News

UK Centre of Excellence for low carbon technologies Cenex has joined Leeds City Council to announce the launch of Project ACCRA, a collaboration between the council, Cenex, Transport Systems Catapult, Earthsense, Dynniq and Tevva Motors. The project will showcase smart city technology applications that demonstrate real-time emissions control, using live air quality data to trigger electric hybrid engines to automatically switch to zero-emission running in heavily polluted areas. The project will be demonstr

The UK GATEway project is soon to launch its open public trial of driverless pods, which will provide first and last mile transportation around the Greenwich peninsula by connecting important transport hubs with business, leisure and residential locations. Commencing in the autumn, Fusion Processing will provide sensing and control equipment on the brand new pods that are being built by Westfield Sportscars. The pods are based on the original Heathrow Airport platform pod design and have been updated for u

David Barzilai, chairman and co-founder of automotive cyber-security firm, Karamba Security, has applauded the UK government for taking pre-emptive action and zeroing in on preventing cyber-attacks as critical for the adoption of self-driving cars on a mass scale. However, he says the guidelines don’t go far enough toward effectively preventing car hacking, saying cars are not servers or mobile phones that can sustain the risk of hidden security bugs. The time it takes to remediate such bugs in production,

Speed surveys at 12 locations on the A75 Gretna Green to Stranraer road in Scotland, carried out by Clearview Intelligence on behalf of Transport Scotland, found that in some cases speeds were unacceptably high, particularly with heavy goods vehicles. Working with the road operator, Scotland TranServ, Clearview developed a vehicle activated, dynamic speed warning system to provide a highly visible and immediate reminder to drivers to monitor and manage their speeds appropriate to the legal limit of their ve

A new report by IDTechEx Research, RFID Forecasts, Players and Opportunities 2017-2027, IDTechEx Research, indicates that in 2017, the total RFID market will be worth US$11.2 billion, up from US$10.52 billion in 2016 and US$9.95 billion in 2015. This includes tags, readers and software/services for RFID labels, cards, fobs and other form factors, for passive and active RFID. In retail, RFID continues to be rolled-out for apparel tagging predominately - that application alone will demand 8.7 billion RFID lab

The US Department of Transportation’s (USDOT) Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Professional Capacity Building Program will host a free Talking Technology and Transportation webinar on the integration of the National ITS Architecture, version 7.1 with the Connected Vehicle Reference Implementation Architecture into one reference architecture. The webinar, "ARC-IT V8: A Live Demonstration," is scheduled for Thursday, 17 August 2017, from 1:00 pm to 2:30 pm EST. The Architecture Reference for Cooperati

Shropshire Council in the UK has installed 25 new eco-friendly Parkeon StradaPAL parking terminals as part of a county-wide replacement programme. The new terminals, located both on and off street in Shrewsbury town centre and in Bridgnorth, enhance customer convenience through multiple payment options, including Chip & Pin, contactless and coin, and will also enable the council to provide print on demand discount coupons in the future.

Hyperloop One successfully completed its second phase of testing, achieving 192 mph and travelling almost the full distance of the 500-metre DevLoop track in the Nevada desert, in a tube depressurised down to the equivalent of air at 200,000 feet above sea level. The Hyperloop One XP-1, the company’s first-generation pod, accelerated for 300 metres and glided above the track using magnetic levitation before braking and coming to a gradual stop.

Writing in the Guardian newspaper, Professor Frank Kelly, chair of the UK Government’s Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants, says fewer not cleaner vehicles are needed to tackle the UK’s air pollution crisis, plus more cycling and walking and better transit systems. The Government recently released its Air Quality Plan, in which it announced that it will ban all petrol and diesel vehicles (including hybrids) from 2040, with only electric vehicles available after that.

New research on consumer preferences for full autonomy in new vehicles finds the technology is not yet popular among a broad audience, according to analysts at IHS Markit. Ironically, the same audience ranked it among the very features they would be willing to pay the most for in their next new vehicle purchase. Blind spot detection ranked highest as the most desired features among all audiences, young and old, and propensity to pay for it varied by region, with the US respondents reporting they would be wi

Centre of Excellence for low carbon technologies, Cenex, has announced its involvement in the UK’s trial of biomethane-fuelled lorries. Led by Air Liquide and funded in part by the Office for Low Emission Vehicles in partnership with Innovate UK via the recently launched Low Emission Freight and Logistics Project, the Dedicated to Gas trial will see large fleet operators including Kuehne + Nagel, Wincanton, ASDA, Brit European, Howard Tenens and Great Bear trial the effectiveness of 81 dedicated gas-powe

Developed jointly by the Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership (LowCVP) and the Energy Saving Trust (EST) together with industry stakeholders through funding and support from the DEFRA/DfT Joint Air Quality Unit (JAQU), the just-launched Clean Vehicle Retrofit Accreditation Scheme (CVRAS) aims to provide the provide the backbone of future retrofit funding for vehicle emission control systems. By providing a single standard for any emission technology to be validated to meet the standards set out in the government’

A recent B2B technology survey by ABI Research of 455 US-based companies across nine verticals finds that 30 per cent of transportation industry respondents plan to introduce robotics into their business operations within the next year, with another 22 per cent actively assessing the technology. Despite notable near-term progress in robotics deployments among the respondents to support e-commerce and delivery growth, their lack of familiarity with nascent technologies such as AR, blockchain, 5G, autonomous

Transport for London (TfL), London Councils and the Greater London Authority (GLA) have announced funding of almost US$6 million (£4.5 million) to London boroughs to install electric vehicle charging infrastructure on London’s streets. A total of 25 boroughs, each receiving up to US$394,000 (£300,000), will install up to 1,500 standard-speed on-street charging points in residential areas, as part of Mayor of London Sadiq Khan’s long-term vision for zero-carbon transport in the Capital another step closer.

Transurban has awarded US$80,000 (AU$100,000) grants to three pioneering research and development projects targeting safer and smarter Australian roads in the latest round of its Innovation Grants Program. Transurban CEO Scott Charlton said each of the successful research projects would trial local Australian technologies to address known safety or efficiency challenges affecting our nation’s busiest motorways.