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The Hill

Writing for The Hill, Principal Research Scientist Randolph Kirchain and Research Scientist Hessam Azarijafari address how the condition of the nation’s road system impacts transportation emissions. “Investing in a higher-performance road system is a lever within state control that will improve the efficiency and carbon emissions of all vehicles, regardless of how each is powered,” write Kirchain and Azarijafari. “Smoother, stiffer roads allow cars to travel along it more efficiently. Every time a car tire traverses a bump, crack, or pothole, energy is wasted.”

Newsweek

Prof. Jessika Trancik writes for Newsweek about the importance of government policy in supporting the transition to electric vehicles. “Policy is needed to make EVs widely accessible to people while the technology and markets continue to mature,” writes Trancik, “and to ensure the process moves quickly enough to help slow the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.”

Marketplace

David Zipper, a senior fellow at the MIT Mobility Initiative, speaks with Kai Ryssdal of Marketplace about how cars in the U.S. are getting heavier and larger, and the environmental and safety costs associated with larger vehicles. “For decades, people who buy enormous, very heavy cars have been creating societal costs that they aren’t paying for. That’s what’s called a market failure,” said Zipper. “So if you want the market for automobiles to succeed, we need to make sure that when people are shopping for their next car, they are considering the societal costs of their purchase.”

Slate

David Zipper, a senior fellow at the MIT Mobility Initiative, writes for Slate about the “continually expanding size of the typical American automobile” and the deadly consequences of car bloat. “In 1977, SUVs and trucks together represented 23 percent of American new car sales; today they comprise more than 80 percent,” writes Zipper. “Meanwhile, the models themselves keep getting larger. These four-wheeled behemoths started as niche vehicles, meant to allow certain groups of people to accomplish specific tasks. Today they have become a fixture of everyday American life. They are also linked to myriad societal ills, from crash deaths to climate change to social inequality. Bigger cars make each of those problems harder to solve.”

Financial Times

Financial Times reporter William D. Cohan profiles Robert Joseph Scaringe SM ’07, PhD ’09 and his personal and professional career in developing Rivian, an electric vehicle technology company dedicated to building vehicles that change the way we consume fossil fuels. “Scaringe has been pining to run his own car company since he was a 17-year-old growing up on the Atlantic coast of Florida, just south of Cape Canaveral. ‘If you were to go in my bedroom as a kid, you’d find [car] hoods under the bed and windshields in the closet,’ he says.”

Bloomberg News

Bloomberg reporter Kyle Stock spotlights the origin and future of Rivian, an MIT startup that has developed an electric pickup truck.

The Wall Street Journal

Wall Street Journal reporter Paul Berger highlights Superpedestrian, an MIT startup and electric scooter company that secured $60 million in funding. Berger notes that Superpedestrian “spent more than four years designing a vehicle intelligence system that can diagnose and maintain itself.”

The Economist

A new working paper co-authored by Visiting Assistant Professor Jordan Nickerson finds that increasingly protective child car-seat laws have contributed to a reduced birth rate in America, reports The Economist. Nickerson and his colleagues found that tightening car-seat laws “was accompanied by a drop, on average, of 0.73 percentage points in the number of women giving birth to a third while the first two were young enough to need safety seats.”

The Verge

MIT startup Optimus Ride is launching a self-driving shuttle service at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, reports Andrew J. Hawkins for The Verge.

Forbes

Forbes reporter Chuck Tannert spotlights alumnus R.J. Scaringe, founder and CEO of the electric vehicle company Rivian Automotive. Scaringe explains his motivation to build electric vehicles: “It was frustrating knowing the things I loved were simultaneously the things that were making the air dirtier and causing all sorts of issues, everything from geopolitical conflict to the smog to climate change.”

co.design

Researchers from the Self-Assembly Lab are collaborating with BMW to develop inflatable objects that could potentially be used in car design, writes Katharine Schwab for Co.Design. Prof. Skylar Tibbits explains that the technology could be used to create adjustable car interiors that, “could be different every time you got in, or for every person who got in.”

Wired

MIT spinoff ClearMotion is working on a proactive suspension system that would allow for smoother car rides over rough surfaces, writes Jack Stewart for Wired. The system would use actuators that can actually lift the wheel over bumps and potholes, allowing cars using ClearMotion to “play offense” against potentially damaging patches.

Wired

Researchers at MIT will begin studying how Boston-area drivers interact with driver assistance systems, reports Aarian Marshall for Wired. Research Engineer Bryan Reimer explains that he and his colleagues hope to gain a better understanding for how, “driving is beginning to transform from one where the human has primary oversight responsibility to one where the human is actively engaged in a robotic interaction with the vehicle.” 

Boston Herald

MIT researchers have teamed up with Lamborghini to create an electric sports car, reports Jordan Graham for the Boston Herald. Graham explains that the research, could be used to, “make the cars lighter and make batteries out of carbon nanotubes. The batteries can be made in any shape, and could be designed to fit inside the car’s side panels.”

CNN

CNN reporter Peter Valdes-Dapena writes that MIT researchers are working with Lamborghini to develop a battery-free, electric supercar. Valdes-Dapena explains that instead of running on batteries, the body of the car, which would be made from exotic carbon nanotubes, would be used as a supercapacitor.