Posted on

We could be buying Apple’s autonomous electric vehicle soon!

On February 13th, 2021, the headline of the Times London online was “Britons are at the back of  a year-long queue for new Tesla model. Another headline in the Barron’s online reads “Electric vehicles were a non-starter until Tesla comes along.

There were a few starts for electric vehicles in the last 100 years. The Barron’s article highlighted several interesting facts.  In 1959 there were a half-dozen companies racing to bring out the first  electric automobile in a half-century. Leading the way was the Nu-Klea Starlite, a new electric model being billed as an “economy car”. At that point pint, Barron’s noted: “Simply by plugging the car into an electric outlet each night, thereby recharging the batteries, the owner can drive about 80 miles the next day at a cost of about US20 cents.”

The Nu-Klea Starlite  failed and no other successful EVs  emerged from this period. It continued for the rest of the 20th century-high hopes dashed by  lack of vision, willpower, and funding. It took an new century, the 21st century, for EVs to be embraced by car-buying consumers.  

Short history of the EV

The first  exciting age of the EVs  happened in the first decade of the 20th century. According to Barron’s the stately, battery-powered sedans of the pre-World Wat 1 era were purchased by well-to-do urbanites. President Woodrow Wilson drove around the White House in his Milburn Electric. Unlike gasoline-powered cars, EVs rode clean and silent, with little effort or maintenance needed. But they lacked speed (about 40 km per hour) and range of about 97 to 112 km per charge, largely because the batteries were so heavy.

The first electric age effectively ended in 1915, after Henry Ford and Thomas Edison teamed up to take  a crack at EVs. The EVs produced were too slow, too heavy and too costly. The EV project was dropped by the two “giant men” of the period.

That was pretty  much where things still stood in 1959, when Klea Starlite made its disappointing debut. EVs were not abandoned. They were produced as golf carts, and “British milk floats”.

Fast-forward to 1968, when Barron’s reported that GM. Ford and Chrysler were boasting about their research on smogless vehicles. The big hope this time was a Union Carbide electric motorcycle, which achieved 40 km per hour . The motorcycle was “strictly experimental”, and the big the  American automobile companies has nothing of their own to offer except vague promises of electric passenger vehicles that might be ready for commercial production in 10 to 15 years.

Barron’s wrote another decade passed. Then, on June 13th, 1977, Barron’s cited “renewed interest in EVs,” this time because of concerns about the oil embargo and air pollution. Yet the only producer of EVs was Sebring-Vanguard, whose Citicar two-seater “boast a top speed of 61 km per hour and can go about 60 km per charge. “The Citicar was flimsy, Barron’s wrote, “it is not allowed on major highways.”

Some 13 years later, in 1990, then GM CEO Roger Smith, “desperate for a piece of good news on which to end his career,“ as Barron’s puts, introduced a new EV programme with great fanfare. But the effort didn’t yield a car until 1996—the General Motors EV1, a two-seater with an initial range of just about 97 km. GM pulled the plug on production in 1999., sparking controversy in the documentary, Who Killed the Electric Car?

By 2002, the big car makers knew that the gasoline engine was “rumbling into end of its product cycle,” with Ford, GM and the then DaimlerChrysler “well spending over US$1 billion a year on new-engine technologies, “ including hybrids, Barron’s wrote. Led by Toyota’s Prius, there were 50,000 hybrids on US roads.

Enter Tesla

The modern EV era begins with Tesla and CEO Elon Musk, a visionary like Ford or Edison. Musk’s goal was is “an electric-car revolution,“ and instead of building another niche economy EV, Musk shot for the moon with a high-end sports car, the Tesla Roadster. Barron’s admitted that it underestimated the power of Musk’s revolution. A 2013 cover story panned the stock, Tesla Inc., suggesting that Tesla’s fans “are viewing its prospects through 3-D glasses.” Today, the company is worth more than US$800 million, producing about 500,00 vehicles per year.

Planned  Entry of Apple Inc.

Many traditional car companies and new EV start-ups have joined Tesla to produce EVs in the US, Europe, China and Japan. New eco-system of EV has emerged including large battery production and  sophirtai9cted software to provide various features which are not available in today’s gasoline-powered cars.

More interesting is the planned entry of Apple Inc. into the automobile industry. The Times on London Times on February 16th, 2021, noted this development. Apple, which has overhauled the personal, music and mobiles market, has remained silent over its plans for vehicles. Its car plan, known internally as Project Titan, have been in the works for some years. It was reported that the company intended to produce a passenger vehicle in 2024. An analyst at Morgan Stanley, Katy Huberty, noted the smartphone market is worth US$500 billion each year. “The mobility market is worth US$10 trillion, so Apple would only need a 2 per cent market share of this market to be the size of their phone business,” she told clients.

In smartphones Apple uses a major contract manufacturer, Foxconn Technology Group, to produce all its smart phones. Apple its efforts on designing, software development and marketing. Major car companies have been making announcements that they are interested to partner Apple to produce tis vehicle.  

The Times London quoted the CEO of Volkswagen, the largest car company in the world, that it was not afraid of Apple’s plan to enter the automotive industry. He said the global car market would not be transformed overnight. He has to be careful!

Apple has led to the failure of Nokia, then the market leader of mobile phone. We believe the business model of the mobility industry is ripe for major disruption after 100 years. CEOs of major car companies have to take note that Apple has a cash in hand of US$191.83 billion, meaning they  has  substantial ammunition to compete in the new autonomous electric vehicle industry.   

Posted on

African giant rats trained to sniff out disease

Magawa, the most famous African giant rat

Occasionally small rats entered our kitchen to sniff out for leftover foods. If they are not lucky, they are caught by my cats, Salina  Boy or Charlie. Instead of being considered a pest, a species of rat, the African giant pouched rat, is being trained to detect a disease that is devastating livestock and threatening the livelihoods of farmers in the world’s poorest countries, as quoted by the Times of London on January 29th, 2021.

Brucellosis is a highly contagious bacterial infection that causes infertility and low milk yields in cows, sheep, goats and pigs. Detection is hard and expensive.

Glasgow University is working with researchers at Sokoine University in Tanzania on using sniffer rats to tackle the problem. The African giant pouched rats, which can grow to 91 cm in length, have already been trained to detect landmines and tuberculosis.

Dan Haydon, director of the institute of biodiversity, animal health and comparative medicine at Glasgow University, said that the idea developed after he discovered how sniffer dogs were being used to detect brucellosis in Yellowstone National Park, in the United States, where there is a brucella problem with elk, bison and cattle. “Professor Rudovick Kazwala, who is lead researcher at Sokoine, said, ‘Aha, well, we already have this facility where rats are being specially trained to sniff landmines and tuberculosis’”, Professor Haydon said.“So, we figured if they can smell landmines and smell TB then surely we can get them to smell brucellosis. It turns out you can.”

The scientists received a grant to conduct the research through the British Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. Testing has delivered encouraging results so far.

The African giant pouched rat is used rather than the standard lab rat because they are easier to source in sub-Saharan Africa and live longer.

It takes nine months and costs about £5,000 to train a rat, which can then speed through 100 samples in 20 minutes.

Magawa, the most famous African pouched rat

Magawa has been awarded a prestigious gold medal for his work deteting land mine, according to the website, www.bbc.com on September 24th, 2020. Magawa has sniffed out 39 landmines and 28 unexploded munitions in his career. The UK veterinary charity PDSA has presented him with its Gold Medal for “life -saving devotion to duty, in the location and clearance of deadly landmines in Cambodia”.

PDSA’s Gold Medal is inscribed with the words “For animal gallantry or devotion to duty”. Of the 30 animals recipients of the award,  Magawa is the first rat. The seven-year-old Magawa was trained by the Belgium-registered charity Apopo (www.apopo.org),  which is based in Tanzania and has been raising the animals,-known as HeroRats-to detect landmines and tuberculosis since 1990s. The animals are certified after a year of training.  

According to Apopo, Magawa was born and raised in  Tanzania-weighs 1.2 kg and is 70 cm long. While that is far larger than many other socies, Magawa is still small enough and light enough that he does not trigger mines if he walks over them.

The rats are trained to detect a chemical compound  within the explosives,  meaning they ignore scrap metal and can search for mines more quickly. Once they find an explosive, they scratch the top to alert their human co-workers.

Magawa is capable of searching a field the size of a  tennis court in just 20 minutes-something Apopo says would take a person with a metal detector between one and four days. Magawa works for just an hour a day in the mornings and is nearing retirement age, but PDSA director, Jan McLoughlin, said his work with Apopo was “truly unique and outstanding”. “Magawa’s work directly saves and changes the lives of men, women and children who are impacted by these landmines, says PDSA. “Every discovery he makes reduces the risk of injury or death for local Cambodians.”

The training of African giant pouched rat

African giant pouched rats can live between 6 to 8 years. This long lifespan for  a rat makes training a worthwhile  investment. They are food motivated and willing to work with just about any handler for a proper reward.  

From now on, I will tell my cats not to kill the rats around our house as their species are saving human lives in countries which have the problem of landmines and  unexploded munitions.