Teslarati: New Anti-Tesla Site by 'Oil Barons' Is Absolutely Hilarious
Serial tech entrepreneur and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been the subject of much criticism over the last six months since joining President Trump’s Business Advisory Council. But this newly found criticism is actually hilarious. A website under the domain stoptesla.com rallies support to “Stop Elon Musk before it’s too late for us!”
The satirical videos poke fun at those protesting against Tesla’s mission to shift away from a fossil-fuel burning economy.
The site proclaims that Tesla’s upcoming Model 3 will unleash dangers for international fossil fuel corporations, describing the vehicle as “the infamous, fast, long-range, environment-friendly and offensively affordable fully electric auto-piloted car from Musk.”
Car and Driver: Development of a Porsche 911 Plug-In Hybrid Is Truly Dead
Porsche was set to put a plug-in-hybrid version of the next-gen 911 sports car into series production, but we’ve learned the project was killed a while ago -- last year, in fact, according to August Achleitner, head of 718 and 911 development.
He revealed that fact to Car and Driver today at an event held to celebrate production of the 1,000,000th 911. The hybrid 911 would have been part of the 992-generation lineup, and we were told that it would have been very efficient at least on paper, thanks to European emissions tests that heavily favor plug-in hybrids.
Bloomberg: Even Clean Energy Has Its Little Oil Spills
Wind turbines were planted along a strip of Mexico’s southern coast to make the country’s power industry cleaner. Now they’re spilling oil.
In the town of Juchitan last month, a cleanup was under way around a generator owned by Electricite de France. Workers wearing goggles and masks were scrubbing off a copper-colored lubricant that dripped down from the turbine. They’d wrapped cloth around its base, to absorb further leakage, and stuffed contaminated soil and stones into plastic trash bags.
Flor, who owns the land where the turbine is sited and rents it to EDF, said she arrived on the scene after being alerted by a neighbor. “The stench was terrible, like a sort of burned fuel or ammonia,” she said, asking not to be identified by her surname out of concern over reprisals. “The trees were glistening with oil.” Similar problems have been reported all along the Tehuantepec isthmus, one of the western hemisphere’s windiest places.
Guardian: Think Wind Farms Are Ugly? It's Not Only a Matter of Perception, but Policy Too
There’s plenty of time and effort dedicated to understanding the technical impact of these new machines on the electricity grid but the ways they interface with culture, behaviour and community are under-considered. Leaving these out often results in attacks on the legislation driving the change.
In 2011 the Baillieu government in Victoria introduced sweeping limitations on wind energy, essentially banning the machines from being built in the Yarra Valley, within 5 kilometers of the Great Ocean Road and in the Mornington peninsula. Ted Baillieu himself labeled wind farms “towering triffids” (the harsher components of the law were repealed when Daniel Andrews became premier).
More recent appeals to disgust spurred by their visual presence were Joe Hockey’s memorable classification of wind turbines as “utterly offensive” and former prime minister Tony Abbott’s curiously specific declaration of the Rottnest Island wind turbine as “visually awful." As Hockey told a Bloomberg energy summit: “We have some beautiful landscapes in Australia and, frankly, putting up those towers is just to me, quite appalling in those places." Pre-existing views on wind energy have a major effect on how they’re perceived aesthetically -- this wasn’t a surprising reaction.
Solar Daily: Atomic-Scale Study Could Pave the Way for Better, Longer-Lasting Solar Cells
Researchers at Imperial College London have identified the mechanism that causes perovskite cells to degrade so quickly. Their findings could pave the way for a more efficient, longer-lasting solar cell.
Previous research by ICL chemists showed "superoxides" work to break down the perovskite material. Now, ICL researchers have discovered how superoxides form and do damage.
When light hits perovskite, electrons are released and react with oxygen to form superoxides. The formation of superoxides is aided by gaps in the perovskite nanostructure, gaps normally occupied by iodide. Superoxides take advantage of these iodide-less defects.