Drone with a Fuel Cell - long flight time

Chinese manufacturer MMC introduces its new technology of hydrogen UAS HyDrone 1800 with upgraded specifications to meet higher standards in professional applications. The Feria Aeroespacial México 2017 (FAMEX 2017) kicks off at Mexico City on 26 April. Designed for use in the toughest conditions, the drone is wind-resistant, rain-resistant, cold-resistant and still incredibly lightweight. Most importantly, HyDrone 1800’s hydrogen fuel cell technology provides a flight endurance of 4 hours or of a stunning 50+ hours when combined with MMC tethered technology.


Read more... http://www.uasvision.com/2017/04/25/second-generation-hydrogen-fuel-cell-drone/

Amazon is Making Fuel Cells -- to hell with batteries!

Amazon’s fuel-cell idea echoes its approach to Cloud Computing. A stake in Plug Power allows Amazon to replicate its end-run strategy in the materials handling sector, where Plug’s fuel cells offer significant advantages over the incumbent lead-acid batteries.

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VW to build a National Charging Station Network for Electric Vehicles

As part of its court settlement with the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for the DieselGate scandal, Volkswagen agreed to invest $2 billion in electric vehicle infrastructure in the US. 


Read more... https://electrek.co/2017/04/14/vw-nationwide-150-kw-fast-charging-network-electric-vehicle/

Uber - autonomous or bust

Uber worries that if a competitor comes to market first with a fully autonomous vehicle then it would crush The company in every market that they could launch in.

Many automakers worry that consumer purchases of cars are coming to an end (http://www.economist.com/news/business/21685459-carmakers-increasingly-fret-their-industry-brink-huge-disruption). Cars are sitting idle 95% of the time so it doesn't make sense for most people to have them (at least in major city centres). As a result, automakers have been starting their own ridesharing programs, like BMW (http://reachnow.com/). Tesla's program is starting soon as well (http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-driverless-ridesharing-plans-could-take-on-uber-2016-10) allowing consumers to opt-in for their vehicles to be a part of it whenever they'd like but banning the use of their vehicles for other ridesharing programs.
So far Uber has actually been working with different automakers, but they worry that an automaker that they can't partner with or purchase from will beat them to market. And even if it is an automaker that's willing to sell to them, what's stopping that company from selling to their competitors? Whether he's right or wrong, Uber's CEO believes that they must be first and the best. Yes, I think that you're right in terms of the importance of establishing patents (and potentially having even competitors pay royalties) but with driver salaries being one of their largest costs, if a competitor can come to market and undercut their costs by 30% while being more profitable, they're in trouble - especially if they can't buy those cars themselves. -- commented elsewhere

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Is a Cloud-based ERP the Future?

Over at TechTarget,

Today, most manufacturers that have migrated to the cloud have hybrid cloud environments, meaning they use a mix of different types of cloud computing and on-premises deployments of IT resources for the optimal balance of agility and cost. Hybrid environments are often necessary, as cloud ERP vendors do not always have every capability a manufacturer might need. Functions such as distribution and warehousing are easily carved off to reside either on-premises or with a different cloud service provider.

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Let the AI Drive, And We All Win...

If we can push humans and their tendencies out of the loop, and put cars under the control of cooperative AI systems, we might just be able to nuke traffic, or at least severely mitigate it. To this end, computer scientists at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore have developed a new intelligent routing algorithm that attempts to minimize the occurrence of spontaneous traffic jams-those sudden snarls caused by greedy merges and other isolated disruptions-throughout a roadway network. The Nanyang researchers' algorithm starts off by just assuming that, given enough traffic density, shit is going to happen. Someone is going to make a greedy merge-something is going to cause enough of a traffic perturbation to result in a network breakdown. Breakdown in this context is a technical-ish term indicating that for some period of time the traffic outflow from a segment of roadway is going to be less than the traffic inflow. "We assume that the traffic breakdown model has already been given, and the probability of traffic breakdown occurrence is larger than zero, and our goal is to direct the traffic flow so that the overall traffic breakdown probability is minimized," Hongliang Guo and colleagues write. Put differently, "Our objective is to maximize the probability that none of the network links encounters a traffic breakdown."

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