Toyota’s second-gen hydrogen car is here, Cyber Monday, and more tech news

Your Tech News Digest via the DGiT Daily Tech Newsletter for Monday, November 30th, 2020.

1. Mirai 2021: Toyota’s second generation fuel cell electric vehicle

Toyota’s Miria is now a second generation hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicle (FCEV) (Engadget), and reviews suggest that the 2021 model has been significantly improved.

• The Mirai, which means future in Japanese, is Toyota’s ninth FCEV, launched back in 1992, and only the fourth to be available for purchase.
• The first Mirai that you may have completely missed. For the first time in 2015, around 11,000 models were sold, just over 1,000 in the UK and Europe and a few thousand in the US.
• The newest Mirai won’t move the needle for Toyota. The Japanese giant wants to sell around ten times more with the latest generation vehicle.
• But it is a big step to work towards something bigger.

What’s new

• With a sleeker, Lexus-inspired design, the Mirai is no longer a really ugly car.
• I mean really, look – apparently airflow was a big problem for the chemical reaction, the tail was thick, the internals were weird, and the performance wasn’t great.
• The new Mirai really shows why second generation products are so much better.
• The 2021 model has improved to a range of 400 miles, with a bigger hydrogen tank, about five minutes of refueling time, and better acceleration. That’s 400 miles in any weather, unlike electric vehicles.
• The fuel cell, which carries out all the chemical reactions to generate electricity, still requires a strong flow of air, but is now smaller: it has decreased to 24 liters of capacity, from 33 liters of space that was previously required. Despite the size decrease, it is more efficient: 128 kW of power compared to the previous 114 kW unit.
• And with this size saving, the carbon fiber reinforced fuel tank is now larger and now contains 5.6 kg of hydrogen, which corresponds to a total range increase of 30 percent.
• Again, there is a fair explanation of how Toyota works.
• It should also be cheaper, going from ~ $ 60,000 to $ 50,000.
• The new Mirai also has a 1.24 kWh “buffer battery”, which provides additional power when required and is used during regeneration.

• Expect the car with only water emissions * sometime in 2021.

* 99 problems and two of them are H:

• Ok, a terrible H2 joke, of course, you need access to hydrogen to fuel your Mirai, and the chicken and egg problem of hydrogen infrastructure is still to be solved, nor are the carbon footprint issues.
• According to h2stations.org, there are only 45 H2 gas stations in the US, almost all of them in California. There is also one in Hawaii near Honolulu that seems useful for this island?
• The H2stations map shows a lot more of the US, but it’s mostly research facilities so I don’t know if you can hoist up and load exactly.
• Germany has 87, the UK has 13. Japan has a healthier 137 that is targeting 900 by 2030.
• And although the problem of the carbon footprint of hydrogen is not yet resolved, significant investments are being made in renewable hydrogen and climate-neutral approaches (The guard), especially from China (Clean energy wire).
• By 2030 and beyond, we’ll see a mix of electric vehicles, FCEVs, gasoline-electric hybrids, and traditional cars, trucks and vans on the roads.
• A mix is ​​at least an opportunity in a complex future.

2. Ok, Cyber ​​Monday means more shopping if you haven’t made a deal yet. Wide range of deals here, best smartphone deals here, Chromebook deals, tablet and iPad deals, Best Buy Cyber ​​Monday deals, Cyber ​​Monday Walmart deals and UK deals here. Phew! (Android Authority).

3. Korean media reports that Samsung may be releasing one final Galaxy Note before putting the series to bed after initial reports that we may have already seen the final Note. One final note 21 in 2021 may be possible, but more than ever, expect a focus on the wrinkle (Android Authority).

4. With this in mind, Samsung’s Galaxy Note 20 and Z Flip 5G are now available in festive red and white options as a limited edition (Android Authority).

5. Xiaomi could also launch the Mi 11 series earlier in 2021: could January be a busy month? (Android Authority).

6. Black Friday online shopping is $ 9 billion, $ 3.6 billion for smartphones, up 25% through Adobe. Cyber ​​Monday is predicted to beat those numbers as well. In 2019, Adobe had online sales of $ 7.4 billion (TechCrunch).

7. Here is one Interesting Twitter thread that deals with details or “tricks” Apple did with the M1 processor so that it makes Intel code run so well. No “magic”, just a series of interesting decisions (Twitter).

8.Tesla owners can see from a distance what their autopilot cameras can see (Electrek).

9. Internet, Get Ready To Search: Utah’s Mystery Monolith Has Gone (Gizmodo).

10. The earth orbits faster and 2000 light years closer to a black hole in a new map of our galaxy: Our orbital speed is 227 km / s, seven more than in previous calculations (phys.org).

11. The loneliest elephant in the world is finally going home (BBC).

12. “Do astronauts have to clean the outside of the space station windows?” No bugs in space, but lots of micrometeoroids (space dust) (r / askcience).

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