Tesla’s Model S and Model X are soon going to have some serious competition.
Last September, Audi revealed its all-electric e-tron quattro concept at the Frankfurt Motor Show. The SUV, which is slated to go into production by 2018, will have three electric motors, a range of 310 miles on a single charge, and quick charging capabilities.
Here’s a look at some of the features in the e-tron quattro that we hope to see in the production version.
Like the e-tron concept, Audi will most likely include piloted driving technology in its upcoming all-electric SUV.
Audi piloted techYouTube/Audi
The e-tron quattro concept has piloted driving technology, which uses radar sensors, a video camera, ultrasonic sensors, and a laser scanner to collect data about the car’s environment and create a model of the vehicle’s surroundings in real-time.
Audi currently has a lot of this tech in its newer vehicles, so it’s likely we will see a more advanced piloted system in the production version of the e-tron quattro.
Cameras could replace side view mirrors.
Audi
The e-tron quattro has curved displays built into the front section of the doors that lets the driver view what is around them. There’s no guarantee we’ll see this in the production version, but automakers are beginning to experiment with new kinds of mirror designs.
The e-tron quattro concept features two touch displays in the cockpit, one to the driver’s left to control lights and the piloted driving systems and one to the right where media and navigation is controlled.
The center console has two more OLED displays for climate control and infotainment.
With its 95 kWh battery, the e-tron quattro has an impressive range of 310 miles on a single charge.
Audi
To put that into perspective, Tesla’s Model X SUV with all wheel drive and a 100kWh battery has a range of 289 miles on a single charge. Audi has already said its range will beat this.
It may be able to fully charge in just 50 minutes.
Audi
We know the production version will have quick charging capabilities, but we don’t know exactly how fast it will work. However, we’re hoping it’s in line with the e-tron quattro concept’s charge time.
The concept car has a Combined Charging System (CCS), meaning it can be charged with a DC or AC electrical current. It can fully charge with a DC current outputting 150 kW in just about 50 minutes.
The e-tron quattro concept is equipped with induction charging technology, so it can be charged wirelessly over a charging plate.
Audi
We can’t say if this is a definite feature the production version will have, but our fingers are crossed.
It will have super fast connectivity.
Audi
Audi announced at CES this year that it is the first automaker to support the latest standard for mobile communications: LTE Advanced.
LTE Advanced is the latest enhancement to LTE, meaning that it can deliver larger and faster wireless data payloads than 4G LTE. We can almost certainly expect to see the technology integrated into the upcoming production car.
Der Mercedes Benz Urban eTruck feiert auf der Nutzfahrzeug-IAA seine Weltpremiere.
Der Urban e-Truck, der Vision Van und der Future Bus – Mercedes zieht auf der Nutzfahrzeug-IAA die ganz große Elektroshow ab. Hinter den futuristischen Studien steckt aber mehr. Denn die Daimler AG versteht sich nicht mehr ausschließlich als Hersteller.
Es ist das gleiche Bild wie beim Pkw-Pendant in Frankfurt: Wer in diesen Tagen bei der Nutzfahrzeug-IAA in Hannover den Daimler-Stand besucht, wird auf eine Zeitreise mitgenommen. Denn hier stehen nicht die Laster von morgen, sondern die von übermorgen. Mit einem Aufwand, wie man ihn in dieser Branche so noch nicht erlebt hat, haben die Entwickler der Bus-und-Truck-Sparte aus dem Sternen-Imperium gleich drei visionäre Studien verwirklicht: Vision Van, Urban e-Truck und Future Bus.
Wie weit uns Mercedes mit diesen drei spektakulären Studien, die allesamt auf reinen Elektroantrieb setzen, in die Zukunft blicken lässt, weiß keiner genau. Wolfgang Bernhard, der für die Nutzfahrzeugsparte zuständige Daimler-Vorstand, ist allerdings überzeugt, dass die Zeitenwende bei der Elektro-Mobilität bereits eingesetzt hat und sie sich „viel dynamischer entwickelt, als wir das alle für möglich halten würden“.
Die Marschrichtung ist klar
Über 200 Kilometer soll der 25-Tonnen-Koloss rein elektrisch fahren.
Und kühn ergänzt der 56-Jährige, dass Daimler mit der Umsetzung der visionären Ideen „den Transport völlig neu erfindet“. Für Güter und Personen. Auf Autobahnen und in Städten. So sei der Urban e-Truck als erster emissionsfreier schwerer Truck die beste Antwort auf immer rigideren Zufahrtsbeschränkungen in verstopften Großstädten. Der sogenannte Verteilerverkehr im eher innerstädtischen Bereich könne mit ihm flüsterleise und sauber durchgeführt werden. Und mehr noch. Er ist komplett vernetzt, und bietet einschließlich eines intelligenten Reichweiten-Managements quasi ein Rundum-Sorglos-Paket für Transport- und Logistik-Unternehmen aus einer Hand.
Das umfasst eine flexible und effiziente Routenplanung, die Staus und sogar die Wetterlage einbezieht, die Optimierung des Energieverbrauchs, das Ansteuern der Ladestationen bis hin zum kompletten Lademanagement. „Das garantiert einen hoch effizienten Betrieb“, erklärt Bernhard. Und zudem will Daimler künftig auch noch stationäre Stromspeicher anbieten, die schon heute aus Antriebsbatterien von Elektroautos hergestellt werden. „Wir müssen uns von einem reinen Hersteller in einen Dienstleistungsanbieter verwandeln“, gibt der Kopf der Nutzfahrzeug-Division die Marschrichtung für die Zukunft vor.
Auch Langstrecke ist „physikalisch“ möglich
Während die Außenhaut des Urban e-Truck futuristisch anmutet, ist das Cockpit vergleichsweise konventionell gestaltet.
Ehrgeizige Pläne, wobei der Urban e-Truck aber allein schon technisch beeindruckt. Verantwortlich für den leisen Auftritt des 25-Tonnen-Kolosses sind zwei Elektromotoren an der Hinterachse direkt neben den Naben, die für eine Gesamtleistung von 340 PS sorgen und es im Zusammenspiel auf ein Drehmoment von 1000 Newtonmeter bringen. Damit ist volle Durchzugskraft direkt aus dem Stand garantiert. Die drei modularen Batteriepakete mit einer Gesamtleistung von 212 kWh sind immerhin für eine Reichweite von 200 Kilometern gut, was für eine Tagestour im Verteilerverkehr üblicherweise voll ausreicht. Die Ladezeit an einer 100-kW-Säule soll nur knapp über zwei Stunden betragen, allerdings sind solch potente Kraftquellen derzeit noch eine Seltenheit.
Und auch wenn die Lithium-Ionen-Akkus zusammen fast 2,5 Tonnen wiegen, wird der Stadt-Laster mit einer Nutzlast von 12,8 Tonnen, wie sie im Verteilerverkehr gängig sind, fertig. Auch der typische 7,4 Meter lange Kühlkoffer für den Frischedienst-Einsatz von Supermärkten und Einzelhandelsgeschäften mit Lebensmitteln lässt sich hinterm Fahrerhaus verbauen.
Mit seinen Drohnen soll der Vision Van vor allem den Lieferverkehr „auf der letzten Meile“ revolutionieren.
Während Wolfgang Bernhard die Einführung rein elektrischer Antriebe im schweren Truck auf der Langstrecke für „physikalisch unmöglich“ hält, gibt er dem Verteiler-Lkw eine gute Chance. „Der Urban e-Truck würde im Vergleich zu einem Diesel-Lkw heute sicher einen Aufschlag in fünfstelliger Höhe erfordern“, erklärt der Nutzfahrzeug-Chef. Allerdings sei der stromernde 25-Tonner frühestens Anfang des nächsten Jahrzehnts serienreif und bis dahin seien die Batteriepreise allemal günstiger. Hinzu kämen aber auch noch die deutlich geringeren Betriebskosten. Denn erstens liegen die Stromausgaben rund 40 Prozent unter einem vergleichbaren Dieselverbrauch und zweitens besitzt ein E-Antrieb viel weniger Verschleißteile, was die Wartungs- und Instandhaltungskosten maßgeblich reduziert. Auch Ölwechsel fallen ja nicht mehr an.
Ohne Lenkrad, aber mit Drohnenlandeplatz
Mindestens genauso futuristisch von Chefdesigner Gordon Wagener gezeichnet präsentiert sich der Vision Van, der mit einer Cloud-basierten Steuerungssoftware ebenso in ein Gesamtkonzept einer komplett digitalisierten Lieferkette eingebunden werden soll. Das Fahrzeug kommuniziert beispielsweise auch über ein als „Kühlergrill“ gestaltetes Black Panel mit der Umwelt und soll vor allem den Lieferverkehr „auf der letzten Meile“ revolutionieren. So gibt es im Cockpit weder Lenkrad noch Pedalerie, dafür aber auf dem Dach zwei Landeplätze für Drohnen, die bei der Auslieferung den letzten Teil des Zustellungsweges vom Auto zum Kunden überbrücken sollen.
Eher als Meilenstein auf dem Weg zu einem autonom fahrenden Omnibus gilt der Mercedes Future Bus, der auch bereits in der Praxis bewiesen hat, dass mit einem City-Pilot an Bord zumindest teilautomatisiertes Fahren im öffentlichen Nahverkehr technisch bereits möglich ist. Auf der knapp 20 Kilometer langen Strecke vom Flughafen Amsterdam Schiphol bis nach Harlem musste der Fahrer jedenfalls kein einziges Mal Gas oder Bremse betätigen.
Dass Mercedes auf der Nutzfahrzeug-IAA mit den drei Zukunftsstudien aber nicht nur eine Show fern jeglicher Realität abzieht, beweist die Ankündigung, schon 2018 mit zwei voll elektrischen Fahrzeugen auf den Markt zu kommen. So ist ein ausschließlich mit Strom angetriebener Bus ebenso versprochen wie ein Sprinter mit E-Antrieb. Und schon im nächsten Jahr ist die Kleinserie eines Fuso e-Canter geplant. Der Kleinlaster der japanischen Tochter, ein Überbleibsel der einst gescheiterten Fusion mit Mitsubishi, setzt je nach gewünschter Reichweite auf individuelle Batteriesätze mit drei bis sechs Akkupacks à 14 kWh, mit denen die Kunden ihre Bedürfnisse in puncto Reichweite, Preis und Gewicht flexibel anpassen können. Er werde um einen vierstelligen Betrag teurer sein als ein vergleichbarer Diesel, würde in den Betriebkosten aber rund 1000 Euro auf 10.000 Kilometer einsparen und sich so bereits nach drei Jahren amortisieren.
What I imagine I could’ve been doing on my way to college instead of holding a steering wheel for nine hours. (Not actually me)Volvo
I went to college nine hours away from home — easily doable in a day’s drive, but tedious nonetheless.
On one trip through the cornfields of Indiana, I remember turning to my friend wondering why we hadn’t figured out cruise control for steering wheels. I had already been cruising at a steady 70 m.p.h. for hours with my feet on the floor. Why did I have to touch the steering wheel to keep it in the lines too?
Less than six years later, the answer is that I don’t have to touch the steering wheel anymore. Self-driving cars are here, and they’re arriving faster than many predicted.
The pace at which a self-driving car went from myth to reality has caused all sorts of problems, from a talent shortage in the field to a sudden arms race in trying to build the best self-driving car on the market. Uber’s CEO Travis Kalanick called it „existential“ for the company to develop its own driverless car technology.
Yet, there’s still a large distinction — and years of development — between the self-driving cars hitting the streets today and the driverless cars that we dream of in the future. Most „driverless“ cars today still have a driver in the front seat. Teaching a car how to drive itself (even with a driver on hand) is just the important first step.
Dreams of driverless
It’s hard not to be seduced by the images of driverless cars.
Even Larry Page is rumored to be working on a flying car so we all finally get one step closer to“The Jetsons“ future we’ve envisioned.
However, what’s not acknowledged is just how hard it is to get cars to that point. When I asked Uber’s Kalanick just what’s holding truly driverless cars back, he laughed because there’s just so much — and a lot of it just that the technology hasn’t even been developed. A self-driving car shouldn’t freak out at a four-way intersection or turn off every time it goes over a bridge.
To get in a self-driving car today, it feels like having cruise control, but for the whole car. The autopilot keeps the car’s speed steady, it stays evenly inside the lines, and maintains the proper following distance. The only way to experience a self-driving car is to either own a Tesla or live in Pittsburgh and magically hail a self-driving Uber.
After taking a ride in Otto’s self-driving truck, I explained the experience to my 92-year-old grandmother as being in a plane: You have a licensed driver who does take off and landing, or in this case, getting onto the interstate, but then once it’s clear, you just set it to autopilot.
While having „self-driving cars“ in the hands in the public is a huge milestone, it’s just the beginning in the path to full autonomy.
Truly driverless cars remain years away — but still closer than you think. Ford, for example, plans to roll out its first fully autonomous carsfor ride-sharing by 2021. Google is aiming for 2020 , and Tesla is planning to make its vehicles part of car-sharing networkonce its cars are fully autonomous.
The impacts of that will be widely felt. Merrill Lynch predicted in a 2015 report that driverless taxis like Ubers will make up 43% of new car sales by 2040. The Boston Consulting Group also wrote in a 2015 report that driverless taxi sales are bound to incline. The BCG predicts that 23% of global new car sales will come from driverless taxis by 2040, which will result in a decline in vehicle ownership in cities.
Before we get to driverless though, we need to perfect self-driving. To do that, that means putting real self-driving cars to the roads in a test. That’s why they are here and happening now. Driverless will come next.
Marc Benioff, left, chief executive of Salesforce, talked with Matthew Panzarino, editor in chief of TechCrunch, at its Disrupt conference in San Francisco last week.Credit Beck Diefenbach/Reuters
SAN FRANCISCO — This is the year artificial intelligence came into its own for mainstream businesses, at least as a marketing feature.
On Sunday, Salesforce.com, which sells online software for sales and marketing, announced it would be adding A.I. to its products. Its system, called Einstein, promises to provide insights into what sales leads to follow and what products to make next.
Salesforce chose this date to pre-empt Oracle, the world’s largest business software company, which on Sunday evening began its annual customer event in San Francisco. High on Oracle’s list of new features: real-time analysis of enormous amounts of data. Oracle calls its product Oracle A.I.
There are big pushes in A.I. in agriculture, manufacturing, aviation and pretty much every other sector of the economy.
It’s all very exciting, the way great possibilities are, and clearly full of great buzzwords and slogans. But will other companies see any value in all this or understand if A.I. has value for them?
“No one really knows where the value is,” said Marc Benioff, co-founder and chief executive of Salesforce. “I think I know — it’s in helping people do the things that people are good at, and turning more things over to machines.”
Mr. Benioff wasn’t selling Einstein’s capabilities short. He was talking about the long-term value of artificial intelligence, which is passing through a familiar phase — a technology that is strange and new, that sometimes overpromises what it can do and is headed for uses not easily seen at the start.
Cloaked inside terms like deep learning and machine intelligence, A.I. is essentially a series of advanced statistics-based exercises that review the past to indicate the likely future, or look at current customer choices to figure out where to put more or less energy.
Perhaps a better question than “What is the value?” of this explosion of advanced statistics is “Why now?” That shows both the opportunity and why many companies are scared about missing out.
Much of today’s A.I. boom goes back to 2006, when Amazon started selling cheap computing over the internet. Those measures built the public clouds of Amazon, Google, IBM and Microsoft, among others. That same year, Google and Yahoo released statistical methods for dealing with the unruly data of human behavior. In 2007, Apple released the first iPhone, a device that began a boom in unruly-data collection everywhere.
Suddenly, old A.I. experiments were relevant, and money and cheap data resources were available for building new algorithms. Ten years later, computing is cheaper than ever, companies live online and in their phone apps, and sensors are bringing even more unruly data from more places.
Amazon, Google and the rest have exceptional A.I. resources for sale, but many older companies are wary of turning their data over to these upstarts. That, along with fear of a competitor getting on top of A.I. first, is a big motivation for some to try things out.
Salesforce is selling Einstein as a system that can work predictive magic without having to look at your data, in what Mr. Benioff calls a “democratizing” move that will create millions of A.I. users who are not engineers.
He said this on his way to attend a series of customer focus groups around the country, however — strong evidence that customers don’t get it yet, even if they’re willing to try it.
“There’s fear of Google and Microsoft controlling everything, and there’s a desire to apply A.I. to anything that’s digital,” said Michael Biltz, managing director of Accenture’s technology vision practice. “People are going to have to experiment, most likely first on pain points like security and product marketing.”
How will we know when the A.I. revolution has taken hold? A technology truly matures when it disappears. We don’t marvel at houses with electricity now, or the idea of driving to work at 60 miles an hour. We can say “phone” and mean a hand-held computer with NASA-level processing power and a professional-quality camera for taking selfies with our drones.
A.I. is probably heading for the same places, invisibly sorting through lots of data everywhere to continuously update and automate most of our lives. Goodness knows what the weird new tech thing will be about at that point.
When the BMW i3 went on sale in the U.S. back in May 2014, it marked not only the debut of the German automaker’s first mass-market electric car, but also a new sub-brand.
BMW originally planned to group all its electric cars under the „i“ sub-brand, which currently includes all-electric and range-extended REx versions of the i3, as well as the striking and expensive i8 plug-in hybrid coupe.
But as BMW looks to expand the number of electric cars in its lineup, that strategy may soon change.
The industry trade journal cites a report from the German newspaper Handelsblatt, which in turn is based on interviews with anonymous sources close to BMW chairman Harald Kruger.
The decision to sell all-electric versions of the 3-Series, X4, and Mini Cooper is partially motivated by the need to compete with Tesla Motors, and to match electric-car programs of other German luxury brands, the report said.
2017 BMW 330e i Performance
The 3-Series in particular is likely the vehicle most directly targeted by the Tesla Model 3, the 215-mile, $35,000 electric sedan unveiled by the Silicon Valley company in April.
It has already been reported that an all-electric powertrain will be offered in the 3-Series—BMW’s core model—as part of a 2018 redesign.
While it initially resisted the idea, BMW may also view offering electric powertrains in its regular models as a less-expensive option than adding more dedicated „i“ models.
Both the i3 and i8 use carbon fiber-reinforced plastic body shells and aluminum subframes that aren’t shared with other models.
This reduces the profit margin of these „i“ models compared to the rest of BMW’s lineup.
In its latest 7-Series large luxury sedan, BMW has incorporated individual structural members of carbon fiber within a largely steel structure, meaning the dedicated CFRP body shells may not be needed.
2016 BMW X4 M40i
BMW is expected to launch an i5 extended-range electric crossover in 2018, as well as a convertible version of the i8 and a new electric flagship sedan code named „iNext.“
To some extent, though, the move away from dedicated BMW plug-in models has already begun.
In the U.S., the carmaker offers plug-in hybrid versions of the 3-Series sedan, as well as the X5 SUV, and the 7-Series sedan will follow.
These models wear „i Performance“ badges, but they have nonetheless obliterated the „i“ division’s short-lived monopoly on plug-in hybrids within the BMW lineup.
Whether there will be any further dedicated „i“ models after the i5 remains to be seen, but the shift in tactics underscores the slow spread of battery-electric powertrains across the lineups of more and more manufacturers.
In other words, electric powertrainsaren’t just for special vehicles any more.
„Too many businesses take a technology-first approach to CX, which is not customer centric“ @briansolis
»Too many businesses today take a technology-first approach to Customer Experience. This is not really customer centric.«
Why is it so difficult to create Customer Experience (CX) for many people and decisionmakers?
Customer Experience (CX) is a difficult process, because so many stakeholders interpret CX differently and then prioritize investments and resources accordingly. The IT-Department thinks it’s about technology. The Marketing-Department thinks it’s about omnichannel. The department customer service focuses on contact touchpoints. The Advertising-Department activates experiential events and campaigns. And the executives ask for customer data and make decisions based on narrow inputs and more so cognitive biases. I could go on and on. This is the reason why Customer Experience is a mess today. Everyone is perpetuating the problem by attacking CX from their silo and the losers are the customers. Yet, customers don’t see departments, they see one brand. Just »because this is how it’s always been done« is a recipe for digital darwinism today. Customer Experience is an opportunity not to just improve and integrate customer experiences, but also re-engineer business models and processes to compete in an era where customers are taking control of their experiences.
Who should own the experience? And what skills will be important in the future?
The best companies in Customer Experience take a different perspective regarding this question. They start with acknowledging that the person, who owns the customer experience, is the customer. Think about that for a second. They absolutely own their experience. Yet, here we are debating, who should own it and do everything, but understand their behaviors, expectations, preferences et al. I define Customer Experience this way: it’s the sum of all engagements a customer has with your brand in every touchpoint, in each moment of truth, throughout the customer lifecycle. The question to ask is then, what is the experience they have? What they expect additionally? What experiences they’re receiving from other companies? More so, how are their favorite apps – for example Uber or Tinder – changing their expectations and how should you rethink the customer journey to be native, frictionless, and delightful based on outside innovation? As such, the question who owns Customer Experience, is something that should be answered in a future state and work toward that goal now.
Companies excelling here are looking at ideal customer experiences and building inside and outside for them. New cross-functional groups lead collaboration to remove friction, optimize effective touchpoints and invest innovation based on new areas of opportunity. An empathetic customer-centric approach to CX improves retention, acquisition and relationships. Great Customer Experience is all the work, that you do so your customers don’t have to…
To what extent technology should play a role in Customer Experience?
Too many businesses today take a technology-first approach to Customer Experience, which is ironically not customer centric. I call this the remote control. No one likes the remote control. We use it, because we have to. I would go so far to say that we have a reluctant relationship with it. Yet, every year, even though we get a new generation of TV innovation, we still get a remote control that looks a little different, but also gets more complex along the way. Did you know that there are on average 70 buttons on this brick and at the same time, we all have phones or tablets where we interact with them using completely different gestures? Technology is not the answer, it’s an enabler. CX should start with the three »Ps« – people, purpose and promise. Technology should facilitate experiences and bring them to life.
What is the importance of CX as part of the digital transformation?
Digital transformation means something different to everyone. Just like Customer Experience. It is something, that is started independently in each group with different objectives. But like CX, everything is on a collision course towards convergence. Everything has to work together, otherwise you compete against yourself. I define digital transformation this way: The re-alignment of, or new investment in, technology and business models to more effectively engage digital consumers, create new value and deliver delightful and relevant experiences at every touchpoint in the customer journey. In my research, I’ve found that a common catalyst for rapid and ultimately holistic digital transformation is in fact Customer Experience. More so, by zooming in on the Digital Customer Experience (DCX) and asking what would my digital customer do and how is it affecting traditional behavior, companies can beeline towards fast innovation.
Customer Experience: Everything has to work together
This is the part where skeptics or laggards say: „Why would you focus on the digital customer? They’re a minority in the overall market. We should focus on customers as a whole!“ They’re right in some aspects. The thing is that they didn’t. They continued to invest in technologies and systems that distanced companies from people all in the name of efficiencies, scale and profitability. These actions weren’t customer-centric, they were shareholder- and stakeholder-centric. It’s the same argument with taxis in the face of Uber. They’ve had years to study how people were changing, how digital was affecting experiences and decision-making, how start-ups were placing customers at the center of services. Once Uber hit the market, it set a new standard for customer experience. People who take Uber don’t go back to taking taxis. There’s an Uber of everything on the horizon of every business and digital transformation is the best defense and offense to compete in a digital economy.
Mercedes-Benz Vans and drone tech startup Matternet have created a concept car, or as they’re calling it a Vision Van, that could change the way small packages are delivered across short distances.
The Vision Van’s rooftop serves as a launch and landing pad for Matternet’s new, Matternet M2 drones.
The Matternet M2 drones, which are autonomous, can pick up and carry a package of 4.4 pounds across 12 miles of sky on a single battery charge in real world conditions.
They are designed to reload their payload and swap out batteries without human intervention. They work in conjunction with Mercedes-Benz Vans’ on-board and cloud-based systems so that items within a van are loaded up into the drone, automatically, at the cue of software and with the help of robotic shelving systems within the van.
A self-flying, Matternet M2 drone hoists a package near a shipping container.
Matternet designed a hard-shelled case to protect and carry any given cargo. The drone’s payload can transmit data about the contents and destination of a given delivery.
For a logistics company using the Matternet M2 drones or Vision Vans, that data could serve as a kind of proof of delivery, and alert users the instant a package has arrived.
Andreas Raptopoulos, co-founder and CEO of Matternet explained that while all of this sounds and looks like the stuff of sci-fi, the vans with integrated drone technology could be put to immediate good use where regulations allow.
The Vision Van can, for example, launch a Matternet M2 drone with a payload to a final destination that’s not accessible to a van or driver, whether that’s due to traffic in a populated urban area or a lack of safe roads in a more rural or disaster-stricken area.
Mercedes-Benz Vision Van with a rooftop-integrated Matternet M2 drone.
Or, the drones could fly a package from a distribution center or warehouse to a van so a driver can ultimately take the package down and walk it up to a customer’s doorstep nearby.
A division of Daimler, Mercedes-Benz may be better known for its luxury and sports cars. However, the Mercedes-Benz Vans unit sold 321,000 vehicles in 2015, according to a company financial statement, with popular models in travel and logistics including the Sprinter, Marco Polo, Vito (known as the Metris in the U.S.) and Citan.
According to a company press statement Mercedes-Benz has invested an undisclosed amount in Matternet. According to SEC filings, Matternet has so far raised $9.5 million of a targeted $11.5 million venture funding round.
As Tesla founder Elon Musk promises to change the world, starting with a giant battery factory in the Nevada desert, investors from Toronto to Tokyo are quietly developing the next-generation technologies that may actually get him there.
Batteries, especially the lithium-ion variety used in mobile phones and electric cars, are likely to dominate the $44 billion or more spent on energy storage by 2024, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Trouble is, they’re not the solution to all needs.
As well as the environmental impact of mining lithium, which has been blamed for starving flamingos in northern Chile, batteries lose their charge over time. They can balance minute-to-minute shifts in supply. But they can’t absorb solar power generated in summer, say, and deliver it in winter.
“We’re going to need a whole range of solutions to keep the lights on,” said Michael Liebreich, founder of Bloomberg New Energy Finance. “If your problem is that the sun doesn’t shine in winter, are you really going to buy a battery, charge it once a year during summer and use it once a year in winter? I don’t think so. You can’t just jump to batteries as the single solution.”
Storage devices are crucial to expanding the wind and solar industries and curtailing pollution because they allow what’s generated now to be consumed later. Just as refrigeration changed the way we handled food in the 20th century, energy storage will give grid operators and rooftop-solar consumers flexibility about when to use the power they produce — reducing the number of big power plants the world needs.
Here’s the leading energy storage projects on the drawing board that go beyond lithium-ion batteries:
Hydropower
Long before batteries, electricity was stored through plants that pump water uphill to a reservoir and release it through turbines when it’s needed. It’s long-lived enough to be hold solar power generated in the summer for use in the winter. Hydropower is renewable energy’s oldest technology and accounts for well over 90 percent of energy storage, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
As well as classic hydroelectric stations, tidal lagoons may also offer energy storage in a similar way by holding water for short periods, according to Tidal Lagoon Power Ltd., which is planning to build six lagoons around the U.K. coast line.
Railpower
Trains can double as storage. In April, Advanced Rail Energy Storage won approval from the Nevada Bureau of Land Management for a $55 million project using rail locomotives.
ARES will build a 6-mile uphill rail corridor involving heavily-loaded trains. When power’s cheap, trains will be pushed up a hill. When the power is needed, they’ll be released down, supplying energy back to the grid through an overhead wire.
Chief Executive Officer Jim Kelly reckons the system can be deployed at about 60 percent of the cost of an equivalent pumped-hydro facility. The nine-month construction program is expected to start in the second quarter of 2017. Once complete, it could run for 40 years.
Air storage
Compressed air storage sequesters a gas underground so it can be released later to drive a generation turbine whenever needed.
One project in Toronto sends the air underwater where it’s stored in balloons. When demand for power rises, the air comes back to the surface through a pipe, where it’s converted into electricity.
Compressed air storage requires a specific type of rock formation. The world has a handful of existing projects — one in Huntorf, Germany and another in McIntosh, Alabama. Several large scale projects have been put on ice, including the Iowa Stored Energy Plant near Des Moines and Dresser-Rand Group’s 317-megawatt Apex Bethel Energy Center in Anderson County, Texas.
Power-to-gas
Companies including carmaker Audi are developing power-to-gas technology that turns excess energy into hydrogen using electrolysis. The hydrogen can be directly injected into a gas network, or “upgraded” into methane and used as a substitute for natural gas.
Siemens, the world’s biggest power-equipment maker, is working on an approach that turns hydrogen into a clean ammonia, that could potentially provide emissions-free fertilizer that could be used by farmers everywhere.
Advocates say it can deliver both long and short-term back up power since the gas can be trapped indefinitely. That means it can shift electricity made in summer for use in the winter. It isn’t yet clear whether the economics will stack up.
Flywheels
Flywheels look nothing like a traditional battery. Think of a spinning drum that stores the kinetic energy in a way that can be made into electricity. Power is used to start the wheel turning. Then when electricity is in short supply, the flywheel turns a motor that generates electricity. They can deliver either short bursts or for longer periods.
Railway Technical Research Institute, a Tokyo-based developer of railroad technologies, is working on a flywheel that uses superconducting magnetic bearings that allow the wheel to spin with less friction. Its system also uses a plastic that’s reinforced with carbon fiber, making the flywheel stronger and faster. The bearings allow the flywheel to float without making contact with its housing, reducing energy lost through friction.
Railway Technical is developing the flywheel technology with Furukawa Electric Co. and Mirapro Co. They have set up a flywheel system at a 1-megawatt solar park in Japan’s Yamanashi prefecture. Temporal Power Ltd. and Beacon Power Corp. are also pursuing flywheel systems.
It’s a great phone, but where’s my headphone jack?
At a glance, you’d be hard-pressed to tell Apple’s new iPhone 7 and 7 Plus models, which go on sale Friday, from their 2015 and 2014 counterparts. They look almost identical, and are the same sizes. But once you get your hands on them, the differences are clear: better cameras, longer battery life, water resistance, doubled memory at essentially the same prices, and more.
Oh, and upon closer inspection, you’ll notice something else: the disappearance of the age-old, standard, perfectly fine audio jack that fits every earbud and headphone you own. Yeah, I know. I’m not crazy about that change either.
I’ve been using both the 4.7-inch iPhone 7 and the 5.5-inch iPhone 7 Plus for nearly a week, equipped with the much-improved iOS 10 operating system (which will be available for older models as well starting today). And I’m impressed. But I’m also annoyed. And impatient. All at the same time. Let me explain.
The impressive
The most important thing about the 2016 iteration of the iPhone is that, overall, it takes a truly excellent smartphone and makes it significantly better in a host of ways, even without overhauling the exterior design, and despite the removal of the standard audio jack.
From Apple’s usual long list, I’ve picked five big improvements that impressed me most.
First, Apple is doubling the memory at every price point on both models, starting with 32GB at the low end ($649 for the smaller iPhone 7) and going all the way to 256GB ($969 on the costlier iPhone 7 Plus). The increase in base memory is long overdue, but it’s great to see higher memory at essentially the same prices on costlier models (the larger Plus costs $20 more this year than last).
Then, there’s battery life. Apple claims it’s adding two hours of battery life between charges to the smaller model, and one hour to the bigger one. This is mainly because of a bigger battery plus a clever new processor, which uses low-power cores for routine phone functions and only kicks in high-power cores when needed.
Battery life on phones is notoriously hard to test, because it depends so heavily on what you’re doing, and on how hard the phone has to work to find a strong cellular or Wi-Fi connection. Still, in my short test period, on both coasts, the new iPhones had great battery life.
The bigger Plus easily turned in 13–15 hour days, often with power left in the tank, doing a wide variety of tasks. For instance, my test iPhone 7 Plus was at just a few minutes shy of 14 hours with 14 percent left, when I got to my DC-area home after flying from San Francisco and using the phone heavily on cellular networks, and hotel, airport, and airplane Wi-Fi. That’s a scenario I usually find to be a battery-killer, unless I charge. The smaller model was typically in the 12–14 hour range, even after hours of streaming video and music.
Then there’s water resistance — the ability to withstand being submerged in a toilet, sink, or puddle for long enough to fish it out and still find it fully functioning. (Samsung phones have been water resistant for a while.) I left an iPhone 7 submerged in a large mixing bowl of water for about 20 minutes (it can go deeper and longer, Apple says — 1 meter for 30 minutes). It was fine when I fished it out and dried it off. No rice needed. The only effects were somewhat gravelly sound quality for about 5 minutes, and an admonition not to charge it for five hours thereafter.
James Bareham
Next, cameras. In my opinion, as a determined amateur who has never bought expensive cameras, the iPhone already had the best camera I owned. But Apple has redesigned it, with a larger, f/1.8 aperture that pulls in more light, a better flash, and the ability to capture a wider range of colors. Yet that’s just the start. On the smaller iPhone, the camera now has optical image stabilization, which limits shaky shots — a feature available only on the larger model last year.
And that costlier iPhone Plus now has two cameras, one a wide-angle version and one a telephoto version. Through software, they act as one single camera with easy, elegant controls. With just the tap of a button labeled „2X,“ I was able to get vivid, detailed shots at true 2x optical zoom, not the grainy digital zoom smartphone users have been wise to avoid forever. For me, and I suspect many other average folks, real zooming is a huge deal, bigger than some of the more esoteric effects photo hobbyists might value. In fact, this beautiful zooming dual camera is the first feature I’ve seen that might lure me to a large-screen phone.
And then there’s the operating system. This isn’t a review of iOS 10, which is a separate product from the iPhone 7. But, since it comes with it out of the box, the two are wedded. And I found almost every aspect of it to be faster and better. Lock screen notifications and widgets, and the Control Center are more logically organized and easier to use. Messaging, Maps, Music, News, and other features are improved. And then there are small things: for instance, to my surprise, the phone even automatically saved a map and directions of where I’d parked my car.
The phone is also faster, its screen is brighter, and it has stereo speakers. But I wasn’t wowed by these things in my testing. You might be.
Apple has also replaced the home button with a non-mechanical, non-moving button that uses a vibration „engine“ to simulate the feel of pressing a button. Three people I know said it felt like the whole bottom of the phone, not just the button, was being pushed. But it didn’t bother me, and it’s one less mechanical component to break.
The annoying
What did bother me was the aforementioned removal of the headphone jack. Yes, Apple has a long history of removing (and also pioneering) standard components, going back to the removal of the floppy disk from the first iMac in 1998.
I have often complained that Apple was acting too soon, but I always agreed that the move made sense at some point, because the displaced component (the floppy, the optical drive, the Ethernet jack) were being used less and less and there was something better (optical drives, the cloud, Wi-Fi) to replace them.
In this case, I see zero evidence that the 3.5mm audio jack is being used less or has hit a wall. It’s happily transmitting music, podcasts, and phone calls to many millions of people from many millions of devices as you read this sentence. Apple says it needed replacing to make more room for bigger batteries and other components.
I also don’t see that Apple has come up with a better replacement. The company is clearly trying to move the whole industry toward wireless audio, which has never been great due to patchy Bluetooth connectivity, poor fidelity — especially for music — and limited battery life.
James Bareham
As a transition, the iPhone 7 includes Apple’s familiar white earbuds — and a free adapter — only with a Lightning connector at the end instead of the standard audio plug. It sounds the same. But now you can no longer charge your phone while making long phone calls or listening to music without a bulky adapter or dock. I label that worse, not better.
Apple says very few people do charge and listen at the same time. I respectfully disagree.
Next month, Apple will ship its take on wireless Bluetooth earbuds — called AirPods — which it hopes will solve some of the old wireless headphone woes and push the transition. Using a custom chip called the W1, the sophisticated AirPods supposedly make Bluetooth connections steadier and Bluetooth audio better. In my tests of preproduction AirPods, they delivered on these promises. And I could charge the phone while listening.
But the $159 AirPods only give you five hours of music listening time and two hours of talk time between charges, though they come in a handy little white case that provides 24 hours of additional juice. Apple notes that it’s proud of those numbers and that a 15-minute charge in the case gets you another 60 percent of rated battery life. It adds that if you use only one AirPod for phone calls, and keep swapping it out for a fresh one, you could talk on and on. Still, to me, they impose a limitation that standard, wired earbuds don’t have.
(Note: during my testing one of the AirPods had trouble holding a charge, so Apple swapped it out. It didn’t affect my tests of connecting and listening, and, since the product isn’t due out until late October, I can’t assume production units would have that problem.)
Not only that, but you have to charge the case periodically. Oh, and they kind of look like white plastic earrings. So, you should hope that’s your style, if you’re planning to buy them.
I’m sure the wireless earbud and headphone revolution is upon us now, and that, in a few years, the battery life will double or triple. For now, though, this Apple change of a standard component adds a hassle to your phone use, whether you are wired or wireless.
It’s an annoyance and a negative.
The impatient
I am impatient for Apple to do a top-to-bottom redesign of the iPhone, and the iPhone 7 isn’t it. Apple concedes this and strongly suggests a dramatic redesign won’t appear until next year, the iPhone’s 10th anniversary.
Let me stress: I am not for a redesign just for the hell of it. There are good reasons to change the look and feel of the iPhone, some of them evident in Samsung models. For instance, Samsung and others manage to fit a large screen like the one on the iPhone Plus into a smaller body and still squeeze in a big battery. But the iPhones still have big footprints for their screen sizes and big top and bottom bezels.
Another example: the iPhones still lack wireless or inductive charging. Adding that might require a redesign.
James Bareham
Bottom line
The iPhone remains an outstanding smartphone, and this latest model makes it even better in many ways. And, unlike rival Samsung, Apple isn’t beset with the very serious problem of exploding batteries. But the whole audio jack thing makes choosing the iPhone 7 more difficult than it might have been.
You won’t go wrong buying the iPhone 7 if you can tolerate the earbud issue, especially if you’re on an installment plan like Apple’s that just gets you a new iPhone every year. You could get the iPhone 7 and then the big redesign next year, as long as you keep paying the monthly fee.
But, despite the undisputed improvements, this new iPhone just isn’t as compelling an upgrade as many of its predecessors. Some might want to wait a year for the next really big thing — and maybe a better audio solution to boot.
Audi
2017 BMW i3
2017 BMW 330e i Performance
2016 BMW X4 M40i
James Bareham
James Bareham
James Bareham
TheIdea – The Innovation Agency 