Month: February 2021

• 

  No, this isn't a rendering from a Pixar film, it's what the new USPS mail delivery vehicle will look like. [credit: USPS ]

The United States Postal Service has decided on a new delivery vehicle. On Tuesday afternoon, the USPS awarded a 10-year, $485-million contract to Oshkosh Defense—better known for armored vehicles—to deliver between 50,000 and 165,000 Next Generation Delivery Vehicles, with the first trucks due on the road in 2023.

Neither the USPS nor Oshkosh is ready to share in-depth specs for the NGDV; Oshkosh still has to finalize the design, according to the press release. We do know that the new fleet will be made of a mix of powertrains. Some will be battery electric, but others will use "fuel-efficient internal combustion engines," with the ability to be retrofitted "to keep pace with advances in electric vehicle technology."

The rendered images certainly show a uniquely styled vehicle. The combination of an extremely low hood and very tall windshield gives it more than a little resemblance to a Pixar creation, but the payoff for this anatine look should be excellent forward visibility. Luckily for future postal workers, air conditioning is standard-issue, so they shouldn't get too hot due to that expanse of glass trapping the Sun's heat.

(credit: D-Wave)

Early on in D-Wave's history, the company made bold claims about its quantum annealer outperforming algorithms run on traditional CPUs. Those claims turned out to be premature, as improvements to these algorithms pulled the traditional hardware back in front. Since then, the company has been far more circumspect about its performance claims, even as it brought out newer generations of hardware.

But in the run-up to the latest hardware, the company apparently became a bit more interested in performance again. And it recently got together with Google scientists to demonstrate a significant boost in performance compared to a classical algorithm, with the gap growing as the problem became complex—although the company's scientists were very upfront about the prospects of finding a way to boost classical hardware further. Still, there are a lot of caveats even beyond that, so it's worth taking a detailed look at what the company did.

Magnets, how do they flip?

D-Wave's system is based on a large collection of quantum devices that are connected to some of their neighbors. Each device can have its state set separately, and the devices are then given the chance to influence their neighbors as the system moves through different states and individual devices change their behavior. These transitions are the equivalent of performing operations. And because of the quantum nature of these devices, the hardware seems to be able to "tunnel" to new states, even if the only route between them involves high-energy states that are impossible to reach.

Enlarge / We were very impressed with the Hyundai Kona EV, but owners may feel a little put out by having to get a replacement battery. (credit: Hyundai)

On Wednesday, Reuters reported that Hyundai is going to recall its Kona EV due to problems with the battery pack. In total, around 82,000 Kona EVs will have to be recalled globally after 15 fires—11 in South Korea, two in Canada, one in Finland, and one in Austria—in order to have replacement battery packs fitted. Until the recall is performed, the automaker advises owners not to charge their Kona EVs beyond 90 percent.

In October 2020, the OEM issued the first recall for the Kona EV, affecting more than 37,000 vehicles in South Korea and more than 11,000 in North America and Europe. The cause was the risk of a short circuit in the battery, which could potentially start a fire. At the time, South Korea's transport ministry suggested that a manufacturing defect could have been the cause, something that cell manufacturer LG Chem denied.

Those cars were issued new software, but in January of this year, a recalled-and-upgraded Kona EV caught fire.