For several years, the automobile industry has grappled with a straightforward question: Is it possible to produce a powerful, efficient, and mass-producible synchronous motor that contains no rare-earth elements at all? A newly announced partnership between General Motors and the startup magnet company Niron Magnetics suggests a resounding “yes.” That was how the media reported… Continue reading GM and Stellantis Back Rare-Earth-Free Permanent Magnet
Author: IEEE_Spectrum
MIT Professor’s IoT Sensors Make Roads Safer
Back in 2005, before smartphones were generally available, MIT Professor Hari Balakrishnan was so fed up with commuting delays in Boston that he built a mobile system to monitor road conditions. Hari Balakrishnan Employer MIT Title Professor Member grade Fellow Alma maters Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, and the University of California, Berkeley He and… Continue reading MIT Professor’s IoT Sensors Make Roads Safer
Smart Emergency Responses to Severe Weather
Floods, landslides, and other disasters resulting from extreme weather are expected to bedevil cities more often due to climate change. These disasters can often disrupt traffic flows, slowing the deployment of emergency vehicles even as they try to respond to an overwhelming number of calls for aid. Now scientists have designed a way to calculate… Continue reading Smart Emergency Responses to Severe Weather
The 2025 Volvo EX30: Priced to Tempt Americans
For such a tiny and intensely powerful EV—an “espresso shot” of Volvo, according to its maker—the new EX30 carries big hopes but plenty of baggage. The EX30 brings the hallmarks of larger Volvos: squeaky-clean Scandinavian design, a canny blend of comfort and performance, and an obsessive focus on safety. But the EX30 is made in… Continue reading The 2025 Volvo EX30: Priced to Tempt Americans
Hoverboard Inventor Turns Heads With Two-Wheeled Car
When it comes to transportation, two wheels are better than one. That’s idea driving Shane, a two-wheeled vehicle that looks to reinvent one of the automotive industry’s most basic assumptions. Its inventor, Shane Chen, has made a career out of gravity-defying ideas—first with the Hoverboard (which, Chen notes, was widely copied) but also with the… Continue reading Hoverboard Inventor Turns Heads With Two-Wheeled Car
Could Direct Lithium Extraction Be a Game-Changer?
High in the Andes mountains where the borders of Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile intersect, white expanses of salt stretch for hundreds of kilometers. Under these flats lie reservoirs of water that contain about three-quarters of the world’s lithium. For decades, producers have extracted that lithium by pumping the water up to the surface and letting… Continue reading Could Direct Lithium Extraction Be a Game-Changer?
Entangled Atoms Lead to Ultraprecise Quantum Sensors
The strange quantum phenomenon known as entanglement can link atoms and other particles together so that they can influence one another instantaneously, regardless of distance. New research suggests it’s possible to take advantage of entanglement for significantly more accurate and faster quantum sensors that could support satellite navigation technologies like GPS. Quantum sensors rely on… Continue reading Entangled Atoms Lead to Ultraprecise Quantum Sensors
From Hockey Enforcer to High-Flying eVTOL CEO
Kyle Clark, the 43-year-old founder and CEO of Beta Technologies, is not quite your typical tech entrepreneur. For one thing, he’s a former professional ice hockey player. Then, too, many afternoons you won’t find him behind a desk at the company’s headquarters near the airport in Burlington, Vt. In fact, you won’t find him on… Continue reading From Hockey Enforcer to High-Flying eVTOL CEO
Where Are All the Solar-Powered Cars?
If you doubt that a car can absorb a lot of solar power, try sitting in one after it has baked for a while in a parking lot. Whether parked or on the road, our vehicles spend a lot of time in the sunshine. So why don’t more of them harvest power from it? Ambient… Continue reading Where Are All the Solar-Powered Cars?
U.S. Agency Seeks Better Maps of Earth’s Magnetic Field
The World Magnetic Model is essential for navigation. The model, which compiles precise measurements of Earth’s magnetic field at points across the globe into one map, provides data on the constantly shifting magnetic field. But the current system for collecting that vital data is getting old. Now, a U.S. intelligence agency is in the final… Continue reading U.S. Agency Seeks Better Maps of Earth’s Magnetic Field