The bipartisan infrastructure plan's total of $15 billion in loans and grants for an electric-vehicle charging network lines up with what the Biden administration has proposed, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm says. However, Granholm notes that consumer incentives to buy EVs are currently missing in the Senate's plan, although they may eventually be included in a reconciliation measure.

Craft Aerospace is developing a novel kind of vertical takeoff and landing aircraft that could serve as a city-to-city air taxi. The prototype uses flaps to capture airflow from the engines to provide lift, a technique that has never been used on a production aircraft.

Varda Space Industries, a startup that aims to establish a manufacturing facility in space, raised $42 million in its Series A funding round. With the new capital, the company hopes to have its first manufacturing facility operating in space as early as 2023.

Although US retail sales of new cars this month are expected to grow 3.7% from a year before, the total of 1.2 million vehicles will be down from the expectations established by preceding months. That's according to LMC Automotive and J.D. Power, whose analysis also says that the supply squeeze points to record dealer profits from new cars, with Thomas King noting that "consumers will spend more money buying new vehicles than ever before in the month of July."

Rohm Semiconductor brought out the RGWxx65C line of hybrid insulated-gate bipolar transistors, featuring an integrated 650V silicon carbide Schottky barrier diode. The IGBTs are meant for use in automotive electronics, such as converter and inverter circuits for electric vehicles.

John Deere started outfitting its agricultural equipment with internet of things technology a decade ago, said Deanna Kovar, vice president of production and precision ag production systems. "There are items around data privacy, user experience, automation and autonomy where agriculture is in a unique seat to be able to provide insights to other industries about how we're implementing technology at scale," said Kovar.

Ryder System is partnering with TuSimple, a self-driving truck developer, to create terminals for TuSimple's Autonomous Freight Network. The project will begin at Ryder's fleet maintenance facilities in the South as TuSimple expands its fleet services from Phoenix to Orlando, Fla.

Residents in low-income neighborhoods around Roxbury, Mass., will soon have access to electric vehicles thanks to a car-sharing nonprofit. Good2Go is working with Mobility Development on the pilot project, which they hope can be replicated in other cities.

Three groups in Oakland County, Mich., are offering a 14-week certification program in robotics technicians and programmable logic controllers. "The goal of the program is to get people up-skilled and then out working in the industry," says Kristen Charlton, program manager at Oakland Community College.

Amazon is kicking off what it describes as "one of the fastest modern commercial electrification programs" by testing electric delivery vehicles in Detroit and 15 other cities. The retail giant could operate 10,000 electric vehicles as early as 2022, en route to an eventual fleet of up to 100,000 vehicles.

Space's relative void means there's little to no sound, although spacecraft have managed to pull some recordings from other bodies, such as winds on Venus. A recent video documentary mixes reality and imagination to portray how sound might function on Mars, the moon Titan and other areas of our solar system.

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Recurrent founder Scott Case is working to give the power of information back to the consumer! On SAE Tomorrow Today, we discussed the used EV market and Recurrent's battery reports that are helping people buy and sell with confidence.