Day: November 10, 2020

BMW found a creative way to showcase its expertise in electrification. Its i division teamed up with its Designworks studio and intrepid stuntman Peter Salzmann to develop, build and test an electric wingsuit.

Designing the device, which the German carmaker calls simply Electrified Wingsuit, took about three years. It consists of two main parts: a suit with wing-like pieces of fabric reminiscent of a flying squirrel’s fur-covered skin membranes, and a compact electric drive unit that houses a pair of carbon propellers capable of spinning at 25,000 rpm. They deliver a total output of 15 kilowatts (roughly 20 horsepower) for as long as five minutes.

BMW notes the drive unit was extensively tested in the same wind tunnel it uses to shape its cars in Munich, Germany. It tips the scale at approximately 26 pounds thanks to the use of carbon fiber and aluminum.

Wingsuit flying has been around for decades. Thirty-three-year-old Franz Reichelt notably died in 1912 while trying to test an early prototype by jumping off the Eiffel Tower, but adding electrification to the equation lets users reach action movie speeds of up to 186 mph. It also allows for more constant gliding over much longer distances. It gives the power of flight to whoever is brave enough to strap in; it’s like a jet pack without the jet fuel.

Salzmann tested the Electrified Wingsuit by jumping out of a helicopter hovering about 9,900 feet over the Austrian Alps, and BMW caught his descent on camera. He lived to tell the tale, he landed safely by deploying his parachute at the end of a long, roller coaster-like glide, and he’s looking forward to further developing this technology.

Don’t expect to see one displayed next to a 3 Series at a BMW dealer, however. Autoblog learned from a company spokesperson that there are no plans to bring the Electrified Wingsuit to the public.

5G and the pandemic are already changing the way people buy and use their devices, so to help bring more competition to affordable mobile devices, MediaTek is launching a new line of smartphone and Chromebook processors.

Starting with its smartphone chip, the new MediaTek Dimensity 700 is based on a 7nm architecture and features an integrated 5G modem, which MediaTek claims delivers up to 28% better energy efficiency than a comparable 8nm chip. Meanwhile, when it comes to 5G, the Dimensity 700 supports 2CC 5G carrier aggregation which can result in mobile download speeds of up to 2.7 Gbps.

That said, the Dimensity 700’s biggest upgrade may be support for features like 90Hz displays, 64-MP cameras (with special processing for Night Mode shots), and MediaTek’s 5G Ultra Save tech to help reduce battery drain when using 5G. Internally, the Dimensity 700 features an octa-core design with two ARM A76 cores to help deliver speedy performance.

Now I admit, smartphone chips (especially budget and mid-range chips like these) aren’t exactly the most exciting topic. But with the number of new phones that have come out recently featuring Qualcomm’s mid-range Snapdragon 765G chip (such as the Pixel 5, Nokia 8.3 5G, LG Wing, and more), it’s nice to see MediaTek release an updated mid-range chip to help increase CPU choice for 5G phone makers. That could end up meaning savings to people buying phones down the line. Unfortunately, the one drawback to the Dimensity 700 is that it doesn’t come with integrated support for mmWave 5G, which could make it a tough sell for phones on carriers like Verizon.

As for Chromebooks, which have recently suffered from massive product shortages due to so many people working and learning from home, MediaTek is releasing two new chips in the 7nm MT8192 and 6nm MT8195.

The MT8192 will be the slightly more affordable of the two and features an octa-core design comprised of four high-performance ARM A76 cores and four energy-efficient A55 cores. However, unlike a lot of budget Chromebook chips, the MT8192 also provides support for features like 1920 x 1080 displays with 120Hz refresh rates and 4K HDR video decoding, which are things you typically don’t find on a lot of low-cost notebooks.

Building off that, the MT8195 takes things a bit further with a 6nm octa-core design featuring four ARM A78 cores, four A55 cores, and MediaTek’s new APU 3.0, which allow for things like support for up to three displays simultaneously, HDR via Dolby Vision, 7.1 surround sound, and up to 80-MP cameras (or dual 32-MP cams).

Similar to the Dimensity 700’s play when it comes to making cheaper 5G phones, MediaTek’s new Chromebook chips should help increase the supply and reduce the price of future low-cost laptops, which is something that could really benefit a lot of students as kids continue to have to learn from home.

While the general caveat about new processors is that they don’t mean a ton until they find their way into actual devices you can buy, there shouldn’t be a huge delay as the Dimensity 700 is expected to start shipping in phones in early Q1 2021 and MT8192 and MT8195 are expected to be featured in products starting as early as Q2 2021.

It’s officially the busiest Atlantic hurricane season in 170 years of record keeping. Subtropical Storm Theta formed late on Monday, taking us further into the Greek alphabet.

The storm itself isn’t a particularly formidable sight to behold or even that interesting. It’s subtropical, meaning it has characteristics of both tropical storms and those that form in the higher latitudes with cold cores (think your nor’easters and whatnot), but we get a few of those a year, especially late in the season. Theta has winds of 50 mph (80.5 kph), which isn’t going to do much damage. It’s puttering eastward from the middle of the Atlantic toward the Strait of Gibraltar. While Portugal’s Madeira Islands are in its path, it’s way too early to talk about if landfall will happen there, let alone impacts.

But for all the ho-hum characteristics, it’s what the storm represents when we zoom out to the season level that matters. Theta is the 29th storm to form in an Atlantic hurricane season that started early, and with few exceptions, never really let up. A record-setting number of storms have now formed, adding to the other slew of records set this season. Those include cumulative ones such as a record 12 cyclones making landfall in the U.S. as well as individual freaks such as Tropical Storm Cristobal’s “lakefall” on Lake Superior, and Hurricane Laura, which tied for the strongest storm to ever make landfall in Louisiana. The disaster fatigue has been real, as 2020 has layered record hurricanes on top of record wildfires on top of a derecho on top of a deadly pandemic.

Conditions were prime for a busy season, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecast reflected that. But the season has outpaced even the forecast as the atmosphere and ocean conspired to keep churning out storms. Overall, this year has seen slack winds high above the Earth’s surface that have allowed hurricanes to spin up. That can actually be linked in part to cooler-than-normal ocean temperatures in the tropical Pacific, where a La Niña has formed. In the Atlantic, Caribbean, and Gulf of Mexico, though, warm ocean waters have in turn allowed a spate of cyclones to rapidly intensify, sometimes with disastrous consequences right before landfall.

That includes Eta, a former major hurricane that smashed into Central America last week and has done a loop de loop over Cuba and Florida. It could make yet another landfall on the Gulf Coast again this weekend because why not.

Climate change could be playing a role. Everything getting hotter, including oceans, is a hallmark of climate change (you know, the whole global warming thing). Atlantic hurricanes have been intensifying more rapidly and into more fierce storms in recent decades. Atlantic hurricane season has also seen the Power Dissipation Index—a measure of a season that takes into account the number of storms, intensity, and duration—rise over the course of the satellite era. Both natural- and human-caused climate change-driven factors are behind the trend.

Findings show the deadly 2017 hurricane season got a boost from climate change, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see similar results about this year’s flurry of cyclones. We’ll have to wait for research to come out on the exact role, but then we also have to wait for this season to officially end on Nov. 30. And Theta may not be our last storm; the National Hurricane Center has already identified another disturbance to watch over the next five days in the Caribbean.

Autonomous delivery company Nuro, whose R2 vehicle has no pedals or steering wheel and only room for packages, said Monday it has raised $500 million as e-commerce gets a huge boost from the pandemic.

Nuro joins other self-driving firms that raised big money this year. Earlier this year Waymo, the self-driving unit of Alphabet Inc raised $3 billion, helping to boost the total raised in 2020 by autonomous car companies to $7.1 billion as of November 4, according to data firm PitchBook. While that slightly exceeds 2019’s total, it falls short of the record $9.4 billion raised in 2018. Also far fewer startups are getting funded.

Early last year Nuro raised $940 million from SoftBank, and a source close to the company said the valuation doubled from that last funding round to $5 billion.

This round was led by T. Rowe Price Associates and includes new investors Fidelity Management & Research Company, LLC. and Baillie Gifford. Existing investors SoftBank and Greylock also participated.

The funding will help Nuro expand its team but also scale up manufacturing, said Nuro co-founder Dave Ferguson. Its R2 vehicle is currently manufactured in Detroit with Roush Enterprises, but he declined to say how many were produced and on the road today.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in February gave Nuro approval to deploy up to 5,000 R2 vehicles on public roads over two years, said Ferguson. They currently drive around in Houston, Texas, Scottsdale, Arizona, and Mountain View in California.

Nuro is currently using Prius cars outfitted with its self-driving technology to deliver groceries and prescriptions for Kroger and CVS in Houston. Ferguson said in the “next couple of quarters” the R2 would be doing the deliveries to “ramp up a full unmanned delivery service”.