Farhood Manjoo

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“There’s A Single, Towering Problem In The Electric Car Business: A Lack Of Infrastructure”

May 13, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From Farhood Manjoo’s new Slate piece about Elon Musk’s underlying strategy in developing electric-car infrastructure in America:

“Tesla wants to be just like Apple. That’s not a bad goal—Apple has done quite well for itself. But what few in the tech press have noticed is that Musk seems to have another tech titan in mind: Google. Musk knows that there’s a single, towering problem in the electric car business: a lack of infrastructure. Batteries aren’t good enough, charging stations are too far apart, and there aren’t enough mechanics and dealers. Tesla is trying to create this infrastructure by itself, which means everything’s moving more slowly than it could. If the entire car business worked together to improve this stuff, batteries and charging infrastructure would improve at a faster pace.

So how can Tesla persuade General Motors, Ford, Toyota, Mercedes, BMW, and other car giants—not to mention other car startups that are similar in size to Tesla—to all work together to improve the world’s electric vehicle infrastructure? By licensing its tech to its competitors, in the same way that Google gives Android away to every phone-maker in the world.

That’s exactly what Tesla has started doing. “

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“It Means The Drone Can Fly Through Or Around Pretty Much Any Obstacle”

March 6, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Wilbur Wright, flight around Statue of Liberty, 1909.

Look up in the sky and you will see neither bird nor plane but the future–it is here now. From Farhood Manjoo’s new Slate piece, “I Love You, Killer Robots“:

“It was way back in May 2010 that I first spotted the flying drones that will take over the world. They were in a video that Daniel Mellinger, one of the robots’ apparently too-trusting creators, proudly posted on YouTube. The clip, titled ‘Aggressive Maneuvers for Autonomous Quadrotor Flight,’ depicts a scene at a robotics lab at the University of Pennsylvania, though a better term for this den might be “drone training camp.”

In the video, an insectlike, laptop-sized ‘quadrotor’ performs a series of increasingly difficult tricks. First, it flies up and does a single flip in the air. Then a double flip. Then a triple flip. In a voice-over so dry it suggests he has no idea the power he’s dealing with, Mellinger says, ‘We developed a method for flying to any position in space with any reasonable velocity or pitch angle.’ What does this mean? It means the drone can fly through or around pretty much any obstacle. We see it dance through an open window with fewer than 3 inches of clearance on either side. Next, it flies and perches on an inverted surface—lying in wait.”

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