Mini has announced the US list price of its new battery-powered Mini Cooper SE. The starting price fo the new 2020 Mini Cooper SE is $29,900 plus an $850 destination charge. The car will hit showrooms in the US in March 2020.
MIT has announced the development of a new system that allows autonomous vehicles (AVs) to see better around corners. The new MIT system can sense tiny changes in shadows on the ground to determine if a moving object is coming around the corner. MIT says that AVs could one day use the system to quickly avoid a potential collision with a vehicle or pedestrian emerging from around the corner of a building or between parked cars.
NASA has announced that the Insight Mars lander has run into an issue with one of its instruments. The instrument is the heat flow probe, also known as the mole. In an image that NASA released, the probe can be seen sticking out of the ground.
Tesla has begun to roll out an update for its EVs that adds more power to the vehicles at no charge. Tesla says that the update will give the vehicles approximately 5% more power for improved acceleration and performance. The power bump is thanks to Tesla learning how to optimize motor control via software.
Carbon dioxide, or CO2, is a greenhouse gas that causes pollution all around the world. Removing pollution from the air is a key area of research around the world. Engineers from MIT have announced that they have developed a new way of removing carbon dioxide from a stream of air that could be a new way to fight pollution of this sort.
IBM has made a breakthrough in quantum computing by demonstrating a way to control the quantum behavior of individual atoms. The discovery has demonstrated a new building block for quantum computation. The team demonstrated the use of single atoms as qubits for quantum information processing.
Toyota has announced that starting next summer in Japan, its Platform 4 (P4) automated driving test vehicle will begin offering rides to passengers. The rides in the autonomous car will be offered from July to September 2020. The P4 vehicle will demonstrate the Toyota SAE Level-4 capabilities in a mobility as a service driving environment.
The Mars 2020 rover has reached a critical milestone in its design and development. After years of design, analysis, and testing, the rover is on its wheels for the first time. The titanium legs of the rover are the black tubes that stick out the side.
Researchers have created a swarm of small drones that are capable of exploring unknown environments by themselves. The scientists say that the research surrounding the drone swarm is a significant step in the field of swarm robotics. The drones in the swarm are small and weigh in at 33g.
One of the most recognizable and popular of VW's line of vehicles is the Golf. The company is set to launch a new 8th-generation for the iconic Golf, and with the new generation it's being electrified in a big way. VW will introduce five new hybrid versions of the Golf intended to increase fuel economy and reduce emissions, sitting alongside the usual performance versions, the Golf GTI and Golf R.
A researcher from the University of Richmond called Kelly Lambert has done something that sounds impossible outside of children's books. She has taught a rat to drive a tiny car. Lambert is a professor of behavioral neuroscience, and she and her team taught the rats to drive.
EPFL researchers have developed a new method that they believe may make electronic devices of the future more energy efficient. The team says that excitons are quasiparticles formed when electrons absorb light. These particles have the potential to revolutionize the building blocks of circuits.