IEEE Spectrum‘s transportation protection drew just below half 1,000,000 guests in 2024. Readers got here to study the newest information about advances in electrical autos and battery expertise, sustainable vitality alternate options, transit infrastructure and logistics, and AI and rising dangers. Considered one of our extra well-liked articles reported on a difficulty on the intersection of expertise and athletics. Learn on to see our round-up of our most generally learn transportation articles of 2024.
1. German EV Motor Could Break Supply-Chain Deadlock
ZF Friedrichshafen
Engineers at ZF Friedrichshafen AG, one of many world’s main suppliers of automotive elements, discovered the best way to make a compact, powerful electric motor that has excessive energy density abut doesn’t have rare-earth everlasting magnets. The upshot: The innovation may neutralize China’s market place, which is predicated on the truth that 95 p.c of the worldwide provide of uncommon earths are mined there. Considerations over the problem of constant to decarbonize transportation if China have been to resolve that nobody else can have uncommon earths may evaporate if ZF’s motor goes mainstream.
2. High-Speed Rail Finally Coming to the U.S.
Brightline West
A brand new rail enterprise goals to ferry passengers between Las Vegas and the suburbs of Los Angeles sooner, extra effectively, and with much less environmental influence than making these journeys by automobile. The brand new hall, which its creator says must be prepared in time for the 2028 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles, will develop into solely the third rail line in the USA whose trains ever attain the 200-kilometer-per-hour mark—the unofficial minimal velocity at which a prepare is taken into account to be high-speed rail. Within the U.S., even trains constructed for velocity are slowed to a relative crawl as a result of they need to yield the best of approach to slower freight trains on shared rail infrastructure. However maybe Brightline West, the purpose-built L.A.-to-Las Vegas line may very well be a bellwether for extra efforts to get Individuals off the roadways and onto railways.
3. The Case for Nuclear Cargo Ships
iStock
Nuclear power may be suitable for the behemoths that carry the burden of worldwide commerce on their decks, and it must be a welcome various to the diesel gasoline that at the moment retains their engines operating. Now that the International Maritime Organization has set a net-zero emissions purpose that the delivery business should attain by 2050, diesel should be phased out. Some business gamers need to ammonia, batteries, and hydrogen, amongst different choices for powering ships. However there’s a rising refrain of voices pushing for nuclear energy, a zero-emissions expertise that already plows the oceans. The advantages: Nuclear-powered ships can go years with out refueling; they don’t want big gasoline tanks, which opens up more room for cargo and passengers; and the reactors themselves have gotten safer and less complicated to function with every new technology.
4. Solid-State Batteries Could Face “Production Hell”
QuantumScape
Stable-sate batteries are anticipated to deliver critical efficiency enhancements as soon as they’re commercialized and finally substitute right this moment’s lithium-ion batteries. However the development cycle for such innovations normally features a prolonged interval throughout which progress hits a plateau, and hopes for a fast transition from lab to business manufacturing are dashed. A quote that sums it up got here from Bob Galyen, proprietor of Galyen Power and former chief expertise officer for the Chinese language battery big Up to date Amperex Know-how Ltd. (CATL), the world’s largest battery producer. “Stable-state is a good expertise. But it surely’s going to be identical to lithium-ion was when it comes to the size of time it’s going to take to hit the market. And lithium-ion took a very long time to get there.”
5. Hydrogen Is Coming to the Rescue
Joe DelNero/NREL
A consortium of U.S. federal businesses pooled their funds and big selection of experience to reinvent the emergency vehicle. The hybrid electrical field truck they’ve provide you with is carbon impartial. And within the aftermath of a pure catastrophe like a twister or wildfire, the car, referred to as H2Rescue, can provide electrical energy and potable water to survivors whereas appearing as a temperature-controlled command middle for rescue personnel.
6. “How Olympics Officials Try to Catch “Motor Doping”
Michal Cerveny/AP
It’s no shocker that expertise’s attain extends to athletic competitors. Officers on the world’s premier biking occasions, fearing that racers in search of any benefit they’ll acquire over their rivals will go overboard in enhancing their our bodies or their bikes, are actually looking out for two-wheelers with cleverly concealed electric motors. The illicit tactic, known as “motor doping,” is threatening to taint the game’s legitimacy as a lot as performance-enhancing drug scandals have. On the Paris Olympics this previous summer season, officers deployed electromagnetic scanners and X-ray imaging to fight it. The cleverly hid motors may be onerous to identify—they should generate solely about 30 watts of additional energy to illegitimately propel a rider onto the medal stand.
7. The Lithium-ion Battery May Not Be the Best Bet for EVs
iStock
After weighing the professionals and cons of a number of several types of EV battery cells—lithium-ion, these with ilicon of their anodes akin to silicon-polyacrylonitrile (SiCPAN) and silicon nanowire (SiNW) cells, strong state cells, and lithium-sulfur cells—researchers on the Polytechnic College of Turin, in Italy, discovered that lithium-sulfur cells would possible have the least environmental influence if scaled as much as industrial ranges.
8. How to Build EV Motors Without Rare Earth Elements
ZF
A trio of specialists from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee wrote for IEEE Spectrum about an interconnected web of dilemmas looming over EVs. Combating local weather change calls for that humanity kick its habit to fossil fuels. Reaching that may require a close to complete shift from inside combustion motors to electrical traction motors for transportation. However as a result of almost all such motors depend on magnets that comprise uncommon earth parts—90 p.c of which come from China—automakers outdoors of China are staring down the barrel of provide chain instability. What may be carried out to sidestep that vulnerability? The authors decide up there, describing huge efforts underway aimed toward designing and testing superior electric-vehicle (EV) motors that don’t use uncommon earth parts (or use comparatively little of them).
9. BYD’s EV Dream May Be Legacy Automakers’ Nightmare
Qilai Shen/Bloomberg/Getty Photos
BYD, the Chinese language battery big and new entrant into the ranks of automakers, is making moves with a view to strike its rivals on the highest and lowest ends of the market, the place they’re most susceptible. BYD’s new electrical supercar, the $236,000 U9, boasts efficiency rivaling hypercars such because the Bugatti Rimac Nevera, although the Bugatti’s sticker value is an order of magnitude greater. BYD’s elegant, money-saving use of lithium iron phosphate battery cells makes the 947-kilowatt (1,287-horsepower) U9’s value level potential and in addition permits the corporate to promote a plug-in hybrid that undercuts the costs of stalwarts on the economic system finish of the market together with the Toyota Corolla. What’s extra, a commuter within the $11,000 Qin Plus DM-i can drive for 55 kilometers on battery energy alone earlier than the car switches to gasoline propulsion.
10. Why It’s Time to Get Optimistic About Self-Driving Cars
Alecsandra Drǎgoi/DSIT
On this business evaluation piece, Azeem Azhar, founding father of the analysis group Exponential View, pulls no punches. He says “I’ve lengthy argued that self-driving vehicles are metaphorically miles away from being a actuality. For years, I’ve tried to supply a tonic to the rah-rah hype that carmakers have been foisting upon us by advertising and marketing. He recollects having written, in an article revealed in MIT Know-how Evaluate, that, “KITT, the automobile from [the TV show] Knight Rider, will stay the gold customary for autonomous autos. Autonomous car pilots will develop into more and more bold, however the real-world hurdles will nonetheless take time to navigate, even with pleasant metropolis regulators. None will ship to the general public in 2018.”
However the pessimist has been transformed. Azhar now says, “That was then, and that is now…I’m altering my thoughts about self-driving vehicles. Removed from being a “pointless distraction,” they’re almost prepared for prime time. And robotaxis are main the cost.” And he proceeds to again up this new assertion with strong statistical evaluation.
