Transportation
From autonomous EVs to electric planes, from hydrogen trains to biofuel transportation, check out the most recent developments on how we’re moving transportation towards a more sustainable future in the good news section below.
State-owned China automaker teams with U.S. electric-car startup Atieva
One of China's largest state-owned automakers said Thursday it has opened a technology research center in California's Silicon Valley and is teaming with U.S. electric-car startup Atieva to develop EVs for China and global markets. Beijing Electric Vehicle Co, an affiliate of government-owned BAIC Read More...
Honda gets California approval for self-driving cars on roads
Honda Motor Co Ltd has received a permit from the state of California to drive its autonomous vehicles on public streets, joining companies ranging from Google Inc to Volkswagen AG in testing the fast-growing technology. The California Department of Motor Vehicles on its website listed Honda as the Read More...
The world's biggest automakers think that humans will always want to drive their own cars
Silicon Valley seems to think that the march to self-driving vehicles is inexorable, but the carmaking industry’s biggest players are betting that most drivers prefer to keep their hands on the wheel. According to one estimate, self-driving technology in cars may grow into a $42 billion Read More...
Toyota presents world’s first mass produced hydrogen-powered car
After two decades of research, the Toyota Mirai—which means future in Japanese—has arrived. It’s the world’s first mass-produced hydrogen-powered car and it has the potential to propel the automotive industry into a new direction. Like Tesla and many other new models, the Mirai has an Read More...
Laser breakthrough could speed the rise of self-driving cars
LIDAR is a portmanteau of “light” and “radar.” In essence, these sensors monitor their surroundings by shining a light on an object and measuring the time needed for it to bounce back. They work well enough, but they aren’t without their drawbacks. Today’s Read More...
Bhutan aims to make electric cars main mode of transportation
Ahead of the U.N climate meeting set in Paris later this year, negotiators are looking at Bhutan, one of the world's poorest countries, for inspiration. The tiny Buddhist kingdom in the Himalayas is implementing plans to make electric cars the main mode of transportation in order to protect the Read More...
By 2018, Dutch rail will be fully powered by wind
The Netherlands, a nation that’s been keen on harnessing the power of the wind since pretty much forever, has announced that in an effort to slash transport-related carbon emissions, its entire electric train network — all 1,800 miles of it — will run on energy produced at European wind Read More...
Google's self-driving cars in Austin have removed humans entirely
Our first glimpse of Google’s driverless cars came in 2012. Since then, Google has confined most of its test-drives of these vehicles to the roads outside its headquarters in Mountain View, California, and recently expanded tests to Austin, Texas (reports of other self-driving car tests by Read More...
Wireless charging for electric BMWs by 2017?
Are BMW’s electric vehicle (EV) offerings going to be set up for wireless charging in only the next few years? An interesting question — it certainly does seem that the technology is developing at a fairly rapid rate, so maybe widespread use is something that we can expect soon. What Read More...
Tesla's newest car is so good it broke Consumer Reports' rating system
The jury is out. And here's what Consumer Report, a leading source for product reviews in the US, wrote about the Tesla model S P85D: "The Tesla initially scored 103 in the Consumer Reports' Ratings system, which by definition doesn’t go past 100. The car set a new benchmark, so we had to make Read More...