Tesla seems to have licked the cold weather problem, or at least as far as temperatures that also don't affect ICE vehicles. You get down in to some of those arctic temperatures - thirty, forty below F - and any vehicle needs TLC to work. Next generation solid-state LI batteries take care of the charge/discharge problem. And again, Tesla is throwing a shit-ton of money at battery technology.
This is interesting. Assuming that 60 Minutes hasn't gotten themselves snowed, it looks like someone's finally cracked how to cheaply turn biomass into fuel.
As with all bio-fuel endeavors, it's a matter of (1) whether the technology economically scales and (2) if it comes with the trade-off of making food more expensive. I'm much more intrigued by the biodegradable plastics and sugar that doesn't promote tooth decay.
Probably not technically on topic, but from source that referred to Bloomberg, on the outlook of developing commercially viable fusion energy: One of the cable business channels had a guest who referred to around ten startups in the pipeline for this year (or vc funded last year, I forget), but it seems unlikely that this many smart people (at least a few really smart ones per company) would spend such time and resources on a pipe dream.
These solar panels recharge my car (for free!) while I'm at work. Each car uses 3.3 to 6.6KW depending on state and how many are plugged in. I charge it at home rarely. There are 480 panels which on a sunny day produce about 320watts each for a total of 153KW. At 3.3KW that's enough for 46 charging positions. We have 40 stations of which 30 are typically in use during the day. I use about 10KW/h to drive round trip to work, so it charges for 2-4 hours per day while I'm playing on the internet.
To quote Donald Sutherland from The Dirty Dozen "Pretty, very pretty". It's only a 65 ton capacity dump truck. I copied the video but I'll take it seriously when it can move at least four times that much.
Windpower now cheaper than natural gas. https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/08/wind-power-prices-now-lower-than-the-cost-of-natural-gas/
Counterpoint, possibly specific to the Columbia: the Columbia River dams (Bonneville, The Dalles, McNary, Grand Cooley) also function as flood control dams. That's not to say that removing the would ultimately be better, but they are protecting Portland and Vancouver from seasonal flooding (like which wiped out Vanport).
Not the first time that I've seen a method for powering things using aluminum, but I've not seen anyone claiming this kind of performance.