Transportation & Vehicles — Posts

47 posts on "Transportation & Vehicles" by Shlomo Strauss — bilingual writing on technology, science, and business.

• Beyond Food: How Soybeans Power Jet Engines and Plastics — Beyond agriculture, soybeans possess unique biological properties driving innovations in jet fuel, winter tires, and safer plastics.
• Propeller Physics: From Mars Drones to Quiet Laptops — How atmospheric density and the speed of sound shape propeller design, from NASA's Mars drones to the silent cooling fans in laptop computers.
• Amazon Challenges Starlink in the Race for In-Flight Wi-Fi — Amazon's new satellite internet solution for airplanes promises double the speed of Starlink and a significantly faster installation time.
• Why Musk's controversial xAI moves may follow a familiar playbook — The Tesla-to-xAI money flows look like investor betrayal, but Musk's Solar City precedent suggests a ruthless rebuild strategy rather than a bailout.
• How Tesla solved the battery and heat problems that held back — From cylindrical cells with interleaved cooling tubes to a structural battery floor, a look at the engineering breakthroughs behind Tesla's thermal and…
• The engineering inside Tesla's motors that most drivers never think — Dual motors, carbon-fiber sleeves, and silicon carbide inverters — a clear look at the engineering solutions Tesla built into its electric drivetrains.
• Hormuz Island: red ochre, ancient salt, and a strait that shapes — The vivid red shores of Iran's Hormuz Island owe their color to iron oxide used locally as spice and pigment — and the island's strategic past echoes in…
• A train to Jerusalem and what divides us less than we think — A personal essay on a train ride to Jerusalem that weaves together strangers, scorched landscapes, and a question about what holds Israeli society…
• The physics behind launching and stopping jets on a carrier — From electromagnetic catapults powered by flywheels to glycol-cooled arresting gear, a clear breakdown of the advanced systems aboard the USS Gerald R.…
• Musk's AI empire: custom chips, space servers, and a closed-loop — From Dojo 3 supercomputers in orbit to xAI merging with SpaceX, the piece maps how Musk is assembling a self-contained AI pipeline that no competitor…
• The hidden damage trail of geomagnetic storms — Beyond the aurora's beauty, geomagnetic storms accelerate pipeline corrosion, collapsed Quebec's power grid in 1989, and destroyed 38 Starlink satellites…
• How supersonic jet engines could power AI data centers — Boom is adapting its supersonic jet engine to generate electricity for data centers, potentially eliminating the water-cooling workaround that limits…
• How a little-known Dutch chipmaker triggered a global auto industry — After U.S. sanctions and a Chinese countermove disrupted Nexperia's supply chain, automakers worldwide are facing shortages of components essential to…
• Small modular reactors and the case for a new nuclear age — From AI data centers to lunar bases, this post examines how small modular reactors work, why tech giants are betting on them, and what risks remain.
• How a Chinese ghost city became a testing ground for autonomous — Ordos, a near-empty Chinese city born from a real-estate bubble and coal collapse, now serves as a rare urban testing ground for autonomous trucks and…
• Sodium batteries: a cheaper, safer alternative to lithium — Sodium-ion batteries offer lower cost, improved safety, and better cold-weather performance than lithium, though their lower energy density currently…
• Russia's research ship Yantar and the threat to undersea — Russia's Yantar vessel systematically maps undersea cables and gas pipelines across European waters, raising fears of a future infrastructure attack that…
• Ethanol: from sugarcane and yeast to fuel, antiseptics and tax law — A concise look at ethanol — how it is produced from plants, why it is considered a relatively clean fuel, and why industrial grades are deliberately…
• Hydrogen cars: how they work and what is holding them back — From the electrochemistry of the fuel cell to the challenges of green hydrogen production, a clear look at the technology, its promise, and its current…
• Belgian traffic lights turn green on demand using drivers' smartphone — Over 200,000 Belgian drivers use an app that communicates with smart traffic lights at 230 intersections, offering an early glimpse of fully synchronized…
• The Bugatti Royale sold only 3 units — and now fetches $22 million — Built between 1927 and 1933 with a 12.7-liter aircraft engine, the Bugatti Type 41 Royale was a commercial failure that now sells for $22 million at…
• From mining waste to battery materials: olivine's unlikely second — A New Zealand startup has developed a process to extract magnesium, silicate, and battery-grade NMC from olivine powder — an industrial waste product — in
• Solid fuel and staging: the physics behind Iran's Sajjil ballistic — A clear explanation of solid-fuel propulsion, multi-stage rocket design, and the extreme engineering challenges that the Sajjil missile's unusual contrail
• The real reason 5G was built — remote cranes, not faster phones — A Chinese cargo port shows how 5G's near-zero latency and massive device density enable safe, real-time remote operation of heavy cranes and trucks.
• The physics of glass: why it shatters and how it is made stronger — From borosilicate to tempered glass, the post explains the physical mechanisms behind heat resistance and impact strength in different types of glass.
• The ring-wing aircraft and the physics of wingless edges — Wingtip vortices waste up to 40% of an aircraft's energy, and Lockheed's ring-wing concept offers a structural solution rooted in basic physics.
• The 660-ton pendulum keeping Taipei 101 standing — The 660-ton steel sphere suspended inside Taipei 101 uses inertia and energy conservation to counteract earthquakes and typhoons — the same damping…
• How levitation works — and why it matters for climate and quantum — From Meissner-effect superconductors to optical tweezers and the Casimir force, this piece explains how levitation works and what room-temperature…
• Adiabatic compression: how squeezing air starts fires and shapes the — From diesel engines to alpine winds and collapsing stars, this piece explains how the ideal gas law links volume, pressure, and temperature in surprising…
• Owning vs. licensing: how the digital age redefined what you actually — From a Nintendo Switch button to HDMI cables, the licensing model Bill Gates pioneered has quietly eroded what consumers actually own when they pay for a…
• What Japanese schoolgirls learn on Toyota's factory floor — A school visit to Toyota's assembly line shows why hands-on, real-world learning leaves a deeper impression than any classroom lesson.
• The KI standard wants to turn your kitchen countertop into a wireless — The WPC's new KI wireless charging standard supports up to 2200W through solid surfaces like wood and marble, potentially eliminating power cords from…
• The physics of tornadoes: vortices, water vapor, and traffic lanes — A clear explanation of how vortices form, what turns them into tornadoes, and why the inner lane of a roundabout gets you around faster.
• Neodymium: the element behind color-shifting glass and electric — The electron structure of neodymium causes glass to shift color under different light sources — and the same element puts over a kilogram of rare-earth…
• BOE makes screens for Apple and the world — and almost no one knows — A look at BOE, the Chinese display giant behind TV panels, smartphone screens, and a new folding dashboard prototype — operating largely out of the…
• 20,000 people in one building: what a Chinese megablock reveals about — Using a Chinese residential megacomplex and a bacterial growth thought experiment, the post illustrates how exponential population growth can overtake us…
• A 4-year cruise for Americans who cannot stomach another Trump term — A cruise line is selling a 4-year, 140-country round-the-world voyage timed to end when Trump's term does, starting at $256,000 per person.
• BYD's YangWang U9 hits 392 km/h and challenges the EV speed record — The Chinese-built YangWang U9 supercar packs 1,306 hp across four motors and tops out near 392 km/h, placing it just behind the Rimac Nevera as the…
• The 15-minute city model and what it means for urban commuters — Fort Myers is redesigning itself around walkability, prompting a practical look at whether paying more to live closer to work saves time and money.
• The Dzhanibekov Effect: Why Objects Flip in Zero Gravity — A phenomenon discovered accidentally in space in 1985 explains why a rotating object periodically flips 180 degrees when spinning on its intermediate axis.
• Las Vegas Tesla Tunnel and the Future of Urban Transport — Las Vegas's all-Tesla tunnel offers a small but telling glimpse into how synchronized autonomous vehicles could one day eliminate traffic and accidents.
• Serbia's lithium protests expose the environmental cost of the EV — As automakers celebrate Rio Tinto's renewed lithium mining license in Serbia, mass protests highlight the ecological destruction that fuels the green…
• A full charge in 4 minutes: the real cost of ultra-fast charging — Realme set a world record with 320W charging, but the tradeoff is accelerated battery wear — which explains why Apple and Samsung deliberately cap their…
• Xiaomi's fully automated factory runs 24/7 with zero human workers — Xiaomi's new 81,000-square-meter factory produces smartphones and auto parts around the clock using only robots, raising pointed questions about the…
• Why small businesses stay small — and what delivery delays have to do — Low margins, high unit costs, and thin volume trap small businesses in a cycle of stagnation — and differentiation is the only structural way out.
• Xiaomi built the car Apple walked away from — After Apple abandoned its autonomous car project following a $10 billion investment, Xiaomi successfully launched an electric vehicle and is already…
• Apple's canceled car and the human cost of a decade-long project — Apple shut down its autonomous car project after a decade and $10 billion, prompting a reflection on what it means for 2,000 engineers who watched years…