Month: July 2022

Enlarge / It will be many years before the battery packs in these ID.4s need recycling, but when that happens VW and Redwood will be ready. (credit: Volkswagen)

Volkswagen is in the midst of a huge electrification effort, spurred on by a combination of dieselgate and stringent fleet emissions targets in Europe. Last week, the company broke ground on the first of six European battery factories and is actively looking at building one or more similar plants here in the US. If and when that happens, Volkswagen may well make those batteries using material recycled from older electric vehicle batteries, thanks to a new collaboration with Redwood Materials.

"Redwood Materials is a great partner to help us accelerate EV adoption in America. This collaboration allows us to move closer toward our goal of closing the loop for a circular EV economy, giving American consumers yet another reason to go electric," said Scott Keogh, president and CEO of VW Group of America.

As we explored yesterday, the lithium-ion battery in an electric vehicle should see little loss of storage capacity over the course of a decade. But eventually, batteries will degrade to the point where it makes more sense to repurpose them as static storage (once they can only hold 60–70 percent of their original charge) or eventually recycle them.

Enlarge (credit: NASA)

After months of anticipation and a day after President Joe Biden himself was involved in the release of an image of the early Universe, NASA has now released four other images from the Webb Space Telescope. The agency already told us that targets would include a couple of nebulas, a galaxy cluster, and an exoplanet.

But it wasn't clear exactly what features of these objects would be the focus or how NASA would process the images so that features that exist in the infrared area of the spectrum could be perceived in the visible area of the spectrum. Scientists we spoke to at the Webb launch event suggested that everyone was aware that aesthetics matter and that officials would be experimenting with different methods to do this processing in a way that balanced scientific accuracy with the "wow" factor everyone expects.

The results are finally being made available, and they definitely managed to wow.

Enlarge / Mass Effect Legendary Edition. (credit: BioWare / EA)

Amazon's Prime Day sale isn't known for hosting tons of gaming deals, but this year's sale includes a few notable discounts. After digging through Amazon's detritus and cross-checking price histories, we've picked out the best Prime Day gaming deals below.

Among the highlights are a handful of PlayStation 5 exclusives, a giveaway that includes the latest Mass Effect compilation, several well-reviewed peripherals and accessories, and a bunch of board games we recommend.

We'll update and add to this roundup if we find more gaming deals of note. Just remember that you'll need a Prime subscription to access some of these offers, though a handful are available at other retailers as well.