Toronto, Ontario — Ford’s Mustang Mach-E sets a Guinness World Record for the longest distance travelled on a single charge; while BMW Group reports a successful trial of Figure’s latest humanoid robot at its plant in South Carolina in this weekly electric and autonomous vehicle report.
An electric record
A driving team from the United Kingdom has set a Guinness World Record for the longest distance travelled by an electric vehicle (EV) on a single charge—the Ford Mustang Mach-E travelling 569 miles, or 915.717 kilometres, and 3,379 feet.
The record-winning run took over 24 hours and began on July 27, 2024. A single-motor Mach-E premium with the larger Extended Range battery pack was used.
The Mach-E was driven on U.K. public roads, including 33 kilometres with the vehicle at a zero percent battery capacity. The vehicle averaged ten kilometres per kWh.
Webfleet commented that while the course was “designed to emulate real-world driving conditions, breaking the world record likely required unrealistically conservative driving.”
A Mercedes-Benz Vision EQXX concept vehicle previously achieved a reported 1,200 kilometres on a charge during a 2022 trip from Germany to the U.K., but was discounted due to not being an in-production vehicle.
Humanoid help
BMW Group recently announced that a trial run using a humanoid robot in vehicle production has been successful.
The trial was specifically conducted at the BMW Group Plant Spartanburg in Greer, South Carolina over several weeks using robotics company, Figure’s, latest humanoid robot, Figure 02.
While working at the automaker’s plant, the robot inserted sheet metal parts into specific fixtures to be assembled as part of a vehicle’s chassis.
“The developments in the field of robotics are very promising. With an early test operation, we are now determining possible applications for humanoid robots in production. We want to accompany this technology from development to industrialization,” said Milan Nedeljkoviv, BMW AG Board of Management for Production in a news release.
Brett Adcock, Figure founder and CEO further said, “Figure 02 has significant technical advancements, which enable the robot to perform a wide range of complex tasks fully autonomously.”
The robotics company claims that Figure 02—its fourth-generation robot—is the world’s most advanced humanoid robot. Specifically, Figure 02 has three times the processing power of its predecessor, improved voice communication, better cameras, microphones and sensors, a high-performance battery and human-scale hands with 16 degrees of freedom per hand as well as human equivalent strength.
Both companies have concluded that the combination of two-legged mobility and advanced dexterity means that Figure 02 is ideally suited for use in areas with physically demanding, unsafe, or repetitive tasks to improve ergonomics and safety for human workers.
BMW has announced that with this latest successful trial, it plans to continue working with Figure on data capturing and training capabilities for the Figure 02 robots.
