Electric charging corridor for e-trucks launched in Europe

Editorial staff
e-truck charging stations

BP Pulse is launching Europe’s first public electric charging corridor for trucks. Eight dedicated e-truck charging stations are located at key sites along the Rhine-Alpine corridor, one of Europe’s busiest road freight routes. The corridor connects key North Sea ports in Belgium and the Netherlands with the Mediterranean port of Genoa, Italy, connecting through a network of roads stretching a total of 1,300km. Fast electric charging The new chargers have been installed on Aral retail sites in Germany between the Rhine-Neckar metropolitan area and the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region. Aral is…

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Hyperloop transportation companies form industry association

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Hyperloop transportation companies

A group of seven hyperloop companies have come together to form the first global association for the new, high-speed form of transportation. Hardt, Hyperloop One, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, Nevomo, TransPod, Swisspod Technologies, and Zeleros Hyperloop Association have signed a constitutive act to create The Hyperloop Association. Hyperloop transportation Hyperloop transportation systems consist of an autonomous, fully electric pod levitating and travelling at high speeds in a low-pressure environment. Hyperloop will significantly cut journey times of passengers and cargo between cities and countries and will be more energy efficient and sustainable…

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BT announces deal to advance UK drone superhighway

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UK drone superhighway

The incubation team at the BT Group’s Digital Unit has announced a £5m deal to help mobilise UK airspace for uncrewed aerial vehicles and create pathways for widescale drone usage. Etc is investing in unified traffic management technology provider, Altitude Angel, to scale the UK drone industry and support development of the country’s drone superhighway, which it claims is set to be the largest and longest network of its kind in the world. Drone infrastructure UTM is a software platform and infrastructure designed to allow drones to fly safely, without…

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Micromobility alliance publishes incident data on e-scooters

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2021 Incidents with personal damage on shared e-scooters in Europe

Micro-Mobility for Europe (MMfE), the EU association of shared micromobility providers, is releasing incident data involving shared e-scooters in Europe. The aggregated data is based on the usage of e-scooters from its six founding members of Bird, Bolt, Dott, Lime, Tier and Voi. Road safety policies The association has published a factsheet of the data and hopes such transparency will inform road safety policies that reduce incident risks for vulnerable road users, such as e-scooter riders, cyclists, pedestrians, in close collaboration with EU and local authorities. Based on over 240…

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Oxbotica to deploy AV operating system around the world

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EV Blanc Robot Oxbotica

Autonomous vehicle software developer Oxbotica has raised US$140m (£115m) in Series C investment to drive its global expansion and accelerate commercialisation of its technology. The investment round includes financial and strategic partners from North America, Emea and Apac, including new investors such as Aioi Nissay Dowa Insurance Company and Eneos Innovation Partners. Current Oxbotica shareholders which are re-investing include BP Ventures, BGF, Halma, Hostplus, Kiko Ventures (IP Group), Ocado Group, Tencent, Venture Science and ZF, among other global companies. Following today’s announcement, Oxbotica has raised approximately $225m to date. Shared…

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Autonomous street sweeper launched in Shenzhen

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Taoping autonomous street sweeper

A next generation autonomous street sweeper and modular smart rest station have been unveiled in Shenzhen’s highly popular Xiangmi Park. The southeastern China city’s “Citizen Park” or Xiangmi Park is one of China’s more famous and scenic spots and serves as a popular site ranging from online influencers and people taking a stroll to children and elderly exercising. Costly daily cleaning Shenzhen reports the high volume of daily visitors enjoying the 424,000 square metre park also creates a considerable amount of waste, which is time consuming and costly to clean.…

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Strategic alliance to deploy EV chargers in Latin America

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Blink Charging Latin America

Blink Charging has announced a collaborative agreement with Citybest, a transport mobility app, to deploy electric vehicle (EV) chargers in Latin America and help advance the EV charging ecosystem in the region. Initially, 70 EV chargers are scheduled for installation through this alliance in Mexico and Chile to help meet driver demands – according to Americas Market Intelligence data more than one million electric vehicles will be sold in LatAm by 2030. Free charging Through the agreement with Citybest, Blink will install 50 Blink MQ 200 chargers at hotel chains…

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Soofa enhances hyperlocal content with Facebook widget

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Soofa Brings Facebook to the Sidewalk

Soofa, a provider of solar-powered street-level furniture used for outdoor advertising and smart city communication, has introduced a feature allowing city landowners to display Facebook updates to passersby. According to Soofa, as many cities and municipalities use Facebook to communicate with constituents in their community, the ability to share current Facebook updates at eye-level to passersby in the right-of-way adds another level of connectivity with community members. Hyperlocal content It also reinforces the power of hyperlocal content that attracts people to the signs’ 42-inch electronic ink displays, Soofa claims, making…

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EHang to create urban air applications demo area in Qingdao

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Qingdao West Coast New Area in China

Autonomous aerial vehicle (AAV) company EHang is partnering with Qingdao West Coast New Area in China to create an urban air mobility (UAM) applications demonstration area. The AAV company will also establish a Northeast Asia regional headquarters as well as a national firefighting business centre in the area. Smart urban air mobility solutions Qingdao West Coast New Area is one of China’s national new areas in Shandong province. It will facilitate the local governments’ applications of EHang’s full range of products while providing support to the company’s local business operations,…

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Phoenix airport launches autonomous service with Waymo

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Waymo’s fully electric Jaguar I-Pace vehicle

A fully autonomous Waymo vehicle service has launched to the general public at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. City of Phoenix mayor Kate Gallego arrived at the 44th Street and Washington PHX Sky Train Station via a Waymo vehicle to launch the new service. Future mobility It claims to be the first airport in the world to offer travellers the ability to take a Waymo autonomous vehicle as a means of transportation to and from the airport. “Phoenix is leading the future of mobility and modernising how the world will…

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Wave energy conversion unit arrives at Port of Los Angeles

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Eco Wave Power

Eco Wave Power’s wave energy conversion unit has arrived for installation as a pilot station at the AltaSea innovation campus at the Port of Los Angeles. It was formerly located in Gibraltar and is the first US siting of the company’s technology. It is already deployed in Israel and there are further plans for deployments in Spain, Portugal, Turkey and other locations, as part of the company’s current 404.7 MW project pipeline. Onshore wave technology Eco Wave Power entered a collaboration agreement with AltaSea in early 2022 and announced plans…

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Mobility-as-a-service spend to grow more than 350 per cent

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Mobility‑as‑a‑service (MaaS)

Mobility‑as‑a‑service (MaaS) will generate revenue of $92bn globally by 2027; up from $20bn in 2022, according a study by Juniper Research. Growing by 357 per cent over the period, Juniper reports that the main drivers will be the cost and convenience of MaaS solutions and the increased investment in MaaS infrastructure. Integrating MaaS with smart city ecosystems The report urges transit planning authorities to take a holistic approach to urban mobility by integrating MaaS into the wider smart city ecosystem to leverage real-time data from smart city sensors and maximise…

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US Postal Service plans to deploy 66,000 electric vehicles

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US Postal Service cars

The United States Postal Service has announced that it intends to deploy more than 66,000 electric vehicles by 2028. The vehicles form part of its 106,000-vehicle acquisition plan for deliveries between now and 2028 and will begin to replace the Postal Service’s aging delivery fleet of over 220,000 vehicles. Network modernisation The move is enabled by the Postal Service’s overall Delivering for America network modernisation efforts which allows for a more rapid deployment of EVs, and its improving financial condition, which includes $3bn in congressional funding appropriated under the Inflation…

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Cologne deploys GeoAI for municipal wastewater management

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Cologne Germany

The German city of Cologne has deployed a geospatial artificial intelligence (GeoAI) digital twin solution for streamlining the its wastewater operations. The solution automatically detects changes in paved surfaces that affect drainage, enabling Stadtentwässerungsbetriebe Köln, AöR (Cologne StEB), Cologne’s municipal wastewater authority, to calculate wastewater taxes on private lands more efficiently. Labour-intensive Prior to the use of Hexagon’s GeoAI, the tax assessment process was labour-intensive. Property owners rarely reported the addition or removal of paved areas, requiring Cologne StEB to collect and record data manually, then validate the information with…

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Green urban infrastructure spend to reach $978bn by 2030

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The Ellinikon

Global public and private investment levels in green urban infrastructure are expected to increase from $606bn in 2022 to $978bn in 2030 across a wide range of green assets, according to new research. The extent of this includes city parks, urban forests, blue spaces such as ponds and lakes, rooftop gardens, green walls and buildings, and pedestrianised green streets as part of new urban concepts. Neom Regreening Example projects from global technology intelligence firm ABI Research’s Green Urban Infrastructure report are the green makeover of the Champs Élysées in Paris…

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