NextBigFuture.com

The global 2022 were 7.7 million BEVs and with plug in hybrid (PHEV and BEV) over 10 million in 2022. The global share is 12.5 % for BEV. About 200k EV units were lost in China due to massive COVID outbreaks in December. In 2023, the number of Global BEV will easily surpass 10 million ... Read more

Russia has announced plans to expand its military to 1.5 million personnel over the next four years. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced the troop increase is expected to be complete by 2026, according to Russian state news agency, TASS. Russia will reorganize seven motorized rifle brigades in the western, central, and eastern military districts, the ... Read more

Japan had nominal (exchange rate per capita GDP) in 1988 that was 117% of the US level (17% higher) but this has fallen to less than half. On a purchasing power per capita income level Japan peaked at about 80% of the US level (about the level of France and the UK) but the PPP ... Read more

Japan’s economy has been in relative decline compared to many other developed countries. Japan sold 4.2 million cars in 2022 which is the lowest in 45 years. The cars that were sold were the cheaper K cars like the Honda N-Box and Toyota Yaris. The N-Box and Yaris are 1.6 million yen or about $12,500. ... Read more

Nextbigfuture has written about the Tesla Electric Semi. The Tesla Electric Semi can have electricity costs of 17 cents per mile. There have been trucker commenters saying that the maintenance costs are different for electric trucks and the battery replacement will wreck the economics of the 500 mile range truck. 60-80% of the loads seem ... Read more

Nextbigfuture has to go into all the details of the costs (energy and maintenance) in order to address arguments against a transition over time from diesel trucks to electric semi trucks. This is one of the articles going over the information. A person who claims to be trucker in the comments says: All I know ... Read more

SpaceX is targeting over 100 orbital launches in 2023 after launching 61 times in 2022. They just had their fifth successful launch which is more than every other country or region in the world in 2022, except China and Russia. SpaceX is the main launch company for the USA and the primary commercial launch company ... Read more

In the first 18 days of 2023, SpaceX has had its fourth successful orbital launch. SpaceX is targeting a fifth orbital mission tomorrow. The mission tomorrow is for launching 51 Starlink satellites. This means SpaceX, in just 18 days, has matched or surpassed the number of successful orbital launches in 2022 for all other countries ... Read more

Lasers have been used to divert lightning strikes in real-world experiments. The work suggests that laser beams could be used as lightning rods to protect infrastructure, although perhaps not any time soon. Metal lightning rods are commonly used to divert lightning strikes and safely dissipate their charge. But the rods’ size is limited and they ... Read more

Elon Musk has tweeted that he expects SpaceX to make five full Stack Super Heavy Starships in 2023. If there is a successful orbital Stack Super Heavy Starships launch in February, 2023 then Super Heavy Starships could start flying weekly by Q4 2023. How many starships is spacex looking to build this year ? — ... Read more

Elon Musk says Tesla FSD version 11 should start rolling out later this week, next week at the latest. Tesla is starting to make use of neural nets for vehicle navigation & control, not just vision. Wen fsd beta v11.3? — Tesla Owners Silicon Valley (@teslaownersSV) January 14, 2023 Should start rolling out later this ... Read more

There was a 2021 analysis of electric trucks in China, but the introduction of mega charging and the Tesla Semi has completely outdated the assumptions. The report by The International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) looked at the Total Cost of Ownership for Heavy Trucks in China: Battery-electric, fuel-cell electric and diesel trucks. It was ... Read more

The US Department of Energy reports that class 8 trucks average 62,000 miles a year. The American Trucking Association provides the following statistics on trucking in America. Trucks move roughly 72.2% of the nation’s (USA) freight by weight. US Annual Trucking Revenue: $875.5 billion in gross freight revenues (primary shipments only) from trucking, representing 80.8% ... Read more

Poland is looking to send a dozen Leopard 2 tanks. However, Germany must approve the transfer. The Leopard 2 is a German-made tank and Berlin holds the export license. Germany’s reluctance has delayed Poland, Spain, Finland, The Netherlands from donating surplus Leopard 2s to the Ukraine. The German defense minister has resigned and it seems ... Read more

I made mistakes calculating how much electricity would be needed for 4 million total USA semi trucks and 40 million large trucks globally. There are also another 40 million light and medium trucks for commercial usage in the USA and another 120 million consumer pickup trucks and SUVs. Regular people use trucks far less than ... Read more

Helion Fusion CEO, David Kirtley, presented an update on the work as of December, 2022. They are working on their seventh-generation prototype system and they have had over 10,000 shots with the sixth-generation system. They create and form plasmas and accelerate two plasmas to merge at supersonic speeds. They do not inject beams and operate ... Read more

A new NASA NIAC phase 1 study is analyzing a 20-meter class infrared space telescope. It is currently impossible to find Earth-like planets in the habitable zones (where the temperature supports liquid water) of Sun-like stars. It is even harder to measure the composition of their atmospheres. But this is necessary if we want to ... Read more

Researchers developed a system called “ICE” (inducible changes to the epigenome) in DNA reparation, which actually advances aging, and also discovered that the process can be reversed by using OSK-mediated rejuvenation. Using the ICE system, young mice have aged quickly, but with dire consequences on the tissues in their bodies. Journal Cell – Loss of ... Read more

SpaceX had a successful Sunday, January 15 launch for Falcon Heavy’s launch of the USSF-67 mission to a geosynchronous Earth orbit from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Following booster separation, Falcon Heavy’s two side boosters will land on SpaceX’s Landing Zones 1 and 2 (LZ-1 and LZ-2) at Cape Canaveral ... Read more

Fortune and others are reporting that Microsoft will close a $10 billion investment deal into the artificial intelligence startup before the end of this month. This is discussed in the All-in-Pod cast. The deal will have a unique structure in that Microsoft will get 49% of the company but 75% of future profits. Chamath is ... Read more

A Phase 1 NASA NIAC study will demonstrate the feasibility of a revolutionary power source for missions to the outer planets utilizing a new paradigm in thermal power conversion, the thermoradiative cell (TRC). This device, driven by a radioisotope heat source, will allow an order of magnitude increase in mass specific power (~30 vs ~3 ... Read more

Tesla cut the prices of their cars in the USA and Europe by up to 23%. This ensures that all by the Model Y performance will get the $7500 tax credit in the US. This price cut and the tax credit means the Model Y is selling for $22,000 less and the Model 3s are ... Read more

NASA NIAC phase 1 studies development of a nuclear fission fragment rocket engine (FFRE) that is exponentially more propellent efficient than rocket engines currently used to power today’s space vehicles and could achieve very high specific impulse (>100,000 sec) at high power density (>kW/kg). Fission Fragment rockets are several proposed nuclear rocket designs made since ... Read more

NASA NIAC has a phase 1 study for Artur Davoyan to study propulsion architecture for fast transit of heavy (1 ton and more) payloads across the solar system and to interstellar medium. This version of a pellet beams approach allow for larger vehicles to reach speeds nine times faster than Voyager 1. Inspired by the ... Read more

Jordan of the Limiting Factor goes into detail on electric semi trucks and the megacharging that will be needed. I will go over the scale of the shift for electric trucks. The motivation is that it will make trucks about 30% cheaper to operate by saving 80% of the fuel costs. It also means countries ... Read more

Peter Zeihan made a series of mostly unsupported and false claims about electric vehicles while being interviewed on the Joe Rogan show. James Stephenson goes through all of the over forty aspects of what Peter Zeihan said. Here is the video and I have below screen shots of the thorough take down of each unsupported ... Read more

Aerographite exists as seen in the petri dish from over two years ago. It is 15000 times lighter than aluminum and making 1 micron pellets and releasing them from where we have already sent the Parker solar mission near the sun they would reach over 2% of lightspeed. A steady stream of these small pellets ... Read more

Jeff Greason’s provides his fastest summary of leveraging the solar wind, pellet riding and Q drive to reach 24% of the speed of light. Q drive uses the solar wind as a power source to accelerate reaction mass. This can take 25% of the mass of the vehicle to go 4 times faster. Simply using ... Read more

The Jupiter Observing Velocity Experiment (JOVE) is a solar-powered technology demonstration of rapid flight to outer solar system targets, performing a flyby of the Jovian magnetosphere 30 days after launch. This is achieved using a magnetic drag device to accelerate with the solar wind plasma. This “Wind Rider” propulsion system can potentially also decelerate against ... Read more

SpaceX had four rockets on four pads and two Dragons on orbit today—as CRS-26 Dragon departed the space station with Crew-5 Dragon still attached to the orbiting lab, Falcon Heavy rolled out of the hangar, two Falcon 9’s readied for launch, and Ship 24 was stacked onto Booster 7. We have a real shot at ... Read more

The BaGuaLu AI system used the Chinese Sunway exaflop supercomputer to train the largest AI model with over 174 trillion parameters. The miraculous capabilities of neural net AI systems like ChatGPT (AI generate novel text and stories) and Dall-E (AI generate novel pictures) and Alphafold2 (protein folding) comes from the growth of the AI models. ... Read more

Businesses are a primary target for cybercriminals. Cybercrime is one of the biggest challenges of our time. Experts are constantly working on being able to offer new solutions to increase safety. Businesses are increasingly addressing these issues and will continue to do so in the future. Cybercrime has grown to become one of the most ... Read more

The CSIS International Security Program for the launch of a new report titled The First Battle of the Next War: Wargaming a Chinese Invasion of Taiwan by Mark Cancian, Matthew Cancian, and Eric Heginbotham. This event will feature a presentation by the report’s authors and a panel discussion with Lt Gen David A. Deptula USAF ... Read more

Virgin Orbit’s 70-foot-long (21 meters) LauncherOne rocket upper stage failed in a launch of nine satellites. Virgin Orbit developed very similar technology to the Pegasus under wing launched rocket from Northrop Grumman. Carrying the rocket on the large plane was fine ane the first stage was fine and the second and final stage did its ... Read more

Peter Zeihan has chosen to claim that the electric car revolution will start to fail around 2030 and “disappear” in the 2030s. This is another convenient claim that will give Peter Zeihan another stream of income lasting until he retires around 2040. It is something where EVs will continue to grow and scale but where ... Read more

Halter Ferguson Financial is a financial advisory, asset management company. They have announced they will release a 6-8 page report that leverages the Tesla Semi truck and Megapack analysis that Nextbigfuture released over the last month. Financial Manager Gary Black has also gotten on board the Megapack will be a very significant and profitable analysis. ... Read more

The UN has their latest world population projections. Overall Annual Global Deaths Will Double Over the Next 60 Years The overall level of absolute annual deaths will be increasing from 60 million per year to about 80 million by 2050 and 100 million by 2070. The annual global death rate will average an increase by ... Read more

Elon Musk tweeted it looks like V11.3 will be ready for wide release in about 2 weeks. Many major improvements. Looks like V11.3 will be ready for wide release in about 2 weeks. Many major improvements. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 7, 2023

Peter Zeihan was interviewed by Joe Rogan where Zeihan again predicted the collapse of China. This time Zeihan says it will happen within ten years. Zeihan has been predicting China’s meltdown since 2005. He repeats the call for China meltdown and possible breakup or breakdown multiple times. In 2010, he said it would happen within ... Read more

The Transporter-6 mission successfully launched at 6:55 a.m. PT on January 3 placed the Caltech Space Solar Power Project (SSPP) prototype, the Space Solar Power Demonstrator (SSPD) in orbit. It will test several key components of an ambitious plan to harvest solar power in space and beam the energy back to Earth. Space solar power ... Read more

I, Brian Wang, was part of today’s Farzad Tesla panel. Here is the youtube video recording. There was a discussion of the Tesla price cuts in China and the impact on margins.

The UN estimates that the world passed 8 billion people in December 2022 and April 2023 India will pass China’s population. There are errors in population estimates of at least 1%. China has been the world’s most populous country for hundreds of years. In 1750, China had about 225m people, more than a quarter of ... Read more

Tesla has reduced their car prices in China. Here are the new starting prices (in USD): • Model 3 RWD: $33,023 (11.7% drop) • Model 3 P: $48,014 (5.7% drop) • Model Y SR: $37,826 (10% drop) • Model Y LR: $45,103 (13.4% drop) • Model Y P: $52,381 (9.5% drop) This will likely reduce ... Read more

Mobileye presented their self-driving and driver-assist technology at the 2023 CES. Mobileye wants to change the terminology from level one to level to a user-based terminology. Mobileye Supervision and incremental improvement is like the incremental and profitable Tesla approach with Autopilot and FSD. Tesla’s FSD beta is already “eyes-on, hands-off” with 285,000 users for the ... Read more

There are forecasts that there will shortages of key minerals for EV batteries but there is also a potential glut of LFP batteries. It is also possible that both events happen with a temporary 2 year glut of LFP batteries and a shortage of nickel batteries. China’s new production capacity for lithium iron phosphate (LFP) ... Read more

A Tesla Model was intentionally driven over a cliff for a 250-300 drop but all four people survived. There were two adults and two children in the car. After investigating into Tuesday morning, speaking to witnesses and putting together evidence at the scene, the CHP (California Highway Patrol) said “investigators developed probable cause to believe ... Read more

The current Transastra Sutter ground telescope test model, comprising four telescopes, moved in early April to the Winer Observatory, where over two months it tracked multiple small, dark, fast-moving objects by collecting about 50 extended images every night built from over 6,000 exposures taken over an eight-hour period. They will launch a cubesat in 2023 ... Read more

NASA’s future telescopes need robust, high-sensitivity, kilopixel-format superconducting arrays that operate over the entire far-IR spectrum. Previously, some of the key technologies needed for these arrays were demonstrated on the High-resolution Airborne Wideband Camera (HAWC+) on the Stratospheric Observatory for Far-Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA). Those detectors provided excellent performance for suborbital far-IR applications, but their production ... Read more

In late 2023, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory project will start a 10-year inventory of the solar system (LSST). It should increase the number of known objects in the solar system by over ten times. LSST will deliver a 500 petabyte set of images and data products that will address some of the most pressing ... Read more

New research indicates that tens to hundreds of planet-sized nomadic worlds may populate the spherical volume centered on Earth and circumscribed by Proxima Centauri, and thus may comprise closer interstellar targets than any stellar planetary system. For the first time, there is systematic analysis of the feasibility of exploring these unbounded celestial bodies via deep ... Read more