The death of a person earlier this year while driving with Autopilot in a Tesla sedan, along with news of more crashes involving Teslas operating in Autopilot, has triggered a torrent of concerns about the safety of self-driving cars.

But there is a way to improve safety across a rapidly evolving range of advanced mobility technologies and vehicles – from semi-autonomous driver assist features like Tesla’s Autopilot to a fully autonomous self-driving car like Google’s.

The answer is connectivity: wireless communication that connects vehicles to each other, to the surrounding infrastructure, even to bicyclists and pedestrians. While connectivity and automation each provide benefits on their own, combining them promises to transform the movement of people and goods more than either could alone, and to do so safely. The U.S. Department of Transportation may propose requiring all new cars to have vehicle-to-vehicle communication, known as V2V, as early as this fall.

Tesla blamed the fatal crash on the failure of both its Autopilot technology and the driver to see the white tractor-trailer against a bright sky. But the crash – and the death – might have been avoided entirely if the Tesla and the tractor-trailer it hit had been able to talk to each other.

Limitations of vehicles that are not connected

Autonomous vehicles that aren’t connected to each other is a bit like gathering together the smartest people in the world but not letting them talk to each other. Connectivity enables smart decisions by individual drivers, by self-driving vehicles and at every level of automation in between.

Despite all the safety advances in recent decades, there are still more than 30,000 traffic deaths every year in the United States, and the number may be on the rise. After years of steady declines, fatalities rose 7.2 percent in 2015 to 35,092, up from 32,744 in 2014, representing the largest percentage increase in nearly 50 years, according to the U.S. DOT.

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We’ve all experienced electromagnetic interference, whether it’s hearing your car engine break in your AM radio station or the squealing of speakers at a concert when a cellphone gets to close. However, researchers from Drexel University may have found a way to all but stop this interference though what they’re calling MXene (2D Transition Metal Carbides).

Electromagnetic interference isn’t just annoying for users, it’s damaging for devices and could lead to the overall degradation of cellphones, laptops, and other electronics.

Typically, to block this interference, scientists encase the interior of electronics with conductive metal (i.e. metal, copper, or aluminum). But researchers for this new study found that a few-atoms thin titanium carbide may be more effective at blocking such interference. Additionally, it is extremely easy to apply – with the ability to be sprayed on to any surface just like paint.

“With technology advancing so fast, we expect smart devices to have more capabilities and become smaller every day. This means packing more electronic parts in one device and more devices surrounding us,” says ECS Fellow Yury Gogotsi, lead author of the research. “To have all these electronic components working without interfering with each other, we need shields that are thin, light and easy to apply to devices of different shapes and sizes. We believe MXenes are going to be the next generation of shielding materials for portable, flexible and wearable electronics.”

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One year ago Tesla Motors announced plans to build its Gigafactory to produce huge numbers of batteries, giving life to the old saying, “if you want something done right, do it yourself.”

By making electric car batteries that Tesla used to buy from others, CEO Elon Musk adopted a strategy made famous by Henry Ford – build a vertically integrated company that controls the many stages of production. By integrating “backward” into its supply chain, Musk is betting Tesla can improve the performance and lower the costs of batteries for its vehicles.

Now, Musk wants Tesla to acquire SolarCity for similar reasons, but with a slightly different twist.

SolarCity is one of the largest installers of solar photovoltaic panels, with some 300,000 residential, commercial and industrial customers in 27 states. The proposed merger with SolarCity would vertically integrate Tesla forward, as opposed to backward, into the supply chain. That is, when people come to Tesla stores to buy a vehicle, they will be able to arrange installation of solar panels – and potentially home batteries – at the same time.

This latest move would bring Tesla one step closer to being the fully integrated provider of sustainable energy solutions for the masses that Elon Musk envisions. But does it make business sense?

The real issue in my mind comes down to batteries and innovation.

Creating demand and scale

Although installing batteries is not a big part of SolarCity’s current business, the company is a potentially large consumer of Tesla’s batteries from the Gigafactory. Tesla makes Powerwall batteries for homes and larger Powerpack systems for commercial and industrial customers.

Any increase in the flow of batteries through the factory gives Tesla better economies of scale and potential for innovation. Innovation comes with the accumulated experience gained from building a key component of its electric vehicles as well as Tesla’s energy storage systems. As the company manufactures more batteries, it will find ways to innovate around battery design and production.

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Last week, Samsung ordered a global recall of its Galaxy Note 7 phones after investigations into claims of exploding devices revealed faulty lithium-ion batteries. Now, the FAA is strongly urging passengers to forge bringing the device on airliners due to safety risks.

Earlier this year, we spoke to ECS member K.M. Abraham about lithium-ion battery devices and safety concerns associated with them.

“It is safe to say that these well-publicized hazardous events are rooted in the uncontrolled release of the large amount of energy stored in Li-ion batteries as a result of manufacturing defects, inferior active and inactive materials used to build cells and battery packs, substandard manufacturing and quality control practices by a small fraction of cell manufacturers, and user abuses of overcharge and over-discharge, short-circuit, external thermal shocks and violent mechanical impacts,” Abraham said. “Safety hazards of Li-ion batteries occur when the fundamental principle of controlled release of energy on which battery technology is based is compromised by materials and manufacturing defects and operational abuses.”

Read Abraham’s full paper on Li-ion safety and building better batteries.

Interest in electric and hybrid vehicles continues to grow across the globe. The world economy saw EV sales go from around 315,000 in 2014 to 536,000 in 2015, and trends so far for 2016 show that the number of vehicles sold this year is on track to far exceed numbers we’ve seen in previous years.

Moving EVs forward

But in order to make these cars, there needs to be an energy storage source that is not only sustainable, but cheap to produce, with high efficiency, and can be easily mass produced. One of the leading contenders in that race has become fuel cell technology.

In recent years, new materials and better heat management processes have advanced fuel cells. Now, researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab’s NERSC center (including ECS Fellow Radoslav Adzic and ECS member Kotaro Sasaki) are putting their chips on polymer electrolyte fuel cells (PEFCs) to be at the forefront of fuel cell technology due recent finds. In a new study, the group showed that PEFCs could be made to run more efficiently and produced more cost-effectively by reducing the amount of a single key ingredient: platinum.

Laboratory curiosity

While fuel cells date back to 1839, they spent a majority of their existence as laboratory curiosities. It wasn’t until the 1950s when fuel cells finally made their way to the main stage, eventually going on to power the Gemini and Apollo space flights in the 1960s.

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Scientists can now directly probe hard-to-see layers of chemistry due to the development of an X-ray toolkit out of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

The research team behind the initiative believes that their development could provide insight about battery performance and corrosion. Additionally, it could give insight into a variety of chemical reactions, including biological and environmental processes.

The from LBNL:

In a first-of-its-kind experiment at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source, an X-ray source known as a synchrotron, researchers demonstrated this new, direct way to study the inner workings of an activity center in chemistry known as an “electrochemical double layer” that forms where liquids meets solids—where battery fluid (the electrolyte) meets an electrode, for example (batteries have two electrodes: an anode and a cathode).

Read the full article.

In a battery, changes in electrical potential can be seen in the electrochemical double layer.

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An interdisciplinary team made up of researchers from Stanford University and the U.S. Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory recently developed a new catalyst that carries out a solar-powered reaction 100 times faster than ever before.

Additionally, the catalyst’s performance improves as time goes on and it can stand up to intense, acidic conditions. In creating the catalyst, the researchers used less iridium than would typically be used, potentially lowering the cost to produce hydrogen or carbon-based fuels that could power a range of renewable, sustainable alternatives.

This from SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory:

The discovery of the catalyst – a very thin film of iridium oxide layered on top of strontium iridium oxide – was the result of an extensive search by three groups of experts for a more efficient way to accelerate the oxygen evolution reaction, or OER, which is half of a two-step process for splitting water with sunlight.

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Deadline: October 1, 2016

The Carl Wagner Memorial Award was established in 1980 to recognize mid-career achievement, excellence in research areas of interest of the Society, and significant contributions in the teaching or guidance of students or colleagues in education, industry, or government.

The award consists of a silver medal and a corresponding wall plaque, complimentary meeting registration for award recipient and companion, a dinner held in recipient’s honor during the designated meeting, and Society Life Membership. The next Wagner Award will be recognized at the 232nd ECS biannual meeting in National Harbor, MD in October 2017 where the recipient will deliver a general address on a subject related to the contributions for which the award is being presented.

View the full list of past recipients, expanded details of the award and APPLY NOW!

ECS understands the value of recognition. The Carl Wagner Memorial Award is part of ECS Honors & Awards Program, one that has recognized professional and volunteer achievement within our multi-disciplinary sciences for decades.

Over the past few years, researchers have been exploring graphene’s amazing properties and vast potential applications. Now, a team from Iowa State University is looking to take those properties enabled by graphene and applied them to sensors and other technologies.

Many scientists have had a hard time moving graphene from the lab to the marketplace, but the research team from Iowa State University saw potential in using inkjet printers to create multi-layer graphene circuits and electrodes for the production of flexible, wearable electronics.

“Could we make graphene at scales large enough for glucose sensors?” ECS member and Iowa State University postdoctoral researcher, Suprem Das, wanted to know.

(MORE: Read more of Das’ work in the ECS Digital Library.)

The problem with the printing process is that the graphene would then have to be treated to improve its electrical conductivity, which could degrade the flexibility. Instead of using high temperatures and chemical to do this treatment, Das and other members of the team opted to use lasers.

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Carbon dioxide emissions account for 80 percent of all greenhouse gases pumped into the environment, totaling in at a staggering 40 tons of CO₂ currently emitted from burning fossil fuels. In a response to the high levels of CO₂, which have been linked to the accelerating rates in climate change, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has called for a 30 percent decrease in emissions of the power sector. Former ECS member Susan Rempe is looking to help the sector achieve that goal through the development of the CO₂ Memzyme.

Researchers claim the Memzyme is the only cost-effective way to capture and process CO₂. Further, the team states that the Memzyme — which is a membrane with an active layer holding an enzyme — has prefect selectivity.

The development could help capture CO₂ from coal-fired power plants and is 10 times thinner than a soap bubble.