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The pace of installations for EV charging infrastructure in the United States, and financial incentives supporting them, picked up substantially in 2017.  Twelve thousand and counting. That’s the number of electric vehicle charging ports being sponsored by three California utilities: San Diego Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, and Pacific Gas & Electric. While that number might sound modest, it actually represents a huge increase in capacity compared with what’s available — an estimated 16,000 public stations as of the middle of 2017, with a capacity of 43,000 connectors. For perspective, roughly 112,000 gas stations are across the United States. So range anxiety for EVs (at least when it comes to traveling state-to-state) is still a legitimate concern even though battery sizes are on the rise.  The auto industry long has pointed to that dearth of EV charging infrastructure available in public locations as one reason relatively few EVS are on t...

Transportation giants are exploring "new ways to unlock value based on the communications, processing capabilities, and physical location" of vehicles and their users.  The following is an excerpt from the book "Three Revolutions: Steering Automated, Shared, and Electric Vehicles to a Better Future" by Daniel Sperling. Automakers will increasingly find themselves in a complicated relation­ship with ride-hailing companies such as Lyft and Uber. The latter will be competitors but also customers. In the next few years, sales to drivers for Lyft, Uber, and others will almost certainly offset declines in car purchases by users of the services. As shared mobility services expand, auto man­ufacturers will likely start producing customized vehicles for ride-hailing companies — even as their own mobile services compete head-to-head. Today, Lyft and Uber have almost no hard assets and are essentially internet-platform companies. Managing and owning vehicles clas...

Ectogenesis – the growth of mammalian embryos in artificial environments – was first described in 1924 by British scientist J.B.S. Haldane. His essay, Daedalus; or, Science and the Future, was regarded as shocking science fiction at the time, but later proved to be remarkable in having predicted many scientific advances. Haldane was a friend of author Aldous Huxley, whose famous novel Brave New World (1932) anticipated similar developments in reproductive technology. In 1953, a transient biochemical pregnancy was reported by Australian researchers who extracted an intact fertilized egg. It was followed by in vitrofertilisation (IVF) six years later enabling the birth of a live rabbit. The first human pregnancy through IVF occurred in 1973 – though it only lasted for a few days. A major milestone was finally reached in 1978 when Louise Brown became the first "test tube baby" having been conceived on a petri dish. During the 1980s, IVF was condemned as immoral by relig...

Researchers in the UK have successfully grown the world's first crop of barley using nothing but robot tractors and drones. Credit: Hands-Free Hectare Hands-Free Hectare is an experimental farm run by researchers from Harper Adams University, United Kingdom. Its aim is to sow, grow and harvest crops of spring barley using only unmanned vehicles, automated control systems a, d open-source technology. The project offers a glimpse of what the future of agriculture may be like. "We have been able to show the public that this is something that isn't too far ahead in the future, and it could be happening now," explains Martin Abell, mechatronics research engineer. "It has also allowed us to raise the perception of agriculture to the public, so they see it as a forward-thinking industry and something that might attract new people to the industry." With funding from the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) and industry sponsors, Abell and his collea...