Self-Assembling Nanotubes

       Nikola Tesla conjured up all sorts of interesting experiments for his famed “Tesla Coils.” Today, however, their main use has been relegated largely to impressing visitors at science museums.
That is about to change. Researchers at Rice University have used Tesla coils to get carbon nanotubes to self-assemble into long chains, a phenomenon the scientists have dubbed “Teslaphoresis.” Controlled assembly of nanomaterials from the bottom up could be useful in applications including regenerative medicine where the nanotubes would act as nerves as well as fabricating electronic circuits without touching them.
You can see a pretty impressive video of this so-called Teslaphoresis in action below.

         In research that is described in the journal ACS Nano, the researchers were able to get the nanotubes to self-assemble into long chains because the Tesla coil generates an electric field that causes the positive and negative charges in each nanotube to oscillate. This ability to remotely affect the charges in each nanotube over such a distance is one of the surprising developments of this research.
        “Electric fields have been used to move small objects, but only over ultra-short distances,” said Paul Cherukuri, who led the research, in a press release. “With Teslaphoresis, we have the ability to massively scale up force fields to move matter remotely.” The influence of the Tesla coils on the nanotubes doesn’t just get them to self assemble, but it can also power the circuits that the nanotubes form. In one experiment, which you can see demonstrated in the video, the researchers were able to get the nanotubes to form into wires that created a circuit between two LEDs, which were powered by the Tesla coil.
         The Rice researchers have initially used carbon nanotubes in their experiments because of their abundance at the institution where the so-called HiPco process for mass producing them was first developed. However, the researchers contend that the Telephoresis process could work with a variety of nanomaterials.
        No matter the material used, the key element is the Tesla coil. The researchers envision using much stronger coils that are able to generate far more powerful directed force fields. They are also considering using several Tesla coils in unison to create far more complex self-assembling circuits than the ones they have already produced.
        Cherukuri added: “There are so many applications where one could utilize strong force fields to control the behavior of matter in both biological and artificial systems. And even more exciting is how much fundamental physics and chemistry we are discovering as we move along. This really is just the first act in an amazing story.”

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2016's Top Tech Cars: Chevrolet Volt

Price: US $33,995 ($26,495 after $7,500 federal tax credit)
Power plant: 1.8-L four-cylinder with dual electric propulsion motors; total 111 kW (149 hp)
Overall fuel economy: Equivalent of 2.2 L/100 km (106 mpge) on electricity; 5.6 L/100 km (42 mpg) on gasoline

       Today’s US $2-a-gallon gasoline doesn’t bode well for the plug-in Volt’s showroom sales in America. But when gas prices spike again, the Volt hybrid may end up looking like one of the smartest fuel savers on the planet—and for one-third the price of a Tesla Model S.
        This second-generation Volt is a green sweetheart to drive, and improved in nearly every way over the original: sleeker, lighter, faster, quieter, and more efficient.
        Let’s cut to the chase. In a test drive north of San Francisco, the Volt managed precisely 60 all-electric miles (97 kilometers) before the gasoline engine kicked in. That beat the official 53-mile estimate, itself a 40 percent improvement over the first-generation Volt. At that point, the Volt’s new direct-injection engine smoothly blended combustion with electric power to offer 675 km of total range—no range anxiety in this car. As it crossed the 106-mile mark on this trip, it burned exactly one gallon of gasoline—3.8 liters—along with $1.50 worth of wall electricity.
In other words, spend $3.50 to cover 106 miles. Go ahead and try to do that in a Mini Cooper. There’s not a gasoline, diesel, or conventional hybrid on the road that can match that efficiency, which equated to 2.0 L/100 km (120 mpge) over the electric portion and better than 70 mpg overall. As advertised, owners who commute fewer than 53 miles round-trip can punch into work every day without ever using a drop of gasoline. Purely coincidentally, the Volt’s battery supplies a half-gallon’s worth of gasoline energy. So if you manage 53 miles (85 km) on a charge—which we exceeded without even glancing at the helpful gauges that coach you toward efficient driving—that works out exactly to the official U.S. estimate of 106 mpge.
And you won’t sacrifice performance. The new Volt’s curb weight drops by more than 90 kilograms (200 pounds), to about 1,607 kg, and the propulsion unit alone is 45 kg lighter. The new four-cylinder engine is more powerful, runs on regular rather than premium fuel, and operates at lower rpm to reduce the drone that plagued the original.
        The dual electric motors are markedly revised, sharing no common parts with the first-gen Volt. Total horsepower remains at 149, but it now has a very hefty 401 newton meters (296 foot-pounds) of torque—21 more than before. The upshot is an 8.4-second surge to 60 mph (97 km/h). Perhaps more important, it gets to 30 mph in just 2.6 seconds, 0.7 second quicker than before—and remarkably, just two-tenths of a second slower than the 220-horsepower Volkswagen GTI that served as my “rabbit” during the driving test. One of the Volt’s coolest new features is a steering-wheel paddle that triggers regenerative braking. Grab the paddle as you’re entering turns or rolling up to stoplights and it feels like downshifting in a sports car, even as you’re saving energy. Battery mass drops by 10 kg, and there are 192 lithium-ion cells in the Volt’s T-shaped, under-floor battery pack, down from 288 before. Yet thanks to a tweak in battery chemistry, capacity is up 8 percent, to 18.4 kilowatt-hours—the secret to the Volt’s newly extended electric range. And at $26,495 after a $7,500 federal tax giveaway (er, credit) in the United States, the Volt is a bargain. The Chevy is not only two-fifths the cost of a Tesla and one-fifth the cost of a BMW i8, it’s actually less than the $33,500 price of the average new car in America—and $1,200 less than its lower-performing predecessor.
        The Volt isn’t the only Chevy that will test American appetites for electrified cars: Late this year, the Chevrolet Bolt goes into production, a pure EV hatchback that promises 200 all-electric miles, for an estimated price of around $30,000 after federal and local tax breaks.
And what will they call the Bolt’s electric successor? Well, it will have to be “Jolt,” because “Colt” has already been taken.

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2016's Top Tech Cars: Ferrari 488 Spider

Price: US $275,000
Power plant: 3.9-L V-8 with dual turbochargers; 493 kW (611 hp)
Overall fuel economy: 13.8 L/100 km (17 mpg)

        Hustling Ferrari’s latest fantasy through Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region, we take all of 3 seconds to salute the end of an era and to hold on tight as another begins. That’s how much time it takes the glorious 488 Spider to reach 100 kilometers per hour (62 miles per hour). Closing a book on seven decades of howling, superhigh-revving, naturally aspirated engines, every new Ferrari will now be turbocharged, a hybrid, or both. And while Ferrari’s new turbos can’t hit the operatic, 9,000-rpm tenor notes of its predecessors (not yet, anyway), it’s game over in every other regard.
        Although the midmounted V-8 displaces 0.6 liters less than the departed 458 model, it pumps out a shocking 20 percent more power. And the 760 newton meters (561 foot-pounds) of torque surpasses the old 458 by fully 40 percent. The result shatters the record for power per liter for any production-car V-8 even as fuel consumption drops by 14 percent.
That unbeatable one-two punch of power and efficiency is why such stalwarts as Ford, Mercedes, and Porsche have gotten the memo: Join the turbo revolution, or die. In 8.7 seconds, or less time than a Toyota Prius takes to reach 100 km/h, the Ferrari is doing 200 km/h (124 mph).
        With warp-speed acceleration achieved, Ferrari looked to tackle another, more elusive supercar goal: making the Ferrari easy to drive. The Side Slip Control 2 system assesses a driver’s skill level in real time, applying its Formula One–bred stability and traction systems to maximize speed in any situation. Twitch a finger on the carbon-fiber steering wheel and the Ferrari reacts in 0.06 second. Flick the column-mounted paddles and the seven-speed F1 automated gearbox downshifts 40 percent faster than before and upshifts 30 percent more rapidly. The style is bellissimo, naturally, but the beauty springs from pure aero function. The signature is the new “blown spoiler,” a discreet cove atop the rear deck that funnels air to pin the Ferrari to the pavement, with no need for a rear spoiler that would add aero drag and spoil the lines.
"After slicing up the countryside like a haunch of prosciutto, we find final affirmation on a looping ascent to Forte di San Leo, a soaring promontory and medieval fortress. The sash-wearing mayor and townspeople pour out to greet our Ferraris, snapping enough photos to fill a family album." Yes, driving a 488 Spider in Italy is almost like cruising in the Popemobile. But while the pope can’t make you infallible, this car just might.

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Feasible Wave Energy. Finally.

        With all that to-and-fro and ebb-and-flow, the motions of the ocean offer an endless supply of renewable energy. Or they would, if engineers could figure out how to capture that power. Most prototypes for wave-energy converters have been massive and costly, or else they’re torn apart during violent storms at sea. But a Swedish company called CorPower Ocean may finally have a solution. Tests show its new buoy can produce three times as much electricity as the best rival tech, with a far more practical design.
        For starters, it’s relatively small: Whereas other devices can stretch hundreds of feet across and weigh well over a thousand tons, CorPower’s bobbing red machine is a mere 26 feet in diameter. Yet a single buoy stationed offshore can generate about 250 kilowatts of power—enough to cover the electricity needs of 200 homes. Wave-power farms could contain hundreds or even thousands of them.
        The process relies on three key components: a mooring line that holds the buoy in place and keeps it upright and stable; a device called the WaveSpring that causes the buoy to oscillate in time with incoming waves; and a gear mechanism that converts that bobbing motion into electricity with maximum efficiency. The company’s engineers have tested the wave-energy converters in tanks, and field trials are scheduled for next year.
        “CorPower could be the real winner in wave energy,” says Antonio Sarmento, an independent researcher in the field. “Their technology represents a breakthrough.” More like a sea change.

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2016's Top Tech Cars: Mercedes-Benz F 015 Concept

Price: Not for sale
Power plant: Hydrogen fuel cell
Overall fuel economy: N/A

        For years, automakers have rhapsodized about how our cars would become mobile offices and living spaces. And then they botched even the simple stuff, like letting you dial up the Backstreet Boys from your iPod on the car’s sound system. But fear not. The Mercedes-Benz F 015 will be the rolling roost of your dreams. You’ll just have to wait at least until 2030, when Mercedes thinks this kind of hydrogen-powered, fully autonomous vehicle will become viable.
        Bigger than an S-Class, the Benz concept looks like a Clockwork Orange hipster lounge, with its walnut-veneered floor and wall-wrapping touch and gesture displays. Mercedes sees it as a retreat that will maximize privacy or productivity in the hectic urban zones of the future. The mod theme continues with two front white-leather-clad lounge seats that swivel rearward (after all, the “driver” usually won’t need to attend to the road). The steering wheel telescopes into the dash during autonomous mode. And any passenger can take charge of vehicle functions, such as speed and which of the 360-degree views to project inside the car.
        The concept car makes clever use of optical technologies to communicate with cars and pedestrians. A forward-looking laser, for example, can beam messages onto the pavement, including a whimsical image of a zebra crossing or the words “please go ahead.” You get into the car using a smartphone app, which opens enormous clamshell-style portals for easy access to the lounge space inside. A hydrogen-fueled F (for “fuel”) cell plug-in hybrid drive system could deliver a 1,100-kilometer driving range, Mercedes says, including 200 km on battery power.
        If you care to trust Mercedes’s crystal ball, by 2030 hydrogen cars will be a common sight. Unless gasoline still costs $2 a gallon. Or if Telsa has its way.

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IBM's Rodent Brain Chip

       IBM has created neuromorphic chips. In August of last year, the project leader Dharmendra Modha and his cognitive computing team shared their unusual creations with the outside world, running a three-week “boot camp” for academics and government researchers at an IBM R&D lab on the far side of Silicon Valley. At a conference last year, this eclectic group of computer scientists explored the particulars of IBM’s architecture and have begun building software for the chip dubbed TrueNorth. In an interview with WIRED last year, Modha showed them one of the neuromorphic chips. "About the size of a bathroom medicine cabinet, it rests on a table against the wall, and thanks to the translucent plastic on the outside, I can see the computer chips and the circuit boards and the multi-colored lights on the inside. It looks like a prop from a ’70s sci-fi movie, but Modha describes it differently." "You’re looking at a small rodent," he said. He means the brain of a small rodent—or, at least, the digital equivalent. The chips on the inside are designed to behave like neurons—the basic building blocks of biological brains. Modha says the system in front of us spans 48 million of these artificial nerve cells, roughly the number of neurons packed into the head of a rodent.
        Some researchers who got their hands on the chip at an engineering workshop in Colorado the previous month have already fashioned software that can identify images, recognize spoken words, and understand natural language. Basically, they’re using the chip to run “deep learning” algorithms, the same algorithms that drive the internet’s latest AI services, including the face recognition on Facebook and the instant language translation on Microsoft’s Skype. But the promise is that IBM’s chip can run these algorithms in smaller spaces with considerably less electrical power, letting us shoehorn more AI onto phones and other tiny devices, including hearing aids and, well, wristwatches.
        “What does a neuro-synaptic architecture give us? It lets us do things like image classification at a very, very low power consumption,” says Brian Van Essen, a computer scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory who’s exploring how deep learning could be applied to national security. “It lets us tackle new problems in new environments.”
        The TrueNorth is part of a widespread movement to refine the hardware that drives deep learning and other AI services. Companies like Google and Facebook and Microsoft are now running their algorithms on machines backed with GPUs (chips originally built to render computer graphics), and they’re moving towards FPGAs (chips you can program for particular tasks). For Peter Diehl, a PhD student in the cortical computation group at ETH Zurich and University Zurich, TrueNorth outperforms GPUs and FPGAs in certain situations because it consumes so little power.
        The main difference, says Jason Mars, a professor of a computer science at the University of Michigan, is that the TrueNorth dovetails so well with deep-learning algorithms. These algorithms mimic neural networks in much the same way IBM’s chips do, recreating the neurons and synapses in the brain. One maps well onto the other. “The chip gives you a highly efficient way of executing neural networks,” says Mars, who declined an invitation to this month’s boot camp but has closely followed the progress of the chip.
        That said, the TrueNorth suits only part of the deep learning process—at least as the chip exists today—and some question how big an impact it will have. Though IBM is now sharing the chips with outside researchers, it’s years away from the market. For Modha, however, this is as it should be. As he puts it: “We’re trying to lay the foundation for significant change.”

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2016's Top Tech Cars: Ford GT

Price: US $400,000
Power plant: 3.5-L V-6 with dual turbochargers; 485 kW (650 hp)
Overall fuel economy: N/A

Nearly a half century ago, the Ford GT40 went to the 24 Hours of LeMans and crushed mighty Ferrari, sparking an enduring legend. Now Ford looks for a LeMans déjà vu this summer with a reborn racing GT, followed by 250 annual copies of a roughly US $400,000 scissor-doored wonder car for the street.
The GT eschews a V-8 for a downsized twin-turbo V-6 based on its Daytona-winning LMP2 race engine. Ford is promising the best power-to-weight ratio of any production car in the world, with a hand-laid carbon-fiber tub and body for this mid-engine monster.
An active suspension lets the Ford hunker down at triple-digit speeds to reduce drag, while an active air brake at the rear rises and angles as needed to boost aero downforce or slow the car into corners. The gorgeous fuselage is billionaire bait, but the bravura style is wedded to pure function. A curved pair of flying buttresses perform dual tricks: The winged roof channels direct air to the rear spoiler, and their hollow sections contain piping for the turbo intercoolers: Engine intake air is hoovered from beneath the car, compressed into the turbos, then snaked through the winglets and down again to hyperventilate the V-6. Heated air from the intercoolers flows rearward and exits through tubes in the center of the rear taillights.
It’s all executed so beautifully that we were pleased to gawp at the thing at the recent Detroit Auto Show. But I’ll be happier when Ford finally lets us drive it.

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2016's Top Tech Cars: Audi Autonomous RS7

Price: US $136,650

Power train: 96-kW (129-hp) AC electric motor with 1.5-L 170-kW (228-hp) three-cylinder gasoline engine

Overall fuel economy: 8.4 L/100 km (28 mpg) on gasoline; electric equivalent of 3.1 L/100 km (76 mpge)

       Audi’s autonomous cars are becoming quite the world travelers: Recall the much-ballyhooed first robotic drive from San Francisco to New York City, about a year ago. Impressive stuff, though honestly, humans can hold their own at pulling into a rest stop.

Here in Spain, the man-vs.-machine competition will be at higher speed and for higher stakes. I’m about to take on Robby, the autonomous RS7 sport sedan that’s designed to rock a racetrack at speeds that would blister Google’s cartoonish bubble car. If a human driver can’t keep up, it occurs to me, then our obsolescence draws that much closer. It’s only a matter of time before governments and automakers pry the ignition keys out of our fallible, accident-prone hands for good.

Robby is looking cool and confident in the pits at Parcmotor Castelloli, near Barcelona. And for good reason: The Audi weighs 400 kilograms (882 pounds) less than Bobby, the RS7 that holds the world speed record for autonomous cars, at 240 kilometers per hour (149 miles per hour).

I take to calling the newer car Robby the Robot, after the glass-skulled automaton from the 1956 sci-fi movie Forbidden Planet. Miklos Kiss, Audi’s head of predevelopment for driver assistance systems, introduces us to his two autonomous brainchildren. Popping Bobby’s hatch, we find it full to bursting with computer gear. Robby’s, in contrast, has plenty of room left over for luggage. There’s a single MicroAutoBox brain and power supply and two other small computers.

Incredibly, Audi’s latest differential GPS unit can fix Robby’s position to within 2 centimeters, vastly better than today’s GPS standard of roughly 1.5 meters. This price-no-object system also uses redundant cameras to triangulate and thus to confirm the car’s location. Keeping a fully autonomous vehicle safely within lanes will require zeroing in to 50 cm (around 20 inches).

Controllers adjust the engine, electric steering, transmission, and brakes, with redundant fail-safes: There’s a spare power supply and brake controllers if the first ones conk out. A 4.0-liter biturbo V-8 produces a villainous exhaust note that echoes off the dusty canyon walls.

I slide into Robby’s shotgun seat with some trepidation, thinking that the driver’s side will remain spookily unoccupied. But surprise! There’s an Audi engineer in the seat, along for the passive ride but holding a plunger connected to a cord. If something goes wrong and he lets go of the plunger’s button, the Audi will slow and halt on the track. Theoretically.

The checkered flag waves. The RS7 launches itself down the front straight and charges into the first corner, the steering wheel twirling, the ghosts fully in charge of this machine. The brake and throttle pedals aren’t moving at all because the computer commands are bypassing the old analog connections.

Before I arrived, Audi engineers had manually driven Robby around this Spanish track to measure its barriers and “geo-fence” a safe zone beyond which Robby will not go. Like a real-life slot car, the Audi locks onto its programmed track line, its path varying by only a few centimeters. Yet the RS7 also reacts in real time to conditions such as a slippery track or wearing tires, dialing back power or correcting the steering if it begins to slide off its satellite-guided path.

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Photo: Audi

Brain in a Boot: The Audi RS7’s computing hardware fills the trunk space.

Robby turns out to be a smoothy, a race-instructor type who puts up great, flowing lap times yet keeps the car utterly balanced and composed. Its dead-consistent laps vary by less than 0.3 second, including a best this day of 2:09.2.

Now, it’s my turn, and I jump aboard a production Audi RS7. Suddenly, I’m John Connor taking on Skynet, a human fighting for his increasingly pitiful and superfluous species. After one reconnaissance lap on this unfamiliar track, I turn the Audi loose. Please, Lord, don’t let me lose to a stinking machine.

I drive back into the pits and dash over to the timer. A few Audi engineers applaud, a bit grudgingly, I’m thinking. But my lap of 2:05.4 is nearly 4 seconds quicker than Robby’s. Even after hundreds of laps in recent weeks, Robby’s best is still 2 seconds behind my first trip around Castelloli. Take that, you remorseless Terminator, German accent and all.

But as my adrenaline subsides, I’m forced to concede that adrenaline is among my biological advantages. Robby may know speed, but the words “race” or “win” simply aren’t part of his vocabulary. Yet.

Where I punished the tires and pushed the limits, Robby stayed emotionless, programmed to run safe, endlessly repeatable laps. The last thing Audi needs is for a self-driving car to disintegrate against a wall or injure its passengers, setting back autonomous driving by a few years. A few tweaks of the algorithms, a few more generations, and Robby’s offspring will be chip-enabled Michael Schumachers. (Please, Audi, name your next car Ricky Bobby.) They’ll scan and pick out us humans up ahead and make us eat their digital dust, if they choose. Or they’ll chauffeur our miserable hides straight to the police if we act up, as did Tom Cruise’s 2054 Lexus in Minority Report. What’s to stop them?

Yes, the rise of the machines seems inevitable. But as my race with Robby showed, some humans will still put up a fight before going to the scrap heap.

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The Tesla Model 3

       The $35,000 Tesla Model 3 is finally here. It is sleek, quick as hell, and meant for the masses. And it is the most important car the company will ever build.
The Model 3 is the car Tesla Motors has promised since the company’s founding, the car that CEO Elon Musk is convinced will push EVs into the mainstream and the technology to an inflection point. Not to put too fine a point on it, it is the car Musk believes will change the world.

“It’s very important to accelerate the transition to sustainable transport,” Musk said on stage. “This is really important for the future of the world.”

In person and on paper, the Model 3 is a stunner. It’s a handsome sedan, with four doors and five seats, and all the comfort and practicality you’d expect of an upscale mid-size sedan. The battery is good for a 0 to 60 mph time under six seconds, a range of 215 miles. It’s packed with tech, stylish, and a bargain if Tesla can deliver it at the $27,500 base price Musk promises you’ll pay after the federal tax credit.The specs and price are key, because so far Tesla Motors has aimed squarely at the affluent. The company’s first three models—the innovative Roadster sports car, exquisite Model S sedan, and tech-slinging Model X SUV—made electric cars fun, cool, and compelling. The Model 3 is meant to do something greater: sell the masses on electric propulsion.
Tesla is hardly alone in hoping to do this and, frankly, got beaten in the race to build a $30K EV wth a triple-digit range by General Motors. In January, the Detroit stalwart introduced the 2017 Chevrolet Bolt, a battery electric hatchback with a range of 200 miles and a price of 30 grand after the $7,500 federal tax credit.
Still, Musk isn’t the slightest bit worried and, to be fair, has little reason to be. The Bolt is lovely, but Tesla has a proven ability to get people excited, and there’s no denying the company has a cachet many automakers do not. You don’t often see people lining up outside dealerships simply to place a $1,000 deposit on a car they haven’t even seen—something that happened at many Tesla stores this week. By the time Musk pulled the sheet off the color Model 3 at the sprawling Space X campus here in Hawthorne, California, 115,000 customers had put their money down.

“They’ll absolutely have a wow factor, because it’s Tesla,” says Gary Silberg, an automotive analyst with KPMG. “They’ll know how to market it, and from that perspective, there’s no doubt in my mind it’s gonna be a big success.”

Tesla doesn’t have to worry about creating a market for the 3. Nor does it have to worry about actually building it. No, the upstart automaker has to do something much harder.
If the company is to truly influence, let alone change, how humanity moves around, it must become more than a niche automaker building luxury vehicles and playing gadfly to the big players. That means producing vehicles on a massive scale and generating sustainable profits. To do that, Tesla must think and act a lot more like the very automakers Musk is so quick to ridicule as out-dated and old-fashioned.

It’s time for Tesla to grow up.

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