Riding the $3,000 pickup truck of electric scooters
Scooters are known for having more storage space than the average motorcycle. Because the engine is actually connected to the rear wheel, that leaves a lot of room under the seat for stuff. It’s convenient, but it still limits the utility of the bike when you want to buy more than some milk and bread at the store. The new GenZe 2.0 electric scooter not only has that under-seat space, but also sports a relatively huge bed (called the “BackBay”) behind the seat. It’s like a tiny two-wheeled pickup truck that can handle a few pizzas, a backpack or your dirty clothes as you take them to the Laundromat. I didn’t have pizzas or filthy clothing to toss in the back, but I was able to take this urban utility scooter for a spin on Treasure Island before its launch in San Francisco and Portland, Oregon, this fall.
Built in Michigan by India-based Mahindra, the aluminum-frame GenZe 2.0 — like a lot of scooters currently available and coming to market — is technically a moped. The onboard software keeps the top speed at 30MPH. You might not be able to keep up with traffic on streets with a 40MPH speed limit, but you also won’t need a motorcycle license to ride it.
The bike has three modes: Sport, Economy and Easy. Easy mode eases new riders into the wild and wooly world of traveling on two wheels by limiting acceleration. Once you’ve done that, you’ll never use it again. For me, Economy is only for when I realize I’m in danger of killing the battery on the ride home. Fortunately, it has a range of 30 to 35 miles on a single charge and the battery is removable, so you can park the scooter and take the battery inside with you to charge it. The rather heavy battery (Mahindra says a lighter one will be available next year) takes about three and a half hours to charge. Because I’m usually in a hurry, I picked Sport mode.
Acceleration is on par with other electric scooters regulated to moped mode. It’s smooth and eventually gets you to the top speed within about half a city block. While it’s not going to be flying down city streets, it’s a bit safer than the average scooter thanks to the 16-inch front wheel that makes it extremely stable. I could feel the bike trying to right itself as I leaned side to side while cruising down the road.
The large wheels (the rear one is 12 inches) also have the added advantage of making all those potholes your city refuses to fix less of a danger than if the GenZe used the smaller tires found on other bikes. Plus, that added stability also makes slow turns easier. I was able to pull tight circles while doing 2 MPH.
As for hills, Mahindra says the bike will tackle an 8 percent grade at 30MPH for half a mile. Helpful for topographic wonderlands like San Francisco. Unfortunately, Treasure Island was built to be as flat as a board, so no hill-climbing tests for the pickup-inspired GenZe.
Like an actual truck, the sitting position is upright. There’s no leaning forward; the high handlebar position keeps that from really being much of an option. My daily rider is a Vespa that also lends itself to an upright riding position, but this is far more pronounced. Right off the bat, the bike is trying to fix my horrible posture. After a few blocks, I got used to sitting at attention while riding.
On that high handlebar, though, is a 7-inch touchscreen that shows off your usual speed, battery and range stats. It’s also how you unlock the bike. As with a smartphone, a PIN code is needed to start the GenZe. But, the most exciting feature is the ability to adjust the power and regenerative-braking settings of the bike directly from the display. Riders can customize their experience with a few flicks and taps. These settings can also be adjusted via a companion app.
The features meant to woo urban gearheads don’t stop there. On the final production model, riders will also be able to top off their smartphones and other devices using two 12-volt charging ports. One will be located in the under-seat compartment so you can charge your phone while you store it. Oddly, the GenZe also has a reverse mode. I guess you could use it to back out of spaces. ¯_(ツ)_/¯.
As for the BackBay bed in the back, the stock bike will have the rather large bucket that housed my backpack and DSLR with plenty of room to spare. There will also be hooks on the production model for bungee cords so all your stuff doesn’t go flying into the street. But customers also have the option to upgrade the bay with a lockable lid and other accessories when the bike launches, which should be somewhere in either late September or early October. Expect it go for $3,000, with availability starting in San Francisco and Portland.
While the GenZe will be available for individual purchase, the company is also interested in fleet sales to colleges, resorts and rental services like Scoot. Don’t be surprised to see a few of these filled with coolers and towels the next time you visit a beach town or in a city where people want the freedom of two wheels, but still need to do things like go shopping for more than a loaf of bread.
Filed under: Misc, Transportation
UK says it’s once again illegal to rip CDs for personal use
Brits: we hope you enjoyed that brief, glorious year of legal media ripping, because you’re once again flouting the law. In the wake of a challenge from the music industry, the UK’s High Court has overturned regulation that allowed format shifting (such as ripping CDs and DVDs) for the sake of personal use. Supposedly, the government was in the wrong when it didn’t implement compensation for copyright holders when you dumped those albums and movies on to your hard drive. Officials could reintroduce exceptions, but they’d have to take a different tack if they want these measures to survive.
The industry unsurprisingly portrays the High Court decision as a big win for performers and writers. At one point, it had claimed that compensation-free format shifts would rob creatives of £58 million ($90.5 million) per year. However, that’s a tentative claim at best. After all, there’s no real way to know if someone is ripping media in the first place, let alone whether or not those copies are intended for piracy or convenience. This also overlooks the blows inflicted against teachers and researchers, who now can’t legally transcode media they need for presentations and studies. While it’s true that the damage to personal use rights is mostly symbolic (the UK can’t really enforce its new policy), the rule ultimately hurts more than it helps.
[Image credit: Jonathon Colman, Flickr]
Filed under: Home Entertainment, Storage, HD
Via: BBC, Ars Technica
Source: UK Music
This is how ‘Shenmue 3’ raked in over $6 million on Kickstarter
Records, like rules, were made to be broken. Shenmue 3‘s Kickstarter campaign recently wrapped and upon doing so it set the bar for video-game projects on the crowdfunding platform by pulling in some $6.3 million in pledges. It’s pretty impressive when you consider that just last month the previous record-holder, the Castlevania spiritual successor Bloodstained, raised over $5.5 million in a similar span of time. Both games come from legendary game developers striking out on their own (thanks to risk-averse publishers) and both are more or less the sequels fans have been asking for for years.
There’s a big difference though: the side-scrolling action/role-playing game Bloodstained didn’t make its debut at E3, much less onstage at PlayStation’s media briefing ahead of the show. That gave Shenmue 3‘s open-world RPG a pretty significant head start, helping it reach its original $2 million funding goal in nine hours. And of course, it didn’t stop there. Along the way, an explanatory documentary about the series popped up and the development team took to Twitch to answer any questions you might’ve had.
The developers at Ys Net also revealed physical copies of the game for PlayStation 4, replicas of protagonist Ryo’s leather jacket and plenty of in-game content like additional quests and features as stretch goals. Of course, we got a brief glimpse of what the game looks like at the moment as well.
But how will Shenmue turn out, though? And further to that point, what about Bloodstained? The former isn’t anticipated to ship until December 2017 and the latter’s slated for March of the same year. If they follow the path of another Japan-developed, Kickstarter-funded game, Mighty No. 9, perhaps it won’t take nearly as long to find out — the latter was playable at E3 this year. For now we have to play the waiting game, though.
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD
Source: Kickstarter
‘Street Fighter V’ will give you free extras if you earn them
For most of the Street Fighter series’ history, you’ve had to pay for significant new content. Want to get those sweet new characters? Buy the Super Ultra EX Plus Alpha Turbo Championship edition. You won’t have to go through that rigamarole with Street Fighter V, though. Capcom is promising that any post-launch SFV material will be earnable for free, in-game — accrue enough “Fight Money” and that brawler will be yours. You can still use real cash if you want more content without putting in additional play time, but you’re no longer forced to splurge.
This economic aspect won’t show up until later in SFV‘s beta testing, and it’s not clear just how much effort you’ll have to put in to unlock content at no charge. Here’s hoping that it isn’t a grind, like you often see in free-to-play games. Either way, this could be a refreshing change from the fighting game world’s recent tendency to charge for extras. You won’t have to purchase whole ‘new’ titles just to compete at tournaments, and you only have to get the content that interests you. Ideally, this will keep the SFV community intact for as long as the core game remains current — and that’s good for both Capcom (which doesn’t split its fan base) as well as casual and cost-conscious players.
Filed under: Gaming
Source: PlayStation Blog
Boeing and Hacking Team want drones to deliver spyware
Forget safeguarding drones against hacks — if Boeing and Hacking Team have their way, robotic aircraft would dish out a few internet attacks of their own. Email conversations posted on WikiLeaks reveal that the two companies want drones to carry devices that inject spyware into target computers through WiFi networks. If a suspect makes the mistake of using a computer at a coffee shop, the drone could slip in surveillance code from a safe distance.
The conversation was still in the early stages as of the leak, so you don’t have to worry about drones planting bugs any time soon. It’s also unclear as to who the customers would be. While the NSA is fond of spyware, there’s no certainty that it or other US agencies would line up as customers. Still, don’t be surprised if military recon drones are eventually doing a lot more than snapping pictures.
[Image credit: AP Photo/Matt York]
Filed under: Robots, Networking, Internet
Via: The Intercept
Source: WikiLeaks (1), (2)
Ford’s high-tech lighting system makes driving at night safer
Ford is in the midst of developing a couple of advanced front-lighting technologies designed to prevent collision and keep drivers safe at night. The first one called “camera-based advanced front lighting system” takes two of the automaker’s older technologies — adaptive lighting system and traffic sign recognition — and transforms them into something better. It can interpret traffic signs and use GPS info to widen the headlights’ reach at roundabouts. In the absence of GPS data, it uses cameras to detect lane markings and move the car’s high beams according to the road’s curvature, or to spot dips in the road to illuminate them better.
The second technology called “Spot Lighting” is especially useful when driving in residential locations with no street lights. It uses an infrared camera attached to the vehicle’s grille to detect people and large animals on the road through their body heat. The high beams can shine a spotlight on up to eight pedestrians, cyclists and canines walking their human companions, but the system can also highlight them with yellow boxes on the in-car entertainment screen. Ford’s still not done making the Spot Lighting technology, but its camera-based front lighting system is ready to be deployed in the near future.
Filed under: Transportation
Source: Ford
California wants pollution-free freight vehicles
California is determined to make dramatic greenhouse gas cuts by 2030, and that could have some major ramifications for the state’s big rigs and cargo ships. Governor Jerry Brown has ordered several agencies to draft plans for cleaner freight transportation, with a plan to eventually move to emissions-free ports, trains and trucks. Officials have until July 2016 to detail what they’re doing, although they’ll likely take considerably longer than that to implement their changes.
Unsurprisingly, the freight business is a bit nervous. The California Trucking Association is worried that the more efficient tech might prove “costly,” and wants to work with the state on any solutions. However, companies might not have much of a choice. While pollution levels are getting better overall, they’re still particularly bad in places like Los Angeles — it’s doubtful that California will let smoke-spewing commercial vehicles carry on while everyone else moves on to greener options.
[Image credit: AP Photo/Jae C. Hong]
Filed under: Transportation
Via: Wall Street Journal
Source: California Governor’s Office
UK considers punishing online pirates with 10-year jail sentences
As police forces up and down the country turn the screw on sellers of illegal streaming boxes, the government is now considering whether pirates in general should receive tougher sentences. Currently, infringers face up to two years in prison, but an amendment to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act could increase that punishment to 10 years. Government ministers have launched a consultation and are calling for feedback on tougher penalties. They argue that the “vast majority” of copyright offenders, focusing more on those who control the distribution of illegal content in the first place, have links to “further criminality” and tougher punishments could “have a deterrent effect” on criminals seeking to make money from file-sharing.
The consultation will please copyright holders and rights groups, which have been campaigning for tougher penalties for some time. Just this week, music groups successfully lobbied the High Court and once again made it illegal to rip CDs for personal use after new rules came into effect last year. The government recognises that availability of streaming boxes and rise of torrent sites have made “online infringement so much more significant,” so it’s looking to “toughen sentencing and use new technology to protect the public” — a message Conservative ministers spread in their election manifesto earlier this year.
[Image credit: John Trainor, Flickr]
Filed under: Internet
Via: BBC News
Source: Gov.uk
US Army wants to send small, cheap satellites to space
The military has been conjuring up one idea after another in an effort to improve its personnel’s ability to communicate, such as putting LTE on a ship and launching a WiFi router to space. This time, the US Army is in the midst of testing nanosatellites that will provide coverage for soldiers’ radios wherever they are. The Army’s having trouble providing a means of communication between soldiers in rural areas, and these small satellites called SMDC-ONE (ONE stands for Orbital Nanosatellite Effect) can solve that issue. “It’s basically a cellphone tower in space,” Dr. Travis Taylor, a senior scientist of the Army’s space division said, “except it’s not for cellphones, it’s for Army radios.” His team made sure SMDC-ONEs are tough enough to survive harsh conditions, but since the devices are small, they could still be displaced by space junk or ruined by adverse space weather.
The agency needs around 12 of these small satellites orbiting the Earth to get the coverage it wants, but it’s not going to be easy making that happen. Aside from launches being really costly, the scientists can’t put a conventional rocket motor on the SMDC-ONEs, because they might explode and take the rest of a rocket’s payload with them. Those rocket motors are necessary for the devices to be able to propel themselves to the right orbit — that’s why Taylor and his team designed a new one using a plastic printer (see image below) and filling it with liquid nitric oxide and a sparker. The plastic and propellant combust together once the sparkler’s lit, but this design’s apparently safe enough to be loaded onto a rocket.
In addition, the Army’s also designing an imaging nanosatellite that’s a bit larger than the one for communications. It will be able to generate images with a ground resolution of two to three meters, enough to tell if there’s a tank on the way. It hasn’t been tested yet, though it’s scheduled to be launched from the ISS in February next year. As we mentioned, though, the SMDC-ONE has already been tested; in fact, one is orbiting the planet right now. If all goes well, the Army will launch a few more units this year and the next until there are 12 or more out there circling the Earth.
[Image credit: US Army]
Source: US Army
Inhabitat’s Week in Green: electric Corvettes and volcano sharks
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week’s most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us — it’s the Week in Green.
Tesla is the hottest electric automaker around, but a mysterious new company called Faraday Future is nipping at its heels — and poaching its employees. Rumor has it Faraday is working on a next-gen electric car, and it has assembled a crack team of automotive execs and designers from Tesla, GM, Ford, and Fiat. In other transportation news, Tesla gave the Model S a major upgrade with a new “Ludicrous Mode” that goes from 0-60 in just 2.8 seconds. An all-electric Corvette will soon be hitting the streets — and it could reach a record-breaking top speed of over 200MPH. The Solar Impulse airplane has traveled halfway around the globe on sunlight alone, but it looks like it’ll have to wait until next year to complete its voyage — the plane’s batteries sustained heavy damage while crossing the Pacific Ocean en route to Hawaii. And if you’re still waiting for a working hoverboard, the RevoBot may be the next best thing. The futuristic body gravity board lets you glide along at 7MPH.
Urban environments change slowly over time — but that hasn’t stopped designers from developing innovative new technologies for the cities of tomorrow. The Dutch city of Rotterdam is considering rolling out roads made from recycled ocean plastic that snap together like Lego bricks. Meanwhile, New York City is installing high-tech trashcans that blanket the streets with WiFi. BMT Asia Pacific unveiled plans for a futuristic floating home with a submerged bedroom that lets you sleep under the sea. Could the buildings of the future be made of bubbles? It sounds improbable, but Pneuhaus has developed an inflatable building with a Bubble Wrap-style facade. And perhaps the craziest proposal of the week was this plan to install elevated airplane runways right through the middle of Stockholm. Can you imagine the noise?
In renewable energy news, the price of solar power keeps on dropping — last week it hit a new all-time low of just $0.0387 per kilowatt-hour. We also showcased this clever SUNplace table, which uses a giant magnifier to beam sunlight onto a cast iron cooking surface — so you can BBQ with solar energy instead of gas or charcoal. Spinali Design recently developed a “smart bikini” that could prevent a lot of sunburns at the beach this summer. The UV-detecting swimsuit monitors solar radiation and signals your smartphone when it’s time to apply more sunscreen. In other oceanic news, scientists discovered a new type of seaweed that tastes just like fried bacon, and researchers were surprised to discover two species of sharks living inside an active underwater volcano. Could a Sharkcano movie be coming up next?
Filed under: Misc, Household, Transportation, Science, Internet
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