile coverage earlier this year. The current roll-out should see…
Daniel Beers, senior vice president of global data centre operations at Ardent Data Centers – a global developer of data centre environments for high performance computing and part of the Northern Data Group – addresses why in our AI world businesses should choose to access external computing power via the cloud rather than invest in on-site infrastructure. The age-old argument of buying versus leasing has plagued organisations for centuries. From the decision to rent an office rather than purchasing the building, to hiring seasonal workers instead of permanent staff, even to signing up for a monthly rather than annual Adobe Photoshop subscription – everyday business is flush with dilemmas regarding the permanence of places, products and services. Often there’s no clear-cut answer: leaders…
South Korea’s Hyundai Motor Group and LG Energy Solution (LGES) – one of the world’s largest battery makers, which is headquartered in Seoul – have launched Indonesia’s first battery cell production plant with the capacity to produce up to 10 gigawatt hours (GWh) of battery cells every year. The joint venture is part of a commitment between the two companies made in 2020 that will see investment of up to $9.8bn in Indonesia to develop an electric vehicle (EV) supply chain. This new battery cell factory in West Java province will have enough annual capacity to produce batteries that can power more than 150,000 battery-based EVs. Indonesia, which is the world’s top producer of nickel, banned exports of raw nickel in 2020 to encourage investment into domestic processing of the metal. At…
The European Space Agency (ESA) is launching a new mission in the coming weeks called Φsat-1, which it says will “push the boundaries” of AI for Earth observation purposes. Earth observation technologies are crucial for a wide range of applications including weather prediction, climate change monitoring and tracking natural disasters. Thanks to new satellites and advanced sensors, the scale and quality of available Earth observation data has risen exponentially in the past decade. Now, the integration of AI could lead to even greater capabilities by allowing for more data to be processed quickly and accurately onboard the satellite itself. ESA launched Ф-sat-1 in 2020 as an experiment to demonstrate how AI can be used in the field. Φsat-2 is a dedicated AI mission that will fully explore…
Google’s increased reliance on energy-hungry data centres to power its new artificial intelligence (AI) products has resulted in a 48% rise in the company’s carbon emissions in five years. This week, the tech giant’s annual environmental report revealed that while the company is on “an ambitious journey to help build a more sustainable future”, it has fallen short of its climate goals, with its emissions in 2023 having risen 13% on the previous year, reaching 14.3 million metric tons. It pins the reason for this rise on “increases in data centre energy consumption and supply chain emissions”. Data centres play a crucial role in training and operating the models that underpin AI models such as Google’s Gemini, which was released by Google in 2023 as a competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4.…
Mobile networks Vodafone and O2 have signed a decade-long deal to share their network infrastructure in a bid to improve performance and coverage. The firms previously established a similar arrangement in 2012 in a bid to improve the roll-out of 4G, and eventually 5G once the standard was launched. The deal would also extend to Three if its merger with Vodafone is approved by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). The resulting company has yet to have an official name, but is currently referred to as MergeCo. An investigation into the deal was launched in March over concerns that it could lead to higher prices for consumers. While many elements of the new agreement expand on the existing arrangement, if the merger goes ahead, the operators have agreed that Virgin Media O2 will acquire…