Month: July 2024

The 2025 Lucid Air is now the most efficient EV on sale

A standard heat pump has made an already-efficient car even more so.

A blue metallic Lucid Air seen head-on

Enlarge / The Lucid Air was already the most efficient EV on sale in the US, but for model year 2025 it goes even further on a single charge. (credit: Lucid)

Lucid has just revealed the details of its model year 2025 updates, and among the tweaks to its handsome electric sedan is an impressive bump in range efficiency. The entry-level Lucid Air Pure, which starts at $69,900, can now travel 420 miles on a single charge of its 84 kWh battery. That equates to 5 miles/kWh (12.4 kWh/100 km), making the Air Pure the most efficient electric vehicle on sale today.

The range bump is mostly thanks to Lucid making a heat pump standard across the range, after first adding one to the ultra-powerful, ultra-expensive Air Sapphire.

Lucid has also upgraded the computer hardware that oversees the Air's various subsystems. The automaker says it has tripled processing power and doubled the system's memory, which should translate to faster and better infotainment. And Lucid has made its advanced driver assistance system standard across the lineup, too.

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Unihertz Jelly Max is a small phone with a big(ger) display (crowdfunding)

At a time when smartphone displays have gotten so big that it can be hard to tell the difference between a big phone and a small tablet, Unihertz continues to sell a line of small-screen phones under its Jelly line of products. Some have screens so sm…

At a time when smartphone displays have gotten so big that it can be hard to tell the difference between a big phone and a small tablet, Unihertz continues to sell a line of small-screen phones under its Jelly line of products. Some have screens so small that they’re barely usable.  The new Unihertz Jelly Max […]

The post Unihertz Jelly Max is a small phone with a big(ger) display (crowdfunding) appeared first on Liliputing.

The struggle to understand why earthquakes happen in America’s heartland

The New Madrid fault line remains something of an enigma to seismologists.

Top: A view of the downtown Memphis skyline, including the Hernando De Soto bridge which has been retrofitted for earthquakes. Memphis is located around 40 miles from a fault line in the quake-prone New Madrid system.

Enlarge / Top: A view of the downtown Memphis skyline, including the Hernando De Soto bridge which has been retrofitted for earthquakes. Memphis is located around 40 miles from a fault line in the quake-prone New Madrid system. (credit: iStock via Getty Images)

The first earthquake struck while the town was still asleep. Around 2:00 am on Dec. 16, 1811, New Madrid—a small frontier settlement of 400 people on land now located in Missouri—was jolted awake. Panicked townsfolk fled their homes as buildings collapsed and the smell of sulfur filled the air.

The episode didn’t last long. But the worst was yet to come. Nearly two months later, after dozens of aftershocks and another massive quake, the fault line running directly under the town ruptured. Thirty-one-year-old resident Eliza Bryan watched in horror as the Mississippi River receded and swept away boats full of people. In nearby fields, geysers of sand erupted, and a rumble filled the air.

In the end, the town had dropped at least 15 feet. Bryan and others spent a year and a half living in makeshift camps while they waited for the aftershocks to end. Four years later, the shocks had become less common. At last, the rattled townspeople began “to hope that ere long they will entirely cease,” Bryan wrote in a letter.

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