For all the hype swirling around electric aviation, the current state of battery technology and electric powertrains remains a limiting factor for all the drones, air taxis, cargo haulers, and flying cars hoping to take off. Unhappy with that cap on the range, power, and speed of these aircraft, one …
Read More »Cars Aren’t Going Anywhere, and More Transportation News Thi…
If experiments on the ground are cool, experiments in the sky are cooler. And so we can count ourselves extra icey this week, as we got to see to high-flying studies. First, we chatted with aviation company UAV Turbines, which is building mini, watermelon-sized jet engines. Pourquoi? Turns out 500- …
Read More »Uber Eats Hopes Drones Can Lift It to Profitability
Come next summer, the most remarkable thing about your home-delivered late-night California burrito won’t be the French fries inside. It’ll be that the San Diego speciality made part of its journey by drone, as part of a scheme to pull Uber’s food-delivery business financials out of a nosedive. At Forbes’ …
Read More »Commercial Drones FM: Ian Smith Talks Urban Air Mobility wit…
Listen to Ian Smith of Commercial Drones FM catch up with Travis Mason, VP and Head of Certification & Regulation, Urban Air Mobility at Airbus. Travis most recently was MC at AUVSI’s XPONENTIAL Conference 2019—the largest global gathering of unmanned systems technology in the world. Travis previously was Chief of …
Read More »DJI Partner Heliguy Awarded Contract With Major UK Rail Oper…
UK-based Heliguy, one of DJI’s largest European enterprise partners and distributors, has been awarded a nationwide contract with Network Rail as part of a drone services framework worth up to £2.6million. Heliguy will supply, maintain, repair and service Network Rail’s drones, as well as delivering training courses to the infrastructure …
Read More »What Boeing’s 737 MAX Has to Do With Cars: Software
Software eating the world may sound good to tech mavens. But the now eight-year-old maxim has its serious downsides. Software defects have been blamed for Boeing 737-MAX 8 crashes in October and March, which killed 346 people. The aircraft has been grounded worldwide for three months, as investigators from Indonesia …
Read More »An Aviation Pioneer Goes All In on Electric Planes
When André Borschberg started flying as a 15 year old, he didn’t worry about how much fuel he had to burn to get and stay aloft. These days, it’s pretty much all he thinks about. It has been three years since Borschberg and Bertrand Piccard completed an around-the-world journey in …
Read More »This Startup Wants to Remake the Last Mile of Parcel Deliver…
We’re a few minutes into a short drive around Oakland’s Jack London Square neighborhood, a place of wide streets and old warehouses, when we hear a metallic bang behind us. Dhruv Raturi gives me a quizzical look and shrugs. He’s sitting behind the wheel but isn’t working the steering wheel …
Read More »States turn to drones to predict avalanches, spot wildlife –…
States turn to drones to predict avalanches, spot wildlife telegraphherald.com SALT LAKE CITY — In Utah, drones have been used to hover near avalanches to watch roaring snow. In North Carolina, they help search for the nests of … >> Osmo Pocket vs. Osmo Mobile 2: Which One Should You Buy? …
Read More »Flying Car Startup Alaka’i Bets Hydrogen Outdoes Batteries
Hydrogen fuel cells have had a hard time making inroads as power sources for ground-based electric vehicles, but things are starting to look up for the zero emission propulsion tech. A new air taxi startup, Alaka’i Technologies, this week unveiled a liquid-hydrogen-powered, five-passenger electric aircraft that it claims will be …
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