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Developments on electric vehicles already exist from the year 1884. In this year Thomas Parker created the first commercially viable car. However, with the introduction of gasoline powered cars the interest in electric vehicles shrinked. Up until the nineties no significant developments were made in the electric vehicle area, but in 1990 the Zero Emission Vehicles Mandate was brought to life in California. This mandate required car manufacturers to sell a specific percentage of Zero Emission Vehicles per year (ca.gov, n.d.). From this moment car manufacturers initiated serious developments in Electric vehicles again, where in 2006 Tesla Motors created the first fully electric vehicle that was allowed on the highways. In the last decade many car manufacturers followed Tesla and this year around 49 different models of fully electric vehicles will be available on the market (Wikipedia, 2019). (Valdes-Dapena, 2019)

Alongside to the development of the electric vehicle, car manufacturers also invested in developments on hydrogen-powered cars. In 2014 Toyota launched the first mass produced fuel cell vehicle, called Mirai (Nied, 2015). Besides, hydrogen-powered vehicles are already widely used in prublic transport. For example, in the Dutch provinces Groningen and Drenthe a company called QBuzz is swapping his polluting diesel busses for hydrogen-powered busses (Joosse, 2019).

On the whole, electric vehicles and hydrogen-powered vehicles are making big steps towards a zero emission environment. However, how will the future of both technologies look like? Beside the fact that both technologies help reducing CO2 emission, there is also a fierce competition between the technologies. Elon Musk, co-founder of Tesla, said that hydrogen fuel cells are: “mind-bogglingly stupid” (D’Allegro, 2019). In 2017 Yoshikazu Tanaka, chief engineer of the Toyota Mirai, supported Musk: “Elon Musk is right — it’s better to charge the electric car directly by plugging in.” (D’Allegro, 2019) Although Tanaka added that the hydrogen technology is a serious alternative to gasoline. On contrary, a survey of a thousand senior auto executives conducted in 2017 by KPMG found that they see the hydrogen technology more likely to rule the future instead of electric vehicles. The biggest advantage according to these executives for the hydrogen technology is the short refueling time, which is just a few minutes (D’ Allegro, 2019).

To conclude, both technologies have their advantages and disadvantages. It is up to the car manufacturers to decide which technology they go for. For both technologies infrastructural challenges appear. Which technology do you think to rule the future? Or maybe a hybrid version?

 

References:

D’Allegro, J. (2019) Elon Musk says the tech is ‘mind-bogglingly stupid,’ but hydrogen cars may yet threaten Tesla [online] Available at:
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/21/musk-calls-hydrogen-fuel-cells-stupid-but-tech-may-threaten-tesla.html [Accessed on 2th Oct. 2019]

Ca.gov (n.d.) The ZEV Regulation [online] Available at:
https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/zero-emission-vehicle-program/about [Accessed on 2th Oct. 2019]

Joose, B. (2019) Extra bussen op waterstof voor Groningen en Drenthe [online] Available at:
https://www.duurzaambedrijfsleven.nl/logistiek/32087/bussen-waterstof-groningen-drenthe [Accessed on 2th Oct. 2019]

Nied, D. (2015) The Long Road to the Mirai [online] Available at:
https://www.toyotatoday.com/news/hydrogen-fuel-cell-timeline.htm [Accessed on 2th Oct. 2019]

Valdes-Dapena, P. (2019) Electric cars have been around since before the US Civil War [online] Available at: https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2019/07/business/electric-car-timeline/index.html [Accessed on 2th Oct. 2019]

Wikipedia.com (2019) List of electric cars currently available [online] Available at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_electric_cars_currently_available [Accessed on 2th Oct. 2019]

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Through the past decade we have seen a lot of developments in the area of robotics. Businesses started using robots instead of human employees which enhances the precision and efficiency in a lot of cases. But not only in businesses, we also introduce robots in our homes these days. Robot vacuum cleaners or robot lawn mowers started to get into our houses already a while ago, but nowadays we have robots helping elderly people with tasks or kitchen assistent robots which can be connected to kitchen appliances and teach you how to cook. Not even talking about Google home or Alexa. Overall, we see that robots are already changing our lives and that is not likely to change in the near future.

Yesterday, Boston Dynamics appeared in the news with their newest developments on the humanoid robot called Atlas. In 2013 this robot was barely able to walk (Etherington, 2019). However, in 6 years of development Boston Dynamics improved Atlas and the robot is now even able to practice gymnastics! If you are curious how that looks like, just watch the video I added in the post. Atlas’ motions are almost 100% human-like and has the capabilities to run and walk through rough terrain without getting out of balance (Etherington, 2019). Even if you push the robot it will manage to keeps its balance (Kettley, 2018). On the whole, the developments of Atlas show how far we already are in the world of robotics.

I can imagine that these new developments are really awesome to a lot of people, I think it is too! However, after reading about the capabilities of Atlas and watching the video I added here, I got a bit scared too. There is a point that robots get so human-like that we should ask ourselves whether we do good with it. These days we hear more often that when people take robots into their homes, things go wrong. “a South Korean woman was sleeping on the floor when her robot vacuum ate her hair, forcing her to call for emergency help” (Selinger and Hartzog, 2015). That was just one example, with technologies as AI robots are self-learning and people who do not fully understand how this works will start believing that these robots are real humans (Selinger and Hartzog, 2015). Besides, with robots with such human-like skills as Atlas the danger arises that people will be replaced by them, worst case in the army. As mentioned in Kettley (2018): “All jokes aside, the Government will eventually fully arm ad weaponise these to use against us”. If robots as Atlas get in the wrong hands we have a huge problem.
I think the developments in robotics are really important to improve many things in life. Especially in the medical area. However, it makes me also a bit scared to see the developments on robots as Atlas. I am curious what your thoughts are! Just leave a comment if you like.

Michaël Zwezerijn
September 25 2019

References

Kettley, S. (2018) Killer robots WARNING: New Boston Dynamics robots feel terrifyingly human-like. [online] Available at:
https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/960139/Robot-warning-Boston-Dynamics-Atlas-humanoid-artificial-intelligence [Accessed on 25th Sept. 2019]

Etherington, D. (2019) Atlas the humanoid robot shows off a new and improved gymnastics routine [online] Available at:
https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/24/atlas-the-humanoid-robot-shows-off-a-new-and-improved-gymnastics-routine/ [Accessed on 25th Sept. 2019]

Selinger, E., & Hartzog, W. (2015) The Dangers of Trusting Robots. [online] Available at:
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150812-how-to-tell-a-good-robot-from-the-bad [Accessed on 25th Sept. 2019]