Texas’ grid manager says there is a risk of it losing power reserves ‘with no market solution available’

Tesla has told users in Texas not to charge their cars during a heat wave.

The alert comes as the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which operates the state’s grid, is calling on residents to conserve energy – in order to stop the grid being pushed to near-emergency conditions.

“A heat wave is expected to impact the grid in Texas over the next few days. The grid operator recommends to avoid charging during peak hours between 3pm and 8pm, if possible, to help statewide efforts to manage demand”, an in-car alert sent to Tesla owners reads, as reported by Electrek.

ERCOT recommends that people in Texas avoid running appliances between 2pm and 8pm. There is a risk of it losing its power reserves “with no market solution available”, Reuters reports.

Its website showed the operator entered late afternoon on Tuesday with about 3,600 megawatts of reserves, which is only enough to power three-quarters of a million homes.

One Tesla owner tweeted a photo in which Tesla offered supercharger rates up to 50 percent off for drivers willing to wait until after 8pm to charge their vehicle.

Temperatures in the heat are reaching 38 degrees Celsius, and it is expected that the alert will be active over the next few days. The heat is also stopping wind power from being generated in Texas, which usually provides the state with a quarter of its electricity.

Bitcoin miners in Texas have also had to shut down operations due to the heat.

“There are over 1,000 megawatts worth of Bitcoin mining load that responded to ERCOTs conservation request by turning off their machines to conserve energy for the grid.” Lee Bratcher, president of Texas Blockchain Council told Bloomberg.

“This represents nearly all industrial scale Bitcoin mining load in Texas and allows for over 1 per cent of total grid capacity to be pushed back onto the grid for retail and commercial use.”

Original Article: https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/tesla-texas-charging-car-heatwave-b2122903.html

Amazon has announced its “first fully autonomous mobile robot,” called Proteus.

The robot – which is small, green, and looks similar to an automatic vacuum cleaner – moves through facilities to lift up transports used by humans to move packages around. Amazon says that the robot will be deployed in the transport handling areas in fulfilment centres and sort centres.

The robot can move safely around humans because of a green light that shines in front of it, Amazon claimed. When a human steps in the way of the light, the robot stops moving.

As well as Proteus, Amazon has announced a number of other robots. This includes Cardinal, a robotic arm that will “quickly select one package out of a pile of packages, lift it, read the label, and precisely place it in a GoCart to send the package on the next step of its journey”.

Amazon is “currently testing a prototype of Cardinal for handling packages of up to 50 pounds”, and the company expects to deploy them next year.

The shopping giant has also said that it will roll out Amazon Robotics Identification (AR ID), an AI-powered scanning which removes employees having to manually scan labels using a “unique camera system that runs at 120 frames per second”.

Employees can “handle the packages freely with both hands instead of one hand while holding a scanner in the other, or they can work to position the package to scan it by hand. This creates a natural movement, and the technology does its job in the background.”

The introduction of these robots comes amid reports that Amazon is struggling to find workers in the United States.

It is possible that the shop’s growth plans could be at risk. “If we continue business as usual, Amazon will deplete the available labor supply in the US network by 2024,” Recode reports, citing internal research from 2021 leaked to the publication. Amazon declined to comment.

Original Article: https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/amazon-first-autonomous-robot-proteus-b2106907.html

The founder of a flying car startup claims to have made the first ever commute to work using an electric vertical takeoff and landing (EVTOL) aircraft.

Tomasz Patan, who is also the chief technology officer of Jetson, flew the company’s $83,600 vehicle ONE from his home in Tuscany to work, cutting the usual travel time by car by nearly 90 per cent.

The low-altitude flight through the Italian countryside saw Mr Patan pilot the craft just metres above the ground in the one person craft, which resembles a large-scale version of a commercial quadcopter drone.

A video of the flight, which took place in May, was shared to the company’s official Facebook page, together with the tagline “Everyone is a pilot”.

Jetson claims that the EVTOL craft will not require a pilots license to operate, though regulations and laws may prohibit its use in most countries.

“We are incredibly proud to share that after months of rigorous trial and testing we completed the world’s first EVTOL commute,” a statement from the company read.

“A momentous occasion for the emerging EVTOL sector. As pioneers, we are focussed on further pushing the envelope during this aviation renaissance.”

Powered by a lithium-ion battery, the aluminium aircraft has a top speed of 102 kilometres per hour (63 miles per hour) and can carry someone weighing up to 100kg.

It also comes with a ballistic parachute that rapidly deploys in the event of an emergency.

“Our long-term goal is to democratise flight. We firmly believe the EVTOL is the future for mass transportation,” said Mr Patan.

“The Jetson is built like a Formula One car for the sky and incredibly fun to fly. Most importantly, the Flight Stabilisation System makes flight super easy.”

Jetson is one of numerous ‘flying car’ startups that are making use of significant battery and aviation advances in recent years to reimagine the way people travel in the future.

Original Article: https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/flying-car-jetson-one-evtol-b2106948.html

Tesla confirmed in a new software update that its vehicles are now scanning for rough roads, like potholes, to help avoid them damaging the vehicles by adjusting the suspension.

In order to achieve full self-driving, a system would have to be able to handle a wide range of different scenarios, including different weather and road conditions.

These conditions, like potholes, can sometimes be difficult for human drivers to handle, and some people find it improbable that self-driving systems will be able to appropriately navigate them. Tesla is leveraging its large customer fleet equipped with Autopilot hardware to capture data on those corner cases and teach its neural network to handle them.

Back in 2020, CEO Elon Musk said that Tesla Autopilot is eventually going to detect potholes and make mini-maps to remember them and avoid them.

Two years later, Tesla Autopilot is not quite there yet, but we are now seeing the first confirmation that Tesla’s fleet of vehicles is looking for them or more “rough road sections” in general.

In a new 2022.20 software update, the automaker writes in the release notes about a new feature of the “Tesla Adaptive Suspension” system:

Tesla Adaptive Suspension will now adjust ride height for an upcoming rough road section. This adjustment may occur at various locations, subject to availability, as the vehicle downloads rough road map data generated by Tesla vehicles.

This is the first confirmation of the Tesla vehicle fleet scanning the roads to evaluate its conditions.

For now, it’s not about Autopilot, or Full Self-Driving Beta, navigating around those “rough road sections,” but Tesla adapting the suspension for those conditions.

Tesla explains how to activate the feature:

The instrument cluster will continue to indicate when the suspension is raised for comfort. To enable this feature, tap Controls > Suspension > Adaptive Suspension Damping, and select the Comfort or Auto setting.

Obviously, this feature is only going to be available in Tesla vehicles with adaptive suspension, like the new Model S and Model X.

Electrek’s Take

This is a nice step toward the direction of Autopilot, and Full Self-Driving, being able to avoid potholes.

Personally, when I drive on Autopilot, the two top reasons I have to take over controls are phantom braking events – which Tesla has yet to completely fix and to avoid potholes – or bad road conditions that Autopilot is about to drive right through.

While as mentioned above, this is just to adapt suspension for now, Tesla at least confirms that it is scanning the road to determine its conditions and I would assume that the next step is to make Autopilot/FSD avoid those issues.

Original Article: https://electrek.co/2022/07/04/tesla-vehicles-scanning-for-potholes-and-rough-roads-help-avoid-them/

Germany needs more foreign workers and more efficient policies to integrate them into the labor market if the country is to keep its social security systems from collapsing in the future, Continental said.

“The impact of demographic change, decarbonization and digitalization is huge,” Ariane Reinhart, the board member at the supplier responsible for human relations and sustainability, said in a statement.

“The imbalance on the labor market is not only endangering the general standard of living in Germany. Our social systems are also threatening to collapse.”

Continental is in need of 2,500 qualified staff in Germany alone this year, particularly in the areas of information technology and logistics.

The country needs to loosen red tape and develop a concept for the controlled immigration of foreign workers as well as reskill job seekers in Germany more quickly than in the past, Reinhart said.

An aging population and a decline in the number of younger people entering the labor market means Germany will have 5 million fewer workers by the end of the decade, Holger Schaefer, senior economist with the IW economic institute in Cologne estimated in January.

The workforce is set to shrink by more than 300,000 people this year alone, unless immigration can plug the gap, he predicted.

Continental is not the only German company crying out for foreign staff. Staff shortages in the airline industry have sparked airport chaos across the country just as the summer vacation period goes full throttle, forcing the government to prepare a legal framework to speed up hiring of security workers from abroad, many of them from Turkey.

Separately, Continental said it was looking into all options for its business in Russia, including a controlled exit from the country. The supplier said an exit from Russia would have no impact on its financial outlook.

Continental said in April it had temporarily resumed tire production for passenger cars at its Russian plant in Kaluga to protect local workers who could otherwise face criminal charges.

The Kaluga plant makes tires and other products from the group’s ContiTech division.

Continental ranks No. 8 on the Automotive News Europe list of the top 100 global suppliers, with worldwide sales to automakers of $24.19 billion in 2021.

Original Article: https://europe.autonews.com/suppliers/continental-calls-controlled-immigration-concept-help-fill-key-jobs

Hyundai has confirmed that it joined the race to build a new small electric car for less than $20,000. However, it sounds like only European markets might get access to it.

One of the biggest complaints about electric vehicles remains their prices. They are unattainable for most consumers, even with subsidies.

To be fair, most new cars are not a smart purchase for most people, and EVs are going after the new car market. But there’s also the factor that many automakers entering the EV space started with more expensive segments, resulting in electric vehicles being on average more expensive.

There are little to no options for an electric vehicle in the $20,000 range. Several automakers have announced that they are working toward that range, like Volkswagen with the ID Life program, which the German automaker indicated would cost less than $25,000.

Now Hyundai announced that it is also working toward an affordable electric car.

Hyundai entry level for European market

At the Automotive News Europe Congress in Prague, Hyundai Motor Europe’s marketing chief, Andreas-Christoph Hofmann, confirmed that the Korean automaker is working on an entry-level electric car for the European market.

He said, “Everybody in the industry knows the target of this kind of vehicle is 20,000 euros”.

With the US dollar at near parity with the euro, this would put the price around $20,000.

However, Hofmann made it sound like the upcoming electric vehicle would be specifically for Europe. He said that it would aim to replace the Hyundai i10, a small four-door hatchback that the brand sells in Europe, India, and Latin countries. The new electric version aims to help Hyundai keep its market share in Europe as regulations increasingly force them to transition to electric vehicles.

Similar regulations are not as strong in North America, which also doesn’t have as big of a market for smaller vehicles, electric or not. Many automakers have decided not to launch some of their smaller city EVs in the US, including Honda with the Honda E.

Original Article: https://electrek.co/2022/07/20/hyundai-small-electric-car-less-than-20000/

Baidu unveiled a new version of its self-driving robotaxi that it says costs nearly half as much to make as the previous model, opening the opportunity for cheaper travel.

Apollo RT6 robotaxis are set to be mass-produced at a cost of 250,000 yuan ($37,000) per unit, the Chinese search-engine giant said on Thursday.

Baidu aims to deploy the vehicle, which has a detachable steering wheel, on its riding-hailing service in 2023. The company said it plans to eventually deploy “tens of thousands” of the robotaxis.

“We are moving toward a future where taking a robotaxi will be half the cost of taking a taxi today,” Baidu co-founder and CEO Robin Li said.

Beijing-based Baidu is expanding beyond internet advertising with its push into artificial intelligence technology and autonomous driving, making it less of a target in China’s crackdown on technology firms such as Alibaba Group and Tencent Holdings.

Baidu’s ride-hailing platform Apollo Go, which was established in 2017, deploys 300 driverless cars in major Chinese cities including Shanghai and Beijing, and may become profitable in some regions in three years, company Vice President Wei Dong told Bloomberg News in April.

Baidu has said it plans to expand Apollo Go into 65 Chinese cities by 2025, rising to 100 by 2030.

The Apollo RT6 has autonomous Level 4 capabilities that need no human intervention, with 8 lidars and 12 cameras alongside the car. Lidars are detection systems, similar to radars, which use pulsed laser light rather than radio waves

The vehicle has a projected operating cycle of more than five years, a Baidu spokeswoman said, adding that the company’s self-developed technology and low-cost sensors helped reduce production costs.

The company did not disclose the manufacturer for the model.

The Apollo RT6 will hit the roads without a steering wheel once Chinese authorities approve it, said Baidu Senior Vice President Li Zhenyu, adding that its driving capability can match a skilled human driver with over 20 years of experience.

Tesla among rivals

Baidu is among a number of companies in China striving to make mainstream use of autonomous vehicles a reality. Its rivals in this area include Pony.ai, backed by Toyota and WeRide, which has received investment from Nissan and Guangzhou Automobile Group.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in a conference with investors in April that the company aims to start mass production of its robotaxi without a steering wheel or pedals in 2024, and predicted that a robotaxi ride will cost less than a bus ticket.

Alphabet’s Waymo also unveiled a robotaxi without a steering wheel last year, saying it planned to roll out its “fully autonomous vehicles” in the U.S. in the coming years.

However, automakers and tech companies are still waiting for nods from regulators to deploy such vehicles in the real world..

Original Article: https://europe.autonews.com/automakers/baidu-unveils-new-robotaxi-detachable-steering-wheel