Thursday, March 05, 2020

High energy Li-Ion battery is safer for electric vehicles

by Walt Mills, Pennsylvania State University

A lithium-ion battery that is safe, has high power and can last for 1 million miles has been developed by a team in Penn State's Battery and Energy Storage Technology (BEST) Center.

Electric vehicle batteries typically require a tradeoff between safety and energy density. If the battery has high energy and power density, which is required for uphill driving or merging on the freeway, then there is a chance the battery can catch fire or explode in the wrong conditions. But materials that have low energy/power density, and therefore high safety, tend to have poor performance. There is no material that satisfies both. For that reason, battery engineers opt for performance over safety.

"In this work we decided we were going to take a totally different approach," said Chao-Yang Wang, professor of mechanical, chemical and materials science and engineering, and William E. Diefenderfer Chair in Mechanical Engineering, Penn State. "We divided our strategy into two steps. First we wanted to build a highly stable battery with highly stable materials."

Their second step was to introduce instant heating. About four years ago, Wang developed a self-heating battery to overcome the problem of poor performance in cold climates. The battery uses an electric current to heat up in seconds compared to the hours an external heater required. By heating the battery from room temperature to around 140 degrees Fahrenheit—60 degrees Celsius—the battery gets an instant boost in reactivity because the law of kinetics is that reactivity increases exponentially with temperature.

"With these two steps I can get high safety when the battery is not being used and high power when it is," he said.

The self-heating battery, called the All Climate battery, has been adopted by several car companies, including BMW, and was chosen to power a fleet of 10,000 vehicles that will be used to ferry people between venues at the next Winter Olympics in Beijing.

The BEST Center tests the safety of the battery using nail penetration equipment. They drive the nail into the cell causing short circuiting. They then monitor the cell for temperature and voltage. The difference in temperature for the passivated cell was 212 degrees F—100 degrees C —compared to a standard battery cell which was 1,832 degrees F—1000 degrees C, an enormous improvement.

Because their batteries are built using stable materials, they have a long cycle life. Even at 140 degrees F, their cycle number is over 4000, which translates to over a million miles.

The team's next project will be to develop a solid-state battery, which will likely require heating as well.

The current work appears in the journal Science Advances and is titled "A new approach to both safety and high performance of lithium-ion batteries." Wang's coauthors are research assistant professors Shanhai Ge, Yongjun Leng and Xiao-Guang Yang, and doctoral students Teng Liu, Ryan Longchamps, Yue Gao and Daiwei Wang. Donghai Wang, professor of mechanical and of chemical engineering, Penn State, also participated in this work.

Lithium ion battery design can charge an electric vehicle in 10 minutes

More information: Shanhai Ge et al. A new approach to both high safety and high performance of lithium-ion batteries, Science Advances (2020). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aay7633

Journal information: Science Advances

Google's robot learns to walk in real world

by Jelani Harper , Tech Xplore

The field of robotics took one step forward—followed by another, then several more—when a robot called Rainbow Dash recently taught itself to walk. The four-legged machine only required a few hours to learn to walk backward and forward, and turn right and left while doing so.\

Researchers from Google, UC Berkeley and the Georgia Institute of Technology published a paper on the ArXiv preprint server describing a statistical AI technique known as deep reinforcement learning they used to produce this accomplishment, which is significant for several reasons.

Most reinforcement learning deployments take place in computer-simulated environments. Rainbow Dash, however, used this technology to learn to walk in an actual physical environment.

Moreover, it was able to do so without a dedicated teaching mechanism, such as human instructors or labeled training data. Finally, Rainbow Dash succeeded in walking on multiple surfaces, including a soft foam mattress and a doormat with fairly notable recesses.

The deep reinforcement learning techniques the robot used comprise a type of machine learning in which an agent interacts with an environment to learn by trial and error. Most reinforcement learning use cases involve computerized games in which digital agents learn how to play to win.

This form of machine learning is markedly different from traditional supervised or unsupervised learning, in which machine learning models require labeled training data to learn. Deep reinforcement learning combines reinforcement learning approaches with deep learning, in which the scale of traditional machine learning is greatly expanded with massive computational power.

Although the research team credited Rainbow Dash with learning to walk itself, human intervention still played a substantial role in achieving that goal. Researchers had to create boundaries within which the robot learned to walk in order to keep it from leaving the area.

They also had to devise specific algorithms to prevent the robot from falling down, some of which focused on constraining the robot's movement. To prevent accidents such as falling damage, robotics reinforcement learning usually takes place in a digital environment before algorithms are transferred to a physical robot in order to preserve its safety.

Rainbow Dash's triumph takes place approximately a year after researchers initially figured out how to get robots to learn in physical, as opposed to virtual, surroundings.

Chelsea Finn, a Stanford assistant professor associated with Google who didn't participate in the research, says, "Removing the person from the [learning] process is really hard. By allowing robots to learn more autonomously, robots are closer to being able to learn in the real world that we live."

Meet Jaco and Baxter, machine learning robots who cook perfect hot dogs

More information: Learning to Walk in the Real World with Minimal Human Effort, arXiv:2002.08550 [cs.RO] arxiv.org/abs/2002.08550

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MAR 03, 2020

Chaotic climate, chaotic cities fuel Brazil flood toll

by Paula Ramon

Rescuers search for victims at the Morro do Macaco Molhado favela in the coastal city of Guaruja, Sao Paulo, after it was struck by torrential rains

Violent rain has killed scores of people and forced thousands from their homes this year in Brazil's most populous states, a disaster experts blame on climate upheaval but also rampant urbanization.

Flash floods, landslides and other havoc wrought by torrential rain have killed at least 29 people in recent days in the states of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Another 25 are missing.

That comes after more than 50 people were killed by heavy rain that devastated the state of Minas Gerais in January.

The same scenes of destruction have played out in all three southeastern states, together home to more than 83 million people: poor neighborhoods wiped out by tidal waves of brown mud; houses and cars swept away by flash floods; residents evacuated by boat and helicopter as their streets turn to gushing rivers.

More than three million people live in high-risk zones in Brazil's southeast, which has been hit by record rain this year—in some places, a month's worth in a matter of hours.

As dozens of rescue workers dug through the debris of wrecked houses for his missing mother, stepfather and sister-in-law, one of those affected, 24-year-old Yago de Sousa Nunes, voiced frustration that the authorities did not do more to protect the at-risk population.

"The city government knew this was a high-risk zone, they knew how much rain was going to fall this week, but they didn't do anything to evacuate people," he said alongside the ruins of the Barreira de Joao Guarda neighborhood, in the coastal city of Guaruja, Sao Paulo.

A cat rescued from a landslide in the Morro do Macaco Molhado favela in the coastal city of Guaruja, Sao Paulo

Extreme weather

Is climate change to blame?

Experts say more studies are needed to be sure.

But there is no doubt the region is experiencing "an increase in extreme weather events," said Andrea Ramos of the National Meteorological Institute.

This year, the rainy season in southeastern Brazil has been marked by extremes, said Marcelo Seluchi of the Natural Disaster Monitoring and Alert Center (Cemaden): very dry in the first half of the summer, then very wet from mid-January on.

"The planet is heating up, that's beyond doubt. It's more humid than 50 or 100 years ago, which means the same weather systems have more potential to create rain," he said.

That has combined with the rampant expansion of urban areas to increase people's vulnerability to floods.

Brazil's biggest cities have seen decades of nearly unchecked growth, as poor migrants arrive and settle wherever they can, often building unstable shantytowns on hillsides or the extreme city outskirts.

A flooded street in the Morro do Macaco Molhado favela in Guaruja, in Brazil's Sao Paulo state

"Population growth and the growth of cities means we're replacing vegetation with cement, and that's where a long-standing problem in Brazil comes into play: lots of building on high-risk areas," Seluchi told AFP.

More than half the population of the southeast region's state capitals—Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte and Vitoria—lives in at-risk zones. And 80 percent of those people are "highly vulnerable: they live in very precarious houses, with high population density and a high percentage of children and the elderly," he said.

Housing problem

Rio de Janeiro's Mayor Marcelo Crivella, a far-right evangelical Christian bishop, caused outrage amid the floods when he blamed residents for the destruction.

"People like to live close (to flood-prone rivers and gulleys) because they spend less on sewage pipes for their pee and poop," he said.

Unaffordable housing costs have forced the urban poor into areas unfit for settlements, said Henrique Evers, an urban development expert at the World Resources Institute.

Destruction caused by a landslide in the Morro do Macaco Molhado favela in Guaruja, in Brazil's Sao Paulo state

"Planning housing for vulnerable populations near urban services is one of the best ways to deal with this challenge," he said.

"Brazil still has a long way to go."

Explore further 21 dead as torrential rain hits Brazil

© 2020 AFP

Los Angeles port, country's biggest, hit hard by coronavirus

by Jocelyne Zablit

Shipping containers from China and other Asian countries are unloaded at the Port of Los Angeles on September 14, 2019

The Port of Los Angeles, the biggest in the United States, has been significantly impacted by the new coronavirus outbreak and is forecasting a 15 to 17 percent drop in activity in the first quarter of the year, officials said Wednesday.

Eugene Seroka, the executive director of the port which mainly handles cargo to and from China, told the Los Angeles City Council that the facility experienced 20 to 25 percent less business in February compared to the same period last year.

He said some 40 vessels that had been scheduled to arrive at the port through April had been cancelled due to the outbreak of the virus.

"We have advised the marketplace that we expect quarter one container volume to be down 15 to 17 percent," he added.

Seroka warned that the drop in business would impact workers and the wider community.

"In summation, for our port community, less cargo means fewer jobs," Seroka said, adding that some dock workers had been asked to stay home because there is not enough work.

"It is our estimation that the effects of the coronavirus and the downturn in trade will cost us tens of billions of dollars in the industry when all is said and done," he warned. "The issue today is that empty containers, perishable commodities and agricultural products are stacking up at our ports because of those vessel sailing cancellations.

"That will cause the American farmer further harm on top of the trade tariffs," he said, referring to the US-China trade war.

Phillip Sanfield, a spokesperson for the port, told AFP that the drop in activity was similar to the decline experienced during the 2009 recession.

Shipping containers from China and other Asian countries are unloaded at the Port of Los Angeles in Long Beach, California on September 14, 2019

'Things will rebound'

He said more than half of the port's business is with China which mainly exports furniture, auto parts, apparel, footwear and electronic to the US.

Among the goods the US sends to China are recycled products, raw materials such as cotton, scrap metal and some agricultural goods including soybeans and beef.

The American Association of Port Authorities said in a statement last week that cargo volume at many US ports during the first quarter of 2020 may be down by 20 percent or more compared to 2019 because of the spreading virus.

"Things will rebound eventually, and indeed we're hearing news about factories that are coming back on-line in China, and ports there ramping back up to move the cargo," Chris Connor, president and CEO of the Association said.

"At the same time, supply chain managers around the world are working tirelessly to keep cargo moving to ensure that the goods we need are available when and where we need them."

The outbreak of the new coronavirus, or COVID-19, and the mounting number of people infected has sent shockwaves through world markets.

More than 90,000 people have been infected and around 3,200 have died worldwide from the virus, which has now reached some 80 countries and territories.

Drugmaker AstraZeneca warns on coronavirus impact

Cathay Pacific fined by UK watchdog over massive data breach

Cathay Pacific admitted the huge data breach in October 2018

Hong Kong carrier Cathay Pacific has been fined HK$5 million by Britain's privacy watchdog over a huge data leak of more than nine million customers including passport numbers and credit card details.

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) said in a statement on Wednesday it has ordered the airline to pay 500,000 pounds (US$644,000) for "failing to protect the security of its customers' personal data".

Between October 2014 and May 2018, a lack of security measures on the carrier's computer systems led to a data breach involving more than 9.4 million customers around the world, according to the ICO.

"People rightly expect when they provide their personal details to a company, that those details will be kept secure to ensure they are protected from any potential harm or fraud," Steve Eckersley, ICO Director of Investigations said. "That simply was not the case here."

He added that multiple serious deficiencies they found "fell well below" standard and the airline failed to satisfy four out of five of the National Cyber Security Centre's basic guidance points.

The Hong Kong-based airline in October 2018 admitted that about 860,000 passport numbers, 245,000 Hong Kong identity card numbers, 403 expired credit card numbers and 27 credit card numbers with no card verification value (CVV) were accessed.

Other compromised passenger data included nationalities, dates of birth, phone numbers, emails, and physical addresses.

Cathay said in a statement it wanted to "express its regret, and to sincerely apologise" for the breach, adding it had taken measures to enhance its IT security and spent "substantial amounts" on computing infrastructure.

The airline's share price was up more than two percent on Thursday afternoon.

Cathay says 'most intense' period of data breach lasted months

'Written in blood': bereaved engineer calls for reform after MAX deaths

by Luc Olinga

Javier de Luis has pressured the FAA to change the way they certify airplanes after his sister died in the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX

After his sister died in the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX one year ago, Javier de Luis, an engineer who once designed software for space stations, became a crusader.

Though his expertise is not in airplanes, 57-year-old de Luis has a simple goal: convince the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to change the way it certifies aircraft so the 737 MAX crashes that killed hundreds and led to the plane's worldwide grounding won't happen again.

Aviation regulations "are written in blood," de Luis, 57, told AFP in an interview. "They usually are written because somebody died, something went wrong."

"It's important as we go forward here that we really understand what went wrong, so the rules can be changed or modified or enforced, so that never happens again."

Working from his apartment in Cambridge, Massachusetts, de Luis has written several letters to the FAA as part of his campaign, and was invited to speak to employees at their headquarters in Washington following his sister's death.

Known to friends and family as Gachi, Graziella de Luis y Ponce was a 64-year-old freelance interpreter for the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the Vatican.

She was among 157 people killed when their flight to Nairobi crashed southeast of the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.

Months prior, another 737 MAX crashed in Indonesia, killing 189, and the model was grounded worldwide days after the Ethiopian crash.

Graziella de Luis y Ponce was a freelance interpreter for the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the Vatican

Answer every question

With gray hair and rectangular glasses, de Luis grows animated when discussing why the plane crashed, how the FAA failed and what could be done to stop it.

Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 took off at 8:30 am local time on March 10. Just 90 seconds later, the aircraft's nose began to pitch down, as a sensor sent incorrect information to the MCAS, the automatic anti-stall flight system.

The pilots tried to counter the downward movement, but the MCAS overrode them. Six minutes after take-off, it crashed.

"An airplane shouldn't fall out of the sky if one single sensor fails," de Luis said.

"They should have grounded the airplanes" after the first crash on October 29, 2018, de Luis said. "If they had done that, then my sister and... the 156 other people would be alive."

He compares the failure of the 737 MAX to his experience working on software deployed on the Mir and International Space Station.

Holder of a doctorate in aerospace engineering from the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he also teaches, de Luis was chief executive of Payload Systems, which worked on nearly 30 space flights before being bought by Aurora Flight Sciences, now owned by Boeing.

"I would have to go down to NASA, and I would have to present our design and tell them why it was safe," he said. "I got up in front of the table, and there were experts in the room, and they would start asking me questions, and I had to be able to keep answering until they got tired."

"That's how it should work for... aerospace when it comes to design reviews," he said.

The holder of a doctorate from Massachusetts Institue of Technology, de Luis owned a company that worked on nearly 30 space flights

'It just doesn't go away'

Since the MAX's grounding, de Luis has watched as more and more details have emerged about malfunctions in the plane's development.

Boeing engineers were the ones who inspected the MCAS under a procedure adopted by US regulators in 2005 under pressure from the aeronautics lobby.

The FAA, which only partially understood how the software worked, merely validated their conclusions.

De Luis fears the agency relies "very much on what Boeing tells them" and questions whether safety is really its top priority.

De Luis's parents left Cuba after the revolution, and he recalls how he saw his 94 year-old father cry publicly for the first time when he learned of Graziella's death.

The steady stream of information about the 737 MAX hasn't made it easy to get grieve. Most recently, it was news that debris had been found in the jets' fuel tanks.

"I opened up my iPad every morning, and there's always a story or two about something," he said.

"This way of dying... is just a nightmare because it doesn't go away."

Explore furtherUnited Airlines pushes 737 MAX flights to September

© 2020 AFP

GM shows 13 electric vehicles as it tries to run with Tesla

by Tom Krisher

This photo provided by General Motors shows GM's all-new modular platform and battery system, Ultium, at the Design Dome on the GM Tech Center campus in Warren, Mich., on Wednesday, March 4, 2020. GM rolled out plans for 13 new electric vehicles during the next five years as it trying to refashion itself as a futuristic company with technology to compete against Tesla. The company on Wednesday touted an exclusive new battery technology that could propel some of the vehicles as far as 400 miles (644 kilometers) on a single charge. (Steve Fecht/General Motors via AP)

General Motors, trying to refashion itself as a futuristic company with technology to compete against Tesla, rolled out plans Wednesday for 13 new electric vehicles during the next five years.

The company touted an exclusive new battery technology that could propel some of the vehicles as far as 400 miles (644 kilometers) on a single charge as it tries to capture electric vehicle enthusiasm that has brought wild growth to rival Tesla's share price.

At an event for investors, dealers and analysts at its sprawling technical center in the Detroit suburb of Warren, Michigan, GM executives said the new vehicles would be built using modular chassis and drive systems for manufacturing simplicity.

GM will be able to build trucks, cars, SUVs and even an autonomous shuttle based on the new systems, the company said. The global vehicles will include affordable transportation, work trucks, luxury SUVs and performance vehicles. CEO Mary Barra said GM will be able to build at a large scale, similar to its profitable full-size truck business.

"We want to put everyone in an EV, and we have what it takes to do it," she said at a presentation for investors.

Some of the new vehicles will be able to go from zero to 60 mph (97 kilometers per hour) in as little as three seconds—performance that rivals electric vehicle sales leader Tesla Inc.

New all-electric models will come from the Chevrolet, Cadillac, GMC and Buick brands starting this year, beginning with the Cadillac Lyriq luxury SUV to be unveiled in April.

A new Chevrolet Bolt small SUV comes in the summer of 2021. There's also the GMC Hummer EV pickup coming to dealers in the fall of 2021.

GM also has plans for three more Cadillac SUVs, a midsize Chevrolet SUV, two Buick SUVs, a GMC Hummer SUV, a Chevrolet full-size pickup with 400 miles of range, a luxury Cadillac car and the Cruise Origin, an autonomous electric shuttle.

With fewer parts than petroleum-powered vehicles, electric vehicles will be much cheaper and simpler to build, reducing manufacturing costs, GM said. The company plans 19 different battery and electric motor and transmission combinations, compared with 550 internal combustion powertrain combinations available today.

The company said a joint venture with Korean battery maker LG Chem will use a low-cobalt chemistry to drive down battery costs to below $100 per kilowatt hour.

Executives told the group that the next generation of GM's electric vehicles will be profitable.

Barra said the new vehicles can increase sales and market share, and the batteries and drive units could be licensed to other companies to bring in more revenue.

She said the company plans to sell more than 1 million electric vehicles in North America and China by the middle of the decade. To get there, GM will spend more than $20 billion developing the vehicles through 2025, she said.

Electric vehicle sales will have to grow substantially both worldwide and in the U.S. for GM to meet its targets. Last year manufacturers sold just over 236,000 fully electric vehicles in the U.S., about 1.4% of total new vehicle sales, according to Autodata Corp.

GM is making a huge investment ahead of consumer demand, said Jeff Schuster, senior vice president of the consulting firm LMC Automotive.

"They're going to need to weather that, not only with investors, but just from an overall financial standpoint," he said.

The announcement also comes at a time when the global economy is slowing, in part due to the coronavirus outbreak. LMC on Wednesday reduced its 2020 U.S. new vehicle sales forecast from 16.8 million to 16.5 million, according to Schuster.

LMC expects automakers to sell 17 million fully electric vehicles by 2030, or about 16% of worldwide demand. It will be 25% to 30% of the market in Europe, 20% in China and 8% in the U.S., LMC estimated. Those numbers are smaller than what GM is predicting, but Schuster said sales could rise because GM has such a wide range of vehicles to offer.

"In order to have breakthroughs, you have to have investments," he said. "It's going to bear fruit. It's just a question of how long it's going to take. That's unknown at this stage."

GM to invest $2.2B in Detroit to build electric vehicles

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Thursday, March 05, 2020

High energy Li-Ion battery is safer for electric vehicles

Robots on the march to walking like humans

Researchers one step closer to creating organic batteries

Computer model of face processing could reveal how the brain produces richly detailed visual representations so quickly

High energy Li-Ion battery is safer for electric vehicles

Households in Switzerland could feasibly be energy self-sufficient by 2050

GM shows 13 electric vehicles as it tries to run with Tesla

Fighting hand tremors: First comes AI, then robots

Robot uses artificial intelligence and imaging to draw blood

Integrating electronics onto physical prototypes

Data-driven machine learning is the best approach for advanced battery modelling

Los Angeles port, country's biggest, hit hard by coronavirus

Cathay Pacific fined by UK watchdog over massive data breach

GM shows 13 electric vehicles as it tries to run with Tesla

by Tom Krisher

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