DTN 050: Hydrogen is losing the race to power cleaner cars
DTN 050: Hydrogen is losing the race to power cleaner cars
Plus: A new type of jet engine, the first wooden satellite, Musk sues OpenAI, human vein implants, bionic jellyfish, DOOM toothbrush, and more.
“We are a licensed and regulated life insurance company that is entirely denominated in Bitcoin: we take premiums in Bitcoin, we pay claims in Bitcoin, we do reserving in Bitcoin, we have our solvency calculations in Bitcoin, and we do our financials in Bitcoin. I think to live up to what Satoshi’s whitepaper talks about—Bitcoin as a currency and economic engine, a means of exchange—it cannot all be held on our hardware wallets and buried in our backyards. Currency is movement, it’s use, it’s exchange. We believe that a crypto economy is the future. If you believe that, financial services will be needed for that economy. We see Meanwhile as building a fundamental cornerstone of Bitcoin financial services and helping to bring that vision to life.”
The Big Picture
Why hydrogen is losing the race to power cleaner cars
“A decade ago, the race to introduce a popular zero-emissions vehicle was anyone’s to win. “Go back to the 2010s, and the two technologies—electric and fuel cell—were very much talked about in the same breath,” says Colin McKerracher, head of the transportation team at BloombergNEF. Today, though, batteries are the clear front-runner. In 2023, global sales of battery electric vehicles topped 10 million, plus about 4 million plug-in hybrids. In that same period, only about 14,000 fuel-cell vehicles were sold worldwide. That means for every hydrogen-powered vehicle sold, 1,000 battery-powered ones were hitting the road. And the gap is widening, with EV sales growing by around a third in 2023 and sales of fuel-cell vehicle shrinking by roughly the same percentage. One of the central draws for fuel-cell vehicles is the speed and ease of fueling up at stations. Building those stations, though, has proved to be a challenge. Overall, hydrogen fueling infrastructure is seeing modest growth globally—but things have been going in the wrong direction in some key markets, including the hydrogen enclave that is California. Shell closed down all its hydrogen fueling stations for passenger vehicles in the state earlier this month, though the company will still operate some for heavy-duty vehicles. That follows similar closures across the state in late 2023.” (MIT Technology Review)
US Department of Defense Plots Renewable Energy Takeover
“The US Department of Defense has been an early adopter of solar power at its own facilities, especially out West where abundant space is available. Now the agency aims to deploy its buying power towards parts East. Earlier this month the DOD hooked up with the General Services Administration in a scheme to draw more renewable energy resources from a wide swath of the US, covering 65 million people in 14 Atlantic and Midwest states along with the District of Columbia, all with the aim of transitioning its facilities to 100% carbon free electricity.” (Clean Technica)
Deep Tech News
China Breakthrough Promises Optical Discs That Store Hundreds of Terabytes
Judge issues restraining order keeping DOE from tracking bitcoin miners
After a decade of stops and starts, Apple kills its electric car project
Spain to set up a new body tasked with pumping €20bn into deeptech
This startup is bioengineering tissue into human vein implants
JPEG of the Week
Astro Mechanica has invented a new kind of jet engine. Unlike any existing engine, it's efficient at every speed.
Because it's efficient at every speed, it can be used in a new way: as the first stage of an orbital launch vehicle. The resulting platform will get payloads to orbit dramatically cheaper than all-rocket systems - among many possible applications. The key insight is to use electric motors to drive a compressor. That way it can spin at any speed, allowing it to "adapt" to it's airspeed and combustion cycle. (via Ian Brooke)
Peer Review
MIT just released directions for commercializing perovskite solar cells
Earth as a test object to evaluate the planned LIFE space mission
Researchers hack a 3D printer to speed up fabrication of bioelectronics
Funding x M&A
Robotics startup Figure raises $675M and partners with OpenAI
Spotting pirates from space: French spacetech Unseenlabs raises €85M
Pfizer Ventures leads £40.5M round in UK cancer drug discovery startup
U.S. DOE Announces $15M to Boost Collection of Used (Spent) Consumer Batteries at Retailers
Geothermal startup Fervo Energy is tapping fresh $221M round
Bioptimus raises $35M seed round to develop AI foundational model focused on biology
Anthro Energy, a startup providing lithium-ion batteries, raised a $20M Series A
Vertical indoor strawberry farmer Oishii raised a $134M Series B
Alamar Biosciences, a company enabling the earliest detection of disease, raised a $128M Series C
Exodigo, a startup modernizing underground mapping, raised a $105M Series A
Matter Neuroscience, a startup aiming to provide personalized insights into brain chemistry, raised a $26M round
Regenerative medicine startup Pelage Pharmaceuticals raised a $16.8M Series A
CellVoyant, an AI-first biotech startup, raised a $10M seed round led by Octopus Ventures
Miscellanea
Flop rock: inside the underground floppy disk music scene / Doom Running on a Toothbrush / Antarctic English / "Dune" and the delicate art of making fictional languages / Antarctica provides at least $276 billion a year in economic benefits to the world / A Pilot Drew a Penis in the Sky and Wrote ‘See Ya’ During a 6-Hour Flight / Bought a Prison Laptop on eBay
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