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Electric Car Sales Surge | Earth Wise

March 24, 2022 By EarthWise 1 Comment

During the fourth quarter of 2021, overall auto sales in the US fell by 21.3% compared to the same quarter of 2020. At the same time, sales of electric cars grew by 73%. Is this the beginning of the end for the Gasoline Era, or was it a just an anomaly during the COVID pandemic?

The biggest factor for the big drop in car sales was probably on the supply side. The ongoing chip shortage as well as other supply-chain problems made it difficult to find many desired vehicles. Meanwhile, the soaring electric car sales in the US was mostly soaring Tesla sales. According to Kelley Bluebook, 72% of all electric cars sold in the US in the fourth quarter were Teslas. For a number of reasons related to its in-house software development and it unified computer architecture, the chip shortage has been far less of a problem for Tesla than for other car brands. So, Tesla bucked the overall market decline because it actually had cars to sell.

So, once these supply-chain issues are resolved, will the car market return to “normal”? That is actually unlikely. Apart from the short-term issues, there are long-term factors that are changing the automobile market.

There is far more public attention on EVs these days. Multiple commercials during the Superbowl demonstrated that. All the carmakers are gearing up for an electric future as government policies push for it. Electric vehicle sales are already booming in Europe. Cars are fashion products and electric cars are the latest trend. Electric car sales will continue to grow at an impressive pace this year. According to many observers, the recent trend could be the beginning of an avalanche.

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US Electric Car Sales Surge As Overall Car Sales Slip — A Game-Changing Trend?

Photo, posted July 28, 2017, courtesy of Steve Jurvetson via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

The Search For Lingering Ash | Earth Wise

January 12, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Ash trees are some of the most important plants along riverbanks and in wetlands. There are three ash species in North America: the white, green, and black ash. Unfortunately, all three species are critically endangered because of the emerald ash borer.

The emerald ash borer is an exotic beetle from Asia that first showed up in the U.S. in southeastern Michigan in the summer of 2002. The adult beetles do little damage but the larvae feed on the inner bark of ash trees and disrupt the tree’s ability to transport water and nutrients. The beetles are now found in 35 states and 5 Canadian provinces and have killed hundreds of millions of ash trees.

The greatest hope for preserving ash tree species relates to lingering ash, which are those rare trees that have managed to survive the onslaught of the emerald ash borer. The idea is that those trees have some natural genetic resistance to the borer. Getting seeds and cuttings from lingering ash and propagating them at nurseries may be the only way to get ash trees back into the natural landscape.

Lingering ash are extremely rare and therefore very hard to find. As a result, researchers are reaching out to the public to help with the search and report the presence of these surviving trees in woodlands.

Researchers want to find large, mature trees left among those that were killed by the invasive insect and therefore display great resilience. In Kentucky, university and Division of Forestry researchers are making use of software tools to engage the assistance of the public. An app called TreeSnap allows people to provide data on trees that they find in their community, on their property, or out in the wild.

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Researchers Ask Public for Help Finding Lingering Ash Trees

Help Our Nation’s Trees!

Photo, posted May 31, 2014, courtesy of Katja Schulz via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Improved Radar For Cars | Earth Wise

December 31, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Self-driving cars require a variety of sensor systems in order for the cars to safely navigate roads and deal with the wide range of objects and conditions that they encounter. Two competing technologies that cars use to identify and locate objects on the scene are radar and LiDAR.

Radar uses transmitted radio waves to locate objects and LiDAR bounces laser beams off of objects. Each has its shortcomings. Radar has the problem that only a small fraction of the transmitted signals gets reflected back to the sensor, so that there is frequently insufficient data to fully characterize a scene. LiDAR has the problem that it is an optical system that does not work well in fog, dust, rain, or snow. It is also much more expensive than radar.

Researchers at the University of California San Diego have developed a new system that they describe as a LiDAR-like radar. The system consists of two radar sensors placed on a car’s hood and spaced about 1.5 meters apart. This configuration enables the system to see more space and detail than a single radar sensor.

Having two radars at different vantage points with an overlapping field of view creates a region of high-resolution with a high probability of detecting the objects that are present. The system also overcomes noise problems of conventional radar systems.

The researchers developed new algorithms that can fuse the information from two different radar sensors and produce a new image free of noise.

Self-driving cars have to combine detection technologies like radar with cameras and ultrasonic sensors. Duplicating the capabilities that people use in order to safely drive a car is a complex problem requiring a combination of multiple sensors and sophisticated software.

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Upgraded radar can enable self-driving cars to see clearly no matter the weather

Photo, posted January 2, 2014, courtesy of Bradley Gordon via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Extreme Heat From Solar Power | Earth Wise

January 23, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Renewable sources are playing a growing role in meeting our energy needs, but one place where they have continued to fall short is in industrial processes that require extreme heat. These include the cement, steel, and glass industries, among others. These industries account for a significant amount of CO2 emissions because the most effective way to reach the necessary temperatures continues to be combustion of fossil fuels. The cement industry alone accounts for 7% of global emissions and the need for cement continues to grow.

A previously stealthy startup company backed by Bill Gates and fellow billionaire Soon-Shiong has made a breakthrough in the area of using solar energy to achieve high temperatures. The company, called Heliogen, has created a solar oven that is capable of generating heat above 1800 degrees Fahrenheit, which is enough for high-temperature industrial processes.

The Heliogen technology uses concentrated solar power to generate heat. Concentrated solar power uses arrays of mirrors to reflect sunlight and focus it to a single point. That technology is not new; there are systems that use it to produce electricity and, to some extent, heat for industry. But it could not achieve high enough temperatures for producing cement or steel.

The new system uses computer vision software, automatic edge detection and other sophisticated technologies to focus the sun’s rays far more finely than ever before and thereby generate far higher temperatures at the focal point.

Heliogen is now focused on demonstrating how the technology can be used in a large-scale application, such as cement-making. The selling points to industry are that not only will there be no emissions generated, but that the fuel needed to obtain their extreme heat will be free.

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