Toronto, Ontario — In this weekly electric and autonomous vehicle report, Tesla announces that the upcoming Cybertruck range extender battery will not be user installed; while researchers at Korean and American universities have developed a black paint to help autonomous vehicles better see environmental surroundings.
Range responses
Tesla Cybertruck’s lead engineer, Wes Morrill, has confirmed that the electric truck’s optional range extender battery pack will not be user-installed.
Morrill specifically confirmed on social media platform X that “the range extender to be offered by the automaker will be structurally mounted so it’s safe in a crash.”
As a result, owners looking to get their hands on the optional battery pack will have to schedule a service appointment with Tesla to have the technology installed.
Currently, no specifications or pricing have been announced for the range-extended battery option, and Tesla has also not said when the technology will be readily available.
However, Elon Musk, Tesla CEO has responded on X that the range extender battery pack will take up about a third of the truck’s bed.
Back to black
Researchers from the Korean universities of Hanbat National, Chungnam National and Hanseo, as well as the University of Texas in St. Austin, United States have developed a highly reflective black paint that could enable self-driving vehicles to detect objects in the dark using only light detection and ranging LiDAR systems.
The nanoparticle (NP) paint is a mix of titanium tetrachloride and other common paint-based substances to create a reflectance rate of 40.9 percent.
The research team says that in testing, objects coated with the paint were successfully recognized by three different LiDAR sensors up to five metres away—a robot sensor, a 360-degree rotating sensor and a MEMs mirror.
The blackness levels of the paint are also maintained in high heat and ultraviolet (UV) light, with the team further reporting that a sample of the material was successfully heated to 300 degrees Celsius under atmospheric conditions.
The research team believes that the paint applies to both cars and roadways, but will continue to conduct testing on the product.
