Structural batteries have been touted by many experts as a way to decrease electric vehicle weight, an application where every ounce is critical. Incorporating large masses like engines and batteries into the vehicle structure does reduce weight, but it makes it difficult or impossible to cost-effectively replace those units when they fail. If the economic and business model supports disposal of the entire vehicle, it’s a sensible weight and cost reduction strategy. But the environmental costs may be bigger than simple disposal of end-of-life EVs. 

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The automatic transmission has been mass produced since the 1940s, but until the ‘60s most people changed gears manually. Why? The clutch and gearbox was, and is, a simple, robust and reliable power transmission technology that costs less, weighs less and engages the driver with the vehicle in a way no automated system can. But modern automatic transmission technology delivers superior performance, and few drivers want the inconvenience of manual shifting. That’s a shame, because it's an experience that everyone should enjoy at least once in their driving life.

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With the ongoing war in Ukraine, the potential health effects of depleted uranium in antitank shells are in the spotlight again, as they were during the Gulf War. While depleted uranium is not an immediate health hazard to crews handling it, the small amount of residual radiation remains long after the battle is over carries a specific cancer risk. That risk is small compared to the other risks coming from war, but it is nonzero. So why the fuss?

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The backlash against complexity starts with agriculture. 

Today’s farmers are facing a significant technical challenge: larger, more expensive machines that can only be serviced by factory-trained technicians. With an urgent need to keep equipment running, many farmers are hacking equipment software to do the repairs themselves. Equipment manufacturers can monitor system access and may void warranties or even brick the equipment. Will right to repair legislation return control to the equipment owner?

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The annual trade show on industrial automation - Automate 2023 - showcased a wide variety of advanced automation solutions, and many of them were branded as “AI enabled.” While there is no external manifestation of artificial intelligence in industrial robotics, the implementation of AI will have a profound effect on American industry. Low-code and no-code robot programming is rapidly becoming the norm, and in the not-too-distant future, we can expect robots that can do multiple tasks on the shop floor and be trained to do those tasks in much the same way that we train human workers.

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With the Canadian government announcing a $13 billion subsidy program to entice VW to build EV batteries in southern Ontario, a similar joint venture project in Canada from Stellantis and LG has been stopped. According to the automaker, the reason is a lack of government subsidies. Has EV manufacturing now become an entirely government-financed industry?  

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Want to watch this podcast as a video? End of the Line is available on engineering.com TV along with all of our other shows such as This Week in Engineering, Designing the Future, and, Manufacturing the Future.

The recent launch of SpaceX Starship, one of the biggest rocket ever built—bigger than even the legendary Saturn V from the days of Apollo—ended in failure. However, much was learned. The gigantic booster got the stack 24 miles up, to the point of staging, before the vehicle failed catastrophically. Although the mass media labelled the loss of the launch vehicle as a success, the simple fact is that it wasn’t. It was a failure—a spectacular failure, but not an unexpected one. Testing complex engineering systems, especially those where multiple systems interact with each other, is expensive and time-consuming business. The next test flight will be the critical one.

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The steel reinforcement of concrete has been around for centuries and was standardized around 1950. Steel reinforcing bar—known as rebar—has a convenient property: a similar thermal expansion coefficient to the concrete surrounding it, making it a natural system to add tensile strength to concrete beams and columns. Unfortunately, steel is prone to corrosion, especially when moisture seeps inside columns and beams through cracks. That rust causes spalling and eventual failure of reinforced concrete structures. Is there a better way?

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Autonomous driving capabilities have been well-demonstrated in millions of Tesla cars, as well as in robotaxis fielded by companies such as Cruise, Waymo and Baidu. But the most economically powerful use case for self-driving isn’t in taxi service, it’s in the trucking industry. 3.5 million Americans drive trucks, earning an average of over $40,000 a year. It’s good money for a craft that requires minimal formal education and upfront training. Those skills are not likely to be easily transferable to some other line of work once the robots take over. California is proposing a law that would effectively prohibit self-driving trucks. Many pundits feel that this is only a delaying action, and the robotrucks are an inevitability. What then?

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From the earliest days of science fiction, robots have often been depicted as bipedal and humanoid. That’s still true today, even though industrial robots have never followed this pattern. For true mass adoption of robots as consumer devices, however, major players such as Elon Musk are actively developing devices that stand on two legs. But is this really the best way forward for mass production consumer devices?

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Want to watch this podcast as a video? End of the Line is available on engineering.com TV along with all of our other shows such as This Week in Engineering, Designing the Future, and, Manufacturing the Future.