November 06, 2017
From January 2018 on, the Flemish region will promote the usage of a ‘greener’ kind of asphalt, that reduces CO2 emissions by one third when applied. Ben Weyts (NV-A), Minister for Public Works, even wants to make the ‘green asphalt’ mandatory form 2021 on. The asphalt used is a new kind that only needs 110 […]
November 03, 2017
Elon Musk himself predicted that the production start of the Model 3 would be ‘a hell’. But the actual problems go beyond his worst case scenario. Especially the software for the Model 3 batteries from Tesla’s own Gigafactory turns out to be problematic. Production prognoses are delayed by another three months. GigaFactory If all goes […]
November 03, 2017
Dutch bicycle maker VanMoof developed a tracking system for stolen bikes and sends out its own ‘bike hunters’ to retrieve them. A service that is proposed at an annual fee of 100 euro. In Belgium every quarter of an hour a bicycle is stolen. Police is powerless with a result that only 4 % of […]
November 03, 2017
Turkish President Erdogan announced a plan to launch a new car brand, entirely made in Turkey. His aim? To see a car rolling off the domestic assembly line by 2021. For years now, a domestic produced car has been an objective for the Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AK Parti), as a symbol of the […]
November 03, 2017
Car maintenance and repair costs shot up with +32,6% in Belgium since 2008, higher than in the neighbouring countries the Netherlands (+21,9%), Germany (+25,5%) and France (+24,5%). This is one of the conclusions of the latest study of the Belgian Price Observatory, part of the federal Agency for Economics. The study focuses on the total […]
November 02, 2017
Dutch start up Circular Energy from Delft has worked out a concept to ‘harvest’ gas at sea on mobile gas power plants and produce electricity without CO2 emissions. The gas power plant can compliment wind farms when there is no wind and use their power lines to supply to the grid on the shore. A […]
November 02, 2017
Californian electric car maker Tesla announced on Wedsnesday its biggest quarterly loss ever, due to continuing production problems with the new Model 3 and 700 sacked employees. Since it entered the stock market back in June 29 2010, Tesla has experienced eight annual losses. Yesterday, the company announced its biggest loss ever of 620 million […]
November 02, 2017
“Electric car sales are progressing all around the world, but only evolve in EU countries with a GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of more than 30.000 per inhabitant, the more wealthy countries”, European Automobile Manufacturers Association ACEA explains. Since the beginning of this year, electric car sales are taking off. This market growth is pulled upwards […]
November 02, 2017
Modern cars are loaded with safety systems, but most drivers hardly ever use them. They simply don’t know what smart gadgets their car is equipped with. This was one of the remarkable results of the study carried out by the Connecting Mobility, a project office of the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management together […]
November 02, 2017
One of the side effects of self-driving car is that the drivers tend to fall asleep and are unable to intervene when something goes wrong. “A scary experience”, Waymo CEO John Krafcik told Reuters on a visit of its Phoenix area test facilities this week. After experiencing this in 2013 during highway testing, Waymo, sister […]
October 30, 2017
According to American real estate experts Justin Thompson and Garth Bostic the autonomous car can tempt people in the future to flee the city and move back to the green countryside, while traffic jams around the city will still remain and parking spaces in the city will become obsolete. The Los Angeles based experts asked […]
October 27, 2017
Belgian Rail is challenging technical students to find a solution to warn passengers being too close to the edge of the train platforms while waiting, despite of the yellow line indicating the safety distance, the signs and the public call systems. Every day, railway company NMBS/SNCB transports 850,000 passengers in 3.500 trains on the world’s […]
October 26, 2017
With the launch of its new Leaf 2, Nissan wants to remain the world’s number one in electric vehicle. In Belgium, it hopes that the new model will oversell the Tesla Model S that is currently the country’s best selling EV. Nissan has been playing in the electric vehicle segment for much longer than its […]
October 26, 2017
Cars that are less polluting, more comfortable, but especially more ‘intelligent’ are put on the stage at the 45th Tokyo Motor Show that is opening its doors to the public on Friday. Japanese car manufacturers use their local platform to show some remarkable prototypes like cars that can recognize emotions of their drivers or self-balancing […]
October 26, 2017
Wednesday, the German railway company Deutsche Bahn (DB) presented its first self-driving minibus. This “intelligent” urban shuttle’s maiden voyage happen in the spa resort of Bad Birnbach in Bavaria. The new autonomous shuttle Deutsche Bahn introduces, is capable of transporting up to 12 passengers. This electric minibus has been developed by the French start-up EasyMile. […]
October 26, 2017
Swedish NEVS, the former Saab which is owned by a number of Chinese investment companies, is going to build electric taxis for taxi hailing and private car sharing service DiDi, the ‘Chinese Uber’. An agreement was signed on Wednesday in Trollhättan (Sweden) for developing a specific electric vehicle, capable of autonomous driving in the future. NEVS, […]
October 25, 2017
The automatic gearbox gains in popularity. Seven years ago only 11,5 per cent of the cars sold in Belgium had an automatic gearbox. Today a third of the cars sold in 2017 are ‘automatics’ while experts predict the disappearance of the manual gearbox. “In family cars the manual gearbox remains the most popular”, says Maarten […]
October 25, 2017
Uber has created a fake city near Pittsburgh (US) on an old industrial lot to test autonomous cars in “real world conditions”. It is also used to train the future security drivers that will be present in Uber’s autonomous cars in case something goes wrong. On an old industrial lot of 17 acres, Uber has […]
October 25, 2017
Belgian federal government blows the whistle on NMBS/SNCB CEO Sophie Dutordoir on her intention of cancelling the project to provide wireless internet on the train. Dutordoir thinks it’s to costly and unnecessary as the entire train network will be covered by 3G and 4G in the near future. But government persists. Sophie Dutordoir, the new […]
October 25, 2017
Ex-GM daughter and one of the worlds major automotive suppliers Delphi buys the nuTonomy start-up created by MIT researchers for 400 million dollars. nuTonomy will reinforce Delphi as the most important provider of autonomous technologies. On Tuesday, Delphi announced that it would acquire the American start-up nuTonomy. The company’s 100 employees, of which 70 are […]
October 25, 2017
VDL, Holland’s biggest bus, car and lorry builder, announced on Tuesday it received new orders from Belgian logistics group Katoen Natie and German chemical giant BASF for 18 fully autonomous driving lorries. The Antwerp based Katoen Natie will use the 11 new lorries they ordered on its Singapore petrochemical site, where they have already one […]
October 23, 2017
According to the Wall Street Journal there is an agreement between American electric car maker Tesla and the Chinese government to start the construction of a Tesla plant in the free-trade zone in Shanghai. China is an important market for Tesla. It counts for 15 per cent of Tesla’s turn-over with an expected growth of […]
October 23, 2017
Dutch company Prodrive Technologies introduces a sensor that is capable of detecting PM2.5 particulates entering the car interior and shutting of air intake or filtering it out by the air con. The sensor is developed for a not yet disclosed German car maker, who intends to launch the product in 2018. Prodrive Technologies already developed […]
October 23, 2017
After numerous discussions with Paris city authorities, SeaBubbles won’t introduce it’s autonomous electric hovering boat taxis on the Seine but on the Geneva Lake instead. SeaBubbles is a new type of electric hydrofoil boats created by two French boaters that could revolutionize public transport. In only eighteen months, ex hydrofoil skipper Alain Thébault and windsurfing […]
