Zero-Gravity Tire Swap of the Week
The awards go to the Red Bull Formula 1 team, which changed a tire within an Ilyushin II-76 MDK cosmonaut training plane—aka a “vomit comet”—in, yes, zero gravity. The team has the world record for tire swaps on land, at 1.82 seconds, and it did not come close to beating that on the vomit comet. But no one barfed, everyone made adjustments, and it kind of seems that the team had fun? You be the judge:
Stat of the Week
87%The fall in battery prices between 2010 and 2019, according to a new Bloomberg New Energy Finance survey. The report attributes that gigantic drop to order size, the growth in electric vehicle sales, and improved engineering. The report projects that prices will drop even by 2023, from $156 per kilowatt-hour today to $100 per kilowatt-hour. Those decreases mean big things for tech like electric cars and solar panels, which are already changing the way American companies do business.
Required Reading
News from elsewhere on the internet
-
General Motors and South Korea’s LG are teaming up to pour $2.3 billion into a battery factory in Ohio.
-
Fiat Chrysler is shopping for electric vehicle tech.
-
Once-hot Silicon Valley startups have lost $100 billion this year so far, creating a messy situation for other companies hoping to finance deals.
-
This upside-down stealth jet was ahead of its time.
-
What might a city’s “runnability index” tell you about what it’s like to live there? Quite a lot, actually.
-
CityLab’s special series of essays on how maps shape us is wrapping up, and you should read them all.
-
Why are kids so obsessed with garbage trucks?
-
And if these mayors are committed to combating climate change, why are they moving to widen highways?
In the Rearview
Essential stories from WIRED’s canonFlashback to the last time Elon Musk made an appearance in court, when he was in New York defending himself against the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s charge that he had ignored the terms of a settlement by, what else, tweeting.
