Month: February 2022

Enlarge / South Korean safety researchers discovered a bug that can prevent a Tesla's seatbelt chimes from chiming. (credit: Getty Images)

Tesla has issued a new recall this week. On Tuesday it notified the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that some new Models S and X, as well as potentially any Models 3 or Y, might not sound the required chimes if the vehicle starts and the driver is not buckled up. The problem affects 817,143 vehicles and will be fixed by a software update.

Federal motor vehicle safety standards require that our cars make an annoying noise if they are started by a driver who is not wearing a seat belt.

However, according to the NHTSA Part 573 Safety Recall Report, if "the chime was interrupted in the preceding drive cycle and the seat belt was not buckled subsequent to that interruption (e.g., the driver exited the vehicle in the preceding drive cycle while the chime was active and later returned to the vehicle, creating a new drive cycle)," then the chime won't sound.

Enlarge / This looks much like any other of Airstream's "silver bullet" travel trailers, but the eStream is a new battery-powered concept. (credit: Airstream)

Concepts—mocked up products of the future—aren't unique to the car industry. Today's vision of an electrified future comes from a car-adjacent manufacturer: the travel trailer and coach builder Airstream. Together with its parent company, THOR Industries, it has developed the eStream, an electrified version of one of its classic aluminum travel trailers.

Under the eStream's floor you'll find slabs of lithium-ion battery modules—up to 80 kWh in total. As you might imagine, these can power the trailer while it's parked. This runs electric heating and air conditioning as well as all the other ancillaries, doing away with the need for propane tanks, usually found near the hitch.

But the trailer's powertrain, developed in partnership with ZF, also features a pair of electric motors that can drive the eStream's wheels while being towed. This should boost the range of a towing EV by between 50-75 percent, Airstream thinks. The trailer even has an electronic stability-control function that can add torque to an individual wheel to combat any swaying or side movements while towing. This also does away with the need for a weight-distribution hitch, Airstream says.

Enlarge (credit: Financial Times)

Not long after being promoted to the role of chief executive at Microsoft, in 2014, Satya Nadella had faced calls to ditch the tech group’s Xbox games division and concentrate its resources on cloud computing—to compete with rivals, such as Amazon. But instead, Nadella saw an opportunity to build new customer bases through online gaming communities. His first deal as chief executive was buying Minecraft, the three-dimensional world-building game.

At the same time, he further developed Microsoft’s dominant position in personal and business software and expanded its cloud and server offerings. Shares in the group have risen eightfold under Nadella’s tenure, and it remains the world’s largest software group.

However, last month’s $75 billion deal to buy video game maker Activision Blizzard will also make Microsoft the world’s third-biggest gaming company by revenue, behind only China’s Tencent and Japan’s Sony.