Month: October 2018

Enlarge / A Tesla car is charging at a Tesla electric vehicle charging station in front of Baolong building on July 15, 2018 in Beijing, China. (credit: Photo by VCG / Getty Images)

On Wednesday, Tesla announced that it had purchased a 210-acre site in Shanghai, China, where it will begin building a second battery and auto factory.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Robin Ren, Tesla’s vice president of worldwide sales, attended a signing ceremony in Shanghai today, stating, “Securing this site in Shanghai, Tesla’s first Gigafactory outside of the United States, is an important milestone for what will be our next advanced, sustainably developed manufacturing site."

A Shanghai government website tracking major land purchases in the city detailed a purchase in the eastern Lingang district for about $140 million, which likely reflects Tesla's latest acquisition.

William Booth/www.photosport.nz

Rocket Lab last launched its Electron vehicle nearly nine months ago, in January, from its New Zealand launch site. This was the vehicle's second flight and first successful orbital mission. Nine months is a long gulf between launches for a company that ultimately aspires to send rockets into space on a weekly basis.

However, Rocket Lab has not been idle for much of this year. Earlier this month, the company opened a second rocket development and production facility in Auckland, New Zealand. And on Wednesday, Rocket Lab announced the location of its second launch site, Wallops Island in Virginia, on the East Coast of the United States. It hopes to have the site operational about one year from now.

Each year, Nikon runs a microscopy competition honoring the best images of all things small. And, well, we're kind of suckers for it here at Ars. So when the company got in touch and offered us the chance to share a peek at this years' winners, how could we say no?

Karl Deckart

While most of you may know Nikon as a camera company, microscopy is a sibling of photography in many ways beyond the involvement of high-end lenses. While it might not matter for scientific purposes, a compelling microscope image depends on things like composition, lighting, exposure, and more. And these days, both fields rely heavily on post-processing. Many of the images you see above are the product of multiple exposures, each on a different focal plane, all stacked and flattened to provide a full three-dimensional view that's actually not possible from a microscope alone.

Enlarge (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

Forget the impending death of the sedan, as an automotive species the station wagon should be on life support. Which is a shame, because station wagons are great. The utility of an SUV without the high seating position, sure, but also without the high center of gravity and drag coefficient. In return, a much more elegantly proportioned vehicle, one that would be more popular but for the decades-old stigma of being a "mom car." (The same fate is coming for you, SUV.) Almost no one sells a wagon any more, which makes some people cross enough to leave angry comments online about the stupidity of car companies. In their defense, the car companies tell me angry Internet comments aren't really worth the same as an actual deposit, and they have too few of those to make it worthwhile. Not Volvo though.

The Swedish automaker has been fascinating to watch these past few years as it has bloomed thanks to Geely's investment. Little happened for the first few years, but Volvo used the investment to thoroughly modernize the way it designed and built cars. Platforms have given way to modular architectures that simplify production yet at the same time allow for a great flexibility when it comes to designing different vehicles.

In 2015, the XC90 SUV marked the introduction of the first of these new architectures, called Scalable Product Architecture. SPA lets Volvo build large and midsized vehicles, and it was soon joined by an S90 sedan and V90 wagon. Three years later and the SPA line-up is complete. Last year the XC60 arrived, a more moderate take on the 21st century Swedish SUV. Yesterday we wrote about the new S60 sedan which means we've saved the best one for last. The new V60 wagon.

Enlarge (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

Forget the impending death of the sedan, as an automotive species the station wagon should be on life support. Which is a shame, because station wagons are great. The utility of an SUV without the high seating position, sure, but also without the high center of gravity and drag coefficient. In return, a much more elegantly proportioned vehicle, one that would be more popular but for the decades-old stigma of being a "mom car." (The same fate is coming for you, SUV.) Almost no one sells a wagon any more, which makes some people cross enough to leave angry comments online about the stupidity of car companies. In their defense, the car companies tell me angry Internet comments aren't really worth the same as an actual deposit, and they have too few of those to make it worthwhile. Not Volvo though.

The Swedish automaker has been fascinating to watch these past few years as it has bloomed thanks to Geely's investment. Little happened for the first few years, but Volvo used the investment to thoroughly modernize the way it designed and built cars. Platforms have given way to modular architectures that simplify production yet at the same time allow for a great flexibility when it comes to designing different vehicles.

In 2015, the XC90 SUV marked the introduction of the first of these new architectures, called Scalable Product Architecture. SPA lets Volvo build large and midsized vehicles, and it was soon joined by an S90 sedan and V90 wagon. Three years later and the SPA line-up is complete. Last year the XC60 arrived, a more moderate take on the 21st century Swedish SUV. Yesterday we wrote about the new S60 sedan which means we've saved the best one for last. The new V60 wagon.

Uh... this is fine, right? (credit: Getty Images)

“Yesterday after I wrote to you, I had an attack of asthma,” Marcel Proust wrote to his mother in 1901. “[It] obliged me to walk all doubled up and light anti-asthma cigarettes at every tobacconist’s I passed.”

While that sounds a bit crazy by 2018 standards, Proust was far from alone: “Medicated cigarettes marketed for respiratory complaints continued to be endorsed, and smoked, by doctors until well after the Second World War,” writes medical historian Mark Jackson.

Of course, tobacco eventually joined the list of treacherous substances once thought to be healthy and subsequently discovered to be harmful, keeping excellent company alongside radium and mercury. It's enough to make people constantly wonder what else might make it onto the list of friends turned foe. Could coffee be next? Processed meat?

Uh... this is fine, right? (credit: Getty Images)

“Yesterday after I wrote to you, I had an attack of asthma,” Marcel Proust wrote to his mother in 1901. “[It] obliged me to walk all doubled up and light anti-asthma cigarettes at every tobacconist’s I passed.”

While that sounds a bit crazy by 2018 standards, Proust was far from alone: “Medicated cigarettes marketed for respiratory complaints continued to be endorsed, and smoked, by doctors until well after the Second World War,” writes medical historian Mark Jackson.

Of course, tobacco eventually joined the list of treacherous substances once thought to be healthy and subsequently discovered to be harmful, keeping excellent company alongside radium and mercury. It's enough to make people constantly wonder what else might make it onto the list of friends turned foe. Could coffee be next? Processed meat?