Bloomberg: GM’s Ready to Lose $9,000 a Pop and Chase the Electric-Car Boom
General Motors Co. stands to lose as much as $9,000 on every Chevrolet Bolt that leaves a showroom once the all-electric subcompact starts rolling out. Sounds crazy, but the damage makes perfect business sense under the "no pain, no gain" policy driving the electric-vehicle boom in the U.S.
California crafted the doctrine, with tough clean-air rules and a mandate that automakers sell some non-polluting vehicles if they want to do business in the Golden State. Nine others have adopted it, New York and New Jersey among them, and all told they make up close to 30 percent of the U.S. market. That goes a long way to explaining why zero-emissions models from more than 10 brands are on the roads, with more on the way. Most are destined to be loaded with red ink for their makers, but they’ll be great deals for consumers as companies unload them to meet their targets.
Midwest Energy News: Amid Dakota Access Protests, Tribes Continue to Pursue Clean Energy
While the Sioux nation has been in the spotlight almost daily for its opposition to construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline, it has much more quietly been pursuing renewable energy development on the Standing Rock Reservation and other tribal lands across North and South Dakota.
Seven Sioux tribes in the Dakotas are developing what would be an enormous collection of wind farms on six reservations scattered across what is generally rated as one of the windiest areas in the country.
“The ultimate vision is to develop as much as 2 gigawatts, and potentially more,” said Caroline Herron, a consultant who’s been hired by the tribes to act as a project manager. Each of the reservations “can support a couple hundred megawatts, if not more. We’re recognizing that we’ll need to phase this in. We will probably start with a couple sites with a couple hundred megawatts each.”
Jalopnik: This Could Be One of the Best Parts of Autonomous Cars That No One Has Thought of Yet
Fundamentally, all autonomous cars are computers combined with a car. A brain and a body. The computer that’s driving the car is relying on data streams from cameras and sensors and GPS systems, but in the end, it’s just numbers. And because of the nature of computers, this means there’s opportunities to make content for autonomous cars, because autonomous cars can be playback devices. I’ll explain.
It should be technically and theoretically possible for an autonomous car to drive with input not just from its array of cameras and sensors, but from a set of pre-recorded data from another car. The data that can be recorded and...is significant: throttle position, steering wheel angle, brake pressure, weight balance, speed, wheel slippage, and, of course, GPS data about where the car goes.
If you’re wondering why the hell anyone would want to do this, think about these possibilities.
New Scientist: Brexit Puts Europe’s Nuclear Fusion Future in Doubt
Brexit puts the future of the world’s largest nuclear fusion reactor, based in Oxfordshire, in doubt. By leaving the European Union, the U.K. might also exit Euratom, the EU’s framework for safe nuclear energy.
“It would be bizarre and extreme for the U.K., which has been at the forefront of fusion research for 50 years, to just leave these projects,” says Ian Chapman, CEO of the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority. “It would make no sense strategically.”
The UK government has yet to say what its plans are for cooperating with Euratom, but part of the Brexit negotiations will have to include the nuclear fusion experiment JET. Decommissioning JET is expected to leave around 3,000 cubic meters of radioactive waste, which would cost around £289 million to deal with, according to the UKAEA.
Motley Fool: Utilities Are Losing the Battle Against Solar Energy
Rooftop solar energy is becoming a financially viable way for millions of U.S. consumers to generate their own electricity -- and utilities are doing everything to kill the solar boom before it gains too much traction. Utilities in states such as Florida, Wisconsin, and Nevada have tried to undermine rooftop solar at the regulatory level and in ballot measures. As a reaction, voters have fought back and beaten the efforts to squash solar energy.
The impact on residential solar companies Tesla, Vivint Solar, Sunrun, and SunPower shouldn't go unnoticed. They're winning the policy war against utilities, and as they do, it'll open a larger and larger market across the country.