Month: March 2020

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  Minus the camouflage body panels, this is what Volkswagen's ID.4 electric crossover will look like. [credit: Volkswagen ]

Since the coronavirus outbreak curtailed this year's Geneva auto show, we're going to have to wait a while longer to take an up-close-and-personal look at Volkswagen's new electric crossover. The novel infectious pathogen might be racking up a bodycount of trade shows around the world, but it can't stop all the fun, so VW took to a webcast in the early hours of Tuesday morning to show off its new wares online. The main reveal planned for the show was the new mk.8 Golf GTI, but we showed you that yesterday. Of even more interest to us here at Ars is our best look yet at the ID.4, an electric crossover that will be the brand's first long-range battery EV for sale in the US.

In fact, this is the first official confirmation that the compact electric crossover will be called the ID.4—until now, VW has just referred to it as the production version of the ID Crozz concept car. But when the first ID—a Europe-only hatchback that we wish would come over here, too—was launched with the name ID.3, it wasn't rocket science to extrapolate out across the future range. (At last year's Los Angeles Auto Show, we started to exasperate VW's executives by continually referring to the ID Space Vizzion electric wagon as the ID.5 wagon, although that may only prove that no one likes a wise guy.)

I've included some images of the ID Crozz concept in the gallery to compare with the images VW has shared of the ID.4 prototype, which illustrate the crossover's path to production. The headlights and taillights have had to change because the ID.4 will be sold in Europe, the US, and China, and therefore must meet the various road legality regulations. There are slightly larger cooling grilles at the front, and I'd bet that the vertical vents below the headlights have a greater role to play in channeling air at speed along the side of the car to reduce drag and increase range efficiency.

Enlarge / Relativity Space tests a component of its Aeon engine in December at the E-2 test stand at Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. (credit: Relativity Space)

STENNIS SPACE CENTER, Miss.—David Giger bounded up 26 steel steps and emerged onto a rocket engine test platform. Off to his left, an unbroken stand of stately pine trees spread out over the Mississippi lowlands. Straight ahead, Giger had a clear view of two Apollo-era test stands through the trees. “It’s quite a view,” he said.

Here, the past meets the future. Giger and his company, Relativity Space, seek to create the most futuristic of rockets. To do so, they have come to the NASA center where rocket scientists tested the mighty engines that carried humans to the Moon half a century ago. Relativity has, over the last two years, steadily occupied more buildings and test stands here as part of its quest to build a rocket made almost entirely of 3D-printed parts. And if that goal were not fantastical enough, Relativity also seeks to automate as much of the rocket assembly and test process as possible, with the ultimate goal of additively manufacturing a rocket on the surface of Mars.

It is a wild, seemingly impossible dream—and yet it has captured the fancy of aerospace investors. Relativity has raised $185 million in four years and hired industry leaders like Giger. Now the program manager for the company’s Terran 1 rocket, Giger spent more than a decade at SpaceX, where he led development of the Crew Dragon spacecraft. Today he superintends Relativity’s plans for launching its first rocket into space, perhaps as early as next year. So as we stood on top of the E-4 test stand in Mississippi last month, I tried to do more than simply admire the view.

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  In the live view of Plume motion, you can get a rapidly updating idea of how much movement the kit sees. You're looking at my kids wandering around the living room right now. [credit: Jim Salter ]

At CES 2020, Wi-Fi mesh kit manufacturer Plume announced the addition of motion-sensing capability to its newer Superpod devices. Before we go any further, let's be clear about what we're talking about—this is not detection of a device you're holding, like a phone or tablet. Instead, Plume is doing real-time analysis of extremely low-level RF data pulled from the Superpods' radios. This is real motion detection, with no gimmicks involved.

Plume Motion requires Superpods—at least for now. The Superpods can also use stationary devices—including any original generation pods, or computers or IoT devices connected to the Wi-Fi—to further refine their detection.

Plume co-founder Adam Hotchkiss explained to us that, although any Wi-Fi device could theoretically be used to sense the data necessary to analyze motion, not all Wi-Fi chipsets actually expose that data. The Qualcomm IPQ4019 chipset used in the Superpods exposes the necessary RF data, but the older QCA9557 chipset used in the first-generation pods does not.