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The Navy is massively fast-tracking a new fleet of unmanned underwater vehicles to more safely perform a range of submarine-like missions to include reconnaissance, countermine operations, and even undersea attack.  Manned submarines can function in more of a command and control capacity to a large extent, operating as motherships able to operate a large fleet of surface and undersea drone boats. Drone submarines provide an unprecedented mix of additional attributes of great relevance to maritime warfare. A principal element of this is endurance. After all, unmanned submarine-like drones can operate for months at a time given that they do not require crew shifts.  Electromagnetic Systems are working together to provide the emerging Large Displacement Unmanned Underwater Vehicle with advanced power for propulsion and energy storage systems.  The LDUUV mission, according to a 2015 study from the International Journal of Advanced Research in Artificial Intelligence is to “conduct missions longer than seventy-days in open ocean and littoral seas, being fully autonomous, long-endurance, land-launched with advanced sensing for littoral environments,” a paper called “Military Robotics: Latest Trends and Spatial Grasp Solutions” from the National Academy of Sciences.

In a company statement, GA-EMS explained that the new high-tech integration is intended to improve undersea drone performance, to include extended endurance. “Over the course of the last two years, the motor has undergone lab testing, and power system has completed underwater testing. Both systems have performed successfully, demonstrating capabilities to both power and propel underwater vehicles. Together, the systems are proving to be key technologies to provide the combined power, energy density, and improved vehicle performance necessary to help meet the objectives,” Scott Forney, the president of GA-EMS, said in the statement.

The study emphasizes “long endurance” and “autonomy” as signature features of large undersea drones, something which can of course extend the length of time possible for undersea surveillance missions. Larger drones may also be engineered with a stronger propulsion system to maneuver undersea. At the early stages, launches will begin on land before slowly migrating toward ocean launches as part of a networked manned and unmanned group of vessels. The emergence of these kinds of systems will of course greatly inform tactics and strategies as they can massively multiply undersea presence without necessarily increasing risk. Large undersea drones may also quite likely be configured to fire weapons such as torpedoes, especially if they are networked with undersea “host ships” or “mother ships.”  

Lasers are particularly effective as short-range air defense systems against Unmanned Aerial Vehicles because most of them are fairly slow. Here's What You Need to Know: By 2022, the Army plans to deploy its first four-vehicle platoon of eight-wheel Stryker armored vehicles equipped with a turret-mounted 50-kilowatt laser. These will eventually become a standard support asset in U.S. brigade combat teams, alongside a Stinger-missile armed Strykers.  After decades of being confined to experimental prototypes and Star Wars movies, laser weapons today are on the verge of entering wide-scale service, whether in the hands of infantry, mounted on trucks, armored vehicles, warships and even Air Force fighters. Lasers focus beams of light to produce intense heat. They have virtually inexhaustible “ammunition” and are very cheap per shot compared to a missile or even a cannon shell. They are also extremely quick and precise, though they tend to lose coherence over distance. The more powerful the laser, the further it can go and the quicker it burns through its target—but the larger its power supply and cooling system have to be.

The Army hopes that ground-based lasers will provide an effective and cost-efficient means to defend against two major new threats which threaten to overwhelm existing air defenses: drones and surface-skimming cruise missiles. Both are proliferating rapidly around the globe, and both were employed in a recent attack that knocked out half of Saudi Arabia’s daily oil production—despite the facilities being covered by both short- and long-range air defense systems.  Lasers are particularly effective as short-range air defense systems against Unmanned Aerial Vehicles because most of them are fairly slow. That gives a laser ample time to burn through the drone’s skin and damage critical bits of the airframe. Anti-drone lasers have been extensively tested (see a video here), and were recently reportedly used in combat for the first time when a Turkish laser used by a faction in Syria shot down an enemy drone. By 2022, the Army plans to deploy its first four-vehicle platoon of eight-wheel Stryker armored vehicles equipped with a turret-mounted 50-kilowatt laser. These will eventually become a standard support asset in U.S. brigade combat teams, alongside a Stinger-missile armed Strykers.  However, jet-powered cruise missiles pose a bigger challenge to lasers. Even slower cruise missiles tend to scream towards their targets at 500–600 miles per hour. That leaves a laser little time to burn through the missile’s skin target. Furthermore, because a laser exerts no kinetic force to “push” a missile of target, it must somehow inflict heat damage to a component which will prevent the missile from sailing forward on sheer momentum to hit its target. That may involve detonating the missile’s warhead, frying its terminal seeker (if it has one), or damaging its engine and flight control fins.  The Army has already been mandated by Congress to deploy an Indirect Fire Protection Capability (IFPC) that can shield troops on the ground from cruise missile attacks. As an interim measure, the Army announced early in 2019 it would procure two batteries of Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system as Increment 1 of the IFPC program. Iron Dome was designed for shooting down unguided projectiles, but has some applicability to cruise missile defense.  However, for Increment 2, the Army wants a mobile laser system more powerful than that on the Stryker. Originally, that looked like that would come in the form of the 100 KW High Energy Laser (HELAS) which would be mounted on a tactical truck. In May 2019, the Army $130 million contract to Lockheed and Dynetics to develop a HELAS combined fiber laser. Rolls-Royce would furnish an integrated power & thermal management system.  However, in August 2019 an article on Army.mil revealed that the Army now sees the 100 KW system as merely an interim step to developing either a 250 or 300 KW weapon that can handle “more stressing threats”—by which they surely mean cruise missiles. Furthermore, they expect the first four-vehicle HEL-IFPC prototype platoon to be ready by 2024. According to Sydney Freedberg of Breaking Defense, the Center for Strategic & Budgetary Analysis had earlier reported that a 300 to 600-kilowatt laser was necessary to reliably burn down cruise missiles before they reach their target. That level of power would allow the laser to begin toasting an incoming missile from further away, and inflict more damage in a shorter amount of time. That could significantly increase the odds of disabling a cruise missile before it can cause much harm.  The odds of a successful shoot-down might remain lower against supersonic cruise missiles or forthcoming hypersonic weapons (which exceed five times the speed of sound), but most of the former at least are designed for use against ship, not land targets.  The potentially threefold power increase from the current HELAS laser seems ambitious. However, the 100 KW HELAS reportedly combines a battery with an M250 turboshaft helicopter engine (used in the OH-58 and OH-6 scout helicopters) that generates 300 KW of power, and has thermal management for up to 200 kilowatts. Therefore, it’s possible scaling up the HELAS laser’s power may be feasible without starting with a new design.  The HEL-IFPC laser system will be mounted on a truck, rather than an armored vehicle. Thus, if it enters service, it would likely primarily be deployed behind the frontlines defending headquarters, ammunition and fuel dumps, fixed radars, and key bases or facilities. Those all happen to be attractive targets for expensive land-attack cruise missiles.  The Army is not the only service seeking land-based directed energy weapons. The Air Force is reportedly testing three different microwaves defensive weapons which could be used to disrupt or disable drones.

Air traffic control audio has revealed details of the highly advanced 'drone' that eluded a police helicopter in military airspace above Tucson, AZ.  The recording obtained from the Federal Aviation Administration this week by The Drive reveals the sophisticated capabilities of the drone as it ran circles around police and federal helicopters in February.  The recordings show that pilots and air traffic controllers were baffled by the drone, which they described as 'super sophisticated' and possibly satellite-controlled, and hovered over Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.  During the nearly 70-minute chase, the drone often toyed with the pursuing helicopters by hovering directly over their rotors, baffling the crews and leading one to call it 'super sophisticated.'  It was not visible with night-vision goggles and eventually exceeded the maximum flight ceiling of the helicopters, escaping the pursuers.  'They can't tell if its a quadcopter or what. They assume it's a drone, but they're following it,' one controller is heard saying.  FBI officials told Tucson TV station KOLD that the drone 'orbited' the helicopter several times and led the copter on a circular, hour-long chase.  The tactical flight officer on the Tucson PD helicopter said in the report that the drone 'maneuvered all over the city' at over 10,000 feet. Crews are also heard saying that it was difficult to estimate the size of the mystery craft, which was difficult to visually identify due to its high speed and maneuverability.

As the chase wore on, crew members repeatedly wonder aloud why the apparent drone's battery hadn't run out of power. 'This would be like no battery I've ever seen,'  Another recording reveals a phone call between the Air Traffic Control tower at Tucson International Airport and the Tucson Police Department helicopter crew.  'Yeah was definitely a drone,' one TPD helicopter crew member tells the controllers. 'I just couldn't tell you - I couldn't give you its dimensions as it was moving... too sketchy for us to.'  'From what I can tell just from its position light, you know, I would have to imagine it was larger than a quadcopter, and I guarantee you it was nothing like a quadcopter from how long it was up,' the crew member said.  'It has to be satellite-driven because there's no line-of-sight, there's no cell phone coverage that could have dealt with that, so it has to be satellite-driven, which is pretty freakin' sophisticated,' he added.

'I assure you it was not a quadcopter, and it was the most advanced drone we've dealt with over the last decade here. Its abilities were pretty incredible, um, I just - I can't tell you exactly its size,' the crew member said.

Amazon is buying up energy production capacity from solar and wind plants around the world in a bid to power all its business activities through renewable energy by 2025.  The Seattle-based e-tailing giant committed to buy 1.5 gigawatts of production capacity — enough to power 500,000 homes — from 14 new wind and solar projects in NA and the EU.  Wednesday’s purchases bring Amazon’s total renewable energy purchases to 10 gigawatts, making the company the largest corporate buyer of renewable energy in the US.  Amazon’s 11 new projects in the US include solar sites in Arkansas, Mississippi and Pennsylvania. The company also announced new solar and wind projects in Canada, Spain and Finland, bringing Amazon’s total global number of renewable energy projects to 232.  But Amazon has a long way to go before it reaches its goal of net-zero emissions. The company had a carbon footprint of about 51.2 million metric tons in 2019, according to its sustainability report — roughly equivalent to the greenhouse gas emissions of the entire country of Singapore.  Concerns about Amazon’s environmental impact resurfaced this week after a report alleged that an Amazon warehouse in Scotland destroys millions of unused products each year — including laptops, jewelry and books. A spokesperson for the company said no waste from the warehouse is sent to a landfill.  Amazon had a carbon footprint of about 51.2 million metric tons in 2019 — roughly equivalent to the greenhouse gas emissions of the entire country of Singapore.. “Our investments in wind and solar energy in the US and around the world send a signal that investing in green technologies is the right thing to do for the planet and citizens —as well as for the long-term success of businesses of all sizes across all industries everywhere,” he said.  

China, which is home to roughly half of the 7 million passenger EVs on the road as of 2020, has more than 600 (EV battery) swapping stations and is on pace to have 1,000 by year’s end, according to a tally by clean-energy research group BloombergNEF. “They've already made the determination that swapping has to be a significant part of the solution,” says Hassounah, “We don't have enough deployment yet to realize that we need this in the U.S.” Even in China, however, where the swapping industry dwarfs that of the U.S., the technology is still only a small piece of the charging infrastructure.  In the U.S. most investment so far has gone into building faster plug-in stations and batteries that can accept power quickly without overheating.  President Biden has proposed a target of 500,000 public chargers by 2030. His plan, which calls for scaling and improving fast-charging networks, makes no mention of battery swapping. Yet plug-in chargers come with limits that can’t be overcome simply by adding more. They are a burden on the power grid, expensive to build, and, even at their fastest, agonizingly slow compared to gas pumps.

Hassounah and De Souza founded Ample in 2014 and have raised about $70 million to date from investors including the venture arms of oil and gas giants Royal Dutch Shell plc and Repsol SA. They’ve spent the last seven years studying how to swap batteries in a cheap, vehicle-agnostic way and believe they’ve finally cracked it. For now they are focusing on ride-hailing fleets, as professional drivers have the most need for fast charging. Late last year, Ample entered a partnership with Uber to help coordinate with the the fleet management services that provide drivers with cars, insurance, and other services. On June 10, Ample announced a separate partnership with the fleet management service Sally, which specializes in making EVs available to ride-hailing and delivery drivers. The two plan to work to together to deploy EVs and swapping stations in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. Sally aims to have hundreds of Ample-ready Kia Niro EVs running in the Bay Area by the end of this summer and to begin offering swapping to drivers in New York by the fall.

Vertical Aerospace, a UK electric aircraft manufacturer, has won the backing of American Airlines, Virgin Atlantic and Microsoft in its bid to make urban air travel a reality. The startup revealed on Thursday that it has pre-orders for up to 1,000 of its zero-emissions VA-X4 vertical takeoff aircraft, worth as much as $4 billion, as it announced plans to go public in New York via a merger with blank check firm Broadstone Acquisition Corp.  The VA-X4 will travel at speeds over 200 miles per hour and be "near silent" when in flight, according to the company. The aircraft has a range of over 100 miles.  American Airlines has agreed to pre-order up to 250 aircraft, with an option for an additional 100. Dublin-based aircraft leasing company Avolon has pre-orders and options for 500 aircraft, while Virgin Atlantic has a pre-order option for up to 150. Microsoft's venture capital subsidiary and Rocket Internet have also invested in the business.  Vertical Aerospace hopes that partnerships with Rolls-Royce and Honeywell, among others, will allow it to quickly secure the same level of certification as large commercial airliners from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and enable production at scale. It expects commercial operations to begin in 2024.  Pre-orders are subject to certain conditions and milestones being met, including certification by aviation safety regulators.  Vertical Aerospace CEO and co-founder Stephen Fitzpatrick said  "Electrification will transform flying in the 21st century in the same way the jet engine did 70 years ago,".  His mission at Vertical Aerospace is to make air travel "personal, on demand and carbon free" and the startup counts former executives from Rolls-Royce (RYCEF), Jaguar Land Rover and the UK Ministry of Defence among its engineering team.  

A small French company called CILAS has been testing its laser system, downing a number of different drones flying at more than 30 mph and up to 3,300 feet away. It marks the first time in Europe that drones were downed by laser.  Lasers like this have an advantage when it comes to swatting pesky drones out of the sky: they will fry up and burn whatever they have hit. But the beam will go no further, causing no collateral damage. They are very precise, have a long range, and are extremely fast.  Tanguy Mulliez, manager of the innovation and products department at CILAS, which specializes in lasers, tells Popular Science: “It’s like the beam of a flashlight. It stops at whatever object it hits first.” “the great advantage of a laser system is that it can also be used for other missions,” such as neutralizing explosives, destroying electronics, taking out light sensors, and jamming cameras by blinding them. The system is called the HELMA-P, which stands for High-energy Laser for Multiple Application – Power. “These demonstrations made a real impact on the military and they’ve come back with a lot of questions that we’re working on, both for France and other clients,” .

The military’s new gadget works by amplifying existing light, either from the moon, stars or sources on the ground. The device senses tiny amounts of photons reflected off seemingly dark objects. Then, the photons pass over an internal surface engineered to convert light into electrons. The electrons are amplified by striking a quarter-sized glass plate that has millions of tiny holes in it. Then, they pass a screen coated with phosphor, a fluorescent substance, to create an image.  Traditionally, a green phosphor is used, which is why green-hued night-vision imagery is well-known. But Elbit’s latest device uses white phosphor, producing black-and-white images, which officers say creates more contrast and greater clarity at night.  “Generally, when you think of night goggles, you think of ambient green light, which is helpful, but this is an improvement on that and allows for better accuracy,”  The Army’s latest goggles include an outline mode, which creates glowing white outlines. There’s an augmented reality overlay that can display navigation instructions and maps. The goggles can also connect wirelessly to others in the platoon, so if a soldier spots something, they can mark that object in cyberspace and have it show up on other people’s binoculars. 

Drone flights generally aren’t remarkable, but this one was for a simple reason—the entire time the Hybrid Tiger was in the sky, it drew power from two distinct systems: solar panels in the wings, and a compact hydrogen fuel cell in the body. The flight marked a major milestone for the program from the US Naval Research Laboratory, a sign that the drone is at least half as capable as intended. Hybrid Tiger’s successful day in the air started November 18, 2020, although the Navy announced the success in mid-April. “The flight was effectively a performance test in worst-case conditions: temperatures falling below zero degrees Celsius, winds gusting to 20 knots, and relatively little solar energy as we approached the solar solstice Dec. 21,” said Richard Stroman, a mechanical engineer from the NRL Chemistry Division, in a release. “Despite all of that, Hybrid Tiger performed well.” A typical long-endurance drone, such as an MQ-9 Reaper, stays aloft for hours and hours by burning hundreds of gallons of jet fuel to power an engine, which in turn drives the Reaper’s pusher propeller. Noise from this engine gives the Reaper its distinctive loud buzz, a sound that is conspicuously absent from the Hybrid Tiger.

Yesterday the United States Army announced that it will work with Microsoft on the production phase of the Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) program as it moves from rapid prototyping to production and rapid fielding.  The IVAS headset, based on HoloLens and augmented by Microsoft Azure cloud services, delivers a platform that will keep Soldiers safer and make them more effective. The program delivers enhanced situational awareness, enabling information sharing and decision-making in a variety of scenarios. Microsoft has worked closely with the U.S. Army over the past two years, and together we pioneered Soldier Centered Design to enable rapid prototyping for a product to provide Soldiers with the tools and capabilities necessary to achieve their mission. (from the MSFT blog) "We appreciate the partnership with the U.S. Army, and are thankful for their continued trust in transitioning IVAS from rapid prototyping to rapid fielding. We look forward to building on this successful partnership with the men and women of the U.S. Army Close Combat Force."

Watch Matheu Parr, from Rolls Royce Electricals speak to CNN News18 on making the world's fastest electric plane.

After 4 years of development work, The Yara Birkeland could be the future of cargo vessels. The container ship runs on battery power, produces zero emissions and has no manned crew. This big boat sails autonomously with a crew monitoring its movements miles away. Now its ready for its maiden voyage, CNN reported.  According to the Norwegian company responsible for the ship's development, it won't be making any major oceanic voyages right away, but if all goes well, it will show the ship's capable of doing things similarly to today's fossil-fuel-burning cargo ships. Onboard the ship is 7 MW-hours' worth of energy from batteries, which gives the ship a top speed of 13 knots, or 15 mph, while carrying 103 containers in the process.  Although the ship sails without human help, it still requires humans to load and unload its contents. The progress made is impressive, but autonomous technologies remain in their infancy. Like self-driving cars, autonomous boats also need to navigate challenges such as obstacles, traffic and more. Replace a self-driving car prototype avoiding a cyclist with an autonomous shipping vessel staying away from other ships in port. But as the world races to decarbonize transportation sectors, cargo ships are a prime place to focus.

This weapon is ideal for hitting targets that are screened by terrain.

Here's What You Need To Remember: It is a technical solution to an age-old problem: how to hit an enemy on the other side of a hill, who is shielded from observation or fire by terrain. Artillery, mortars and airstrikes can accomplish this, but arranging these fires takes time. A loitering munition essentially gives infantry their own precision-guided, indirect firepower. Russia is testing “kamikaze drones,” or unmanned aircraft that are essentially flying artillery shells.

Factory testing of the KYB-BLA and Lancet weapons have been completed, Alexander Zakharov, chief designer at ZALA Aero, told Russian news agency TASS during a Russian defense trade show last year. ZALA Aero is part of famed small arms maker Kalashnikov, which is now delving into drones.  The U.S. military doesn’t like the term “kamikaze drone,” preferring to call these weapons “loitering munitions.” Whatever the name, they are small battlefield drones that are launched by an infantry platoon. Equipped with a camera, the drone can orbit the battlefield while relaying imagery to the troops on the ground. When the troops see a promising target, they can order the drone to dive into the target and detonate its warhead.  It is a technical solution to an age-old problem: how to hit an enemy on the other side of a hill, who is shielded from observation or fire by terrain. Artillery, mortars, and airstrikes can accomplish this, but arranging these fires takes time. A loitering munition essentially gives infantry their own precision-guided, indirect firepower.  While the warheads on loitering munitions aren’t big—about the power of a grenade—the weapon is ideal for locating and hitting targets, such as enemy mortars, that are screened by terrain. Or, they can fly into windows to take out enemy positions during urban combat.  Zakharov described the Lancet as an intelligent multitasking weapon that can independently find a given target and hit it. "It is equipped with a television communication channel, which transmits an image in real-time and allows you to confirm the success of hitting the target.”

Unfortunately for Russia, the United States and other nations already have loitering weapons. The AeroVironment Switchblade is a 5.5-pound weapon that fits in an infantryman’s backpack. The drone-missile has a range of up to ten kilometers (six miles), a speed 63 to 100 miles per hour, and an airborne endurance of fifteen minutes. It is guided by day and night video cameras on the weapon, and GPS (AeroVironment recently announced a six-tube launcher for Switchblade).  Originally conceived by U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command, and used experimentally in Iraq and Afghanistan, it was a demonstration weapon for the Army’s Lethal Miniature Aerial Munition System (LMAMS) program. The Marine Corps has recently ordered its own Switchblades.  In April 2019, the Army posted a request for information on what industry can provide to meet LMAMS requirements. Some of the requirements are fairly sophisticated. For example, the weapon should have a range of at least 20 km/12 miles.  More interesting is a requirement that the loitering weapon track and hit fast-moving vehicles. “The LMAMS shall have variable velocity and be able to overtake a target that is traveling up to 50 mph within a 5 km [3 mile] range from the launch point at the time of launch,” the Army said.  Last year, the Marine Corps also put out a request for information for a loitering munition. However, the Marines wants a weapon with a range of around thirty-five miles and flight endurance of an hour or two.  When it comes to loitering munitions, the world’s leader is probably Israel. Back in the 1990s, Israel Aerospace Industries introduced the Harpy anti-radar weapon. Unlike a conventional anti-radar missile that heads straight for the target, the Harpy would loiter over a battlefield, waiting to detect an enemy radar, and then home in on it (an eighteen-pound Mini-Harpy was announced this year).

If you're into the new lighting technology that's been developed over the last few years.  Then Govee is one provider that has been nailing it recently, and your wallet will appreciate it   --> "I love smart lighting, especially being able to control all of the lights in my house with my voice, but I absolutely do not love paying for them. As convenient and clever as Philips Hue bulbs are, they're crazy expensive. Recently there's been a compelling alternative popping up all over Amazon, called Govee. This company has been producing a ton of new smart LED products which compete directly with many of the more expensive Philips products, and today this popular 32-foot light strip is now only $31."  The 32-foot Govee LED strip offers 300 individual LEDS with a smart controller packed with features. The Govee app will allow you to control the color of multiple sections at once, and the light strip itself has a microphone built in so you can enable a music mode and have your lights dance with the music. The app connects to Alexa and Google Assistant, so you can quickly and easily add both voice control and presets for different times of the day with ease. And for $50 cheaper than the comparable Philips Hue strips, it's much easier to cover your house in these great lights.

Israel’s Defence Ministry and defence contractor Elbit Systems Ltd are developing an airborne laser weapon to shoot down drones and other flying targets, officials said on Monday, predicting a prototype would be ready by 2025.  They said the as-yet unnamed laser weapon could be incorporated in Israel’s multi-tier air defences, which include the Iron Dome system for downing short-range rockets and the David’s Sling and Arrow systems against ballistic missiles.  Preliminary tests of the laser, flown on a light aircraft, were successful against several drones at ranges of around 1 km (half a mile) in recent days, Brigadier-General Yaniv Rotem of the ministry’s research and development section told reporters.  “As far as we know we are the first one (country) - but maybe, for sure we are among the first countries - that have tried and succeeded (at) such an...interception,” he said.  Elbit makes C-Music, a defence system fitted to aircraft which uses a laser to “blind” incoming missiles. Oren Sabag, a senior Elbit official, said the new laser weapon would use tracking technologies similar to C-Music’s but would destroy targets by heating them up so they catch fire in “a few seconds”.  Rotem said a 100-KW prototype with a range of 20 km (12.5 miles) would come out in 3 - 4 years. That suggested an operational version would take longer to roll out.

On Thursday morning, Waymo announced that it is working with trucking company JB Hunt to autonomously haul cargo loads in Texas. Waymo's Class 8 trucks equipped with the autonomous driving software and hardware system called Waymo Driver will operate on I-45 in Texas, taking cargo between Houston and Fort Worth.  However, the trucks will still carry humans—a trained truck driver and Waymo technicians—to supervise and take over if necessary.  Although Waymo is better known for the autonomous taxi service it operates in a suburb of Phoenix, the company started experimenting with adding its autonomous technology to freight haulers several years ago. And in 2018, it began testing those trucks in the Atlanta area. What makes today's news notable is the partnership with a major truck operator.  "This will be one of the first opportunities for JB Hunt to receive data and feedback on customer freight moved with a Class 8 tractor operating at this level of autonomy. While we believe there will be a need for highly skilled, professional drivers for many years to come, it is important for JB Hunt as an industry leader to be involved early in the development of advanced autonomous technologies and driving systems to ensure that their implementation will improve efficiency while enhancing safety," said Craig Harper, chief sustainability officer at JB Hunt.

This isn’t some electric Powerwheels toy – it can fit a couple of adults shoulder to shoulder. It’s more closely comparable to a golf cart in size and power, yet reaches a decent speed of 25 mph (40 km/h).

It’s also much cheaper than golf carts, which cost around $7,000 in the US.  Amazingly, this mini-Jeep is quite affordably priced at a mere $1,280.  But based on my conversations earlier this year with the Chinese factory, the final price shipped to a US port seemed to put it closer to $1,700.  That’s actually pretty close to what Electrek reader Kyle Day found when he set out to order his own electric Jeep.

He originally told me several months ago that he planned to buy one and have it sent to the US. I offered him my customs broker’s contact info (I have a problem and it’s called “buying too much weird stuff from overseas”) and I asked him to keep me updated about how the process went.  The whole exercise was fairly new to Kyle, but ultimately he made it through the purchase, importation, customs clearance, and delivery steps to receive his very own electric mini Jeep. But the adventure wasn’t over there – because it turns out that getting the Jeep assembled was a bit more of a task than any of us had expected.  Read on for my interview with Kyle and to live out his experience vicariously.