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Fisker EMotion car

Radical new battery technology for a $130,000 electric sedan

01/12/18 LA Times — Solid-state automotive batteries, like those being designed for Fisker Inc.'s all-electric EMotion supercar, will eventually exist, says materials science and engineering professor Gerbrand Ceder, but “it's not going to happen as fast as people think.”
Illustration of autonomous vehicle situation on city street

Are we going too fast on driverless cars?

12/15/17 Science — Automakers, high-tech companies and politicians are solidly behind self-driving cars and trucks as a sure path to a better, more mobile society. But research on the social, economic and environmental effects of autonomous vehicles is sparse - something Berkeley transportation engineers are seeking to remedy.

Case studies in forward thinking

11/01/17 — Nine Berkeley Engineering faculty members share some of their forward-looking work and how it might impact what's to come.
High-speer rail demo outside the Capitol in Sacramento

13.5-mile tunnel will make or break California’s bullet train

10/23/17 LA Times — A critical part of California's high-speed rail project is a 13.5-mile tunnel through the Diablo Range - a landmark project whose costs may greatly exceed initial expectations. "This is not good news for taxpayers of California," says civil engineering professor William Ibbs, who has consulted on similar rail projects around the world.
New École Polytechnique and the Institute of Transportation Studies agreement

École Polytechnique and Berkeley partner for new transportation program

10/11/17 — École Polytechnique and the Institute of Transportation Studies have signed a new partnership agreement for the new École Polytechnique's Executive Master degree program. The new program will train transportation leaders to design, deploy and manage strategies and projects for companies and organizations that have an international focus.
Max Chilton with Berkeley Formula SAE students and their car

IndyCar driver Max Chilton spreads the gospel of STEAM

09/15/17 IndyCar — Speaking to a spirited group of students of all ages at Berkeley, IndyCar driver Max Chilton spread the word on the importance of STEAM - science, technology, engineering, arts and math - to successfully educate the leaders of tomorrow.
Victorious CalSol team members surround their car, Zephyr, at the track in Austin, Texas.

CalSol finishes 1st at Formula Sun Grand Prix

08/17/17 Daily Californian — The CalSol student team has won the Formula Sun Grand Prix, an annual solar vehicle track race for college teams from around the nation. CalSol's four-year-old Zephyr took first place in the July race in Austin, TX, completing 228 laps with zero penalties.
Fleet of electric cars

I-Corps supports entrepreneurs building STEM companies

07/13/17 — The regional I-Corps program, an NSF-funded collaboration among UC Berkeley, UCSF and Stanford, teaches committed entrepreneurs from STEM disciplines to take a hard look at their ideas and turn them into real, sought-after products in the market.
Avideh Zakhor

Avideh Zakhor: the brains behind Google Earth and Street View

05/26/17 Mercury News — EECS professor Avideh Zakhor, inventor of the 3-D modeling technology underlying Google Earth and Street View, is now turning her attention indoors. Her new startup - Indoor Reality - aims to create virtual reality and augmented reality technology for the mapping of building interiors.
Sketch of Hyperlane concept

A superfast lane for self-driving cars?

03/22/17 Fortune — Imagine a future where self-driving cars zip beside interstates at 120 mph, with absolutely zero congestion. That future could exist as soon as 2050, according to grad students Baiyu Chen (B.S.'14 CEE, M.S.'15 CEE, M.S.'17 EECS) and Anthony Barrs, whose Hyperlane idea was awarded top prize and $50,000 at the Infrastructure Vision 2050 Challenge.
Karl Hedrick

ME professor Karl Hedrick dies at 72

02/28/17 — J. Karl Hedrick, the James Marshall Wells Academic Chair and Professor of Mechanical Engineering, passed away on February 22 after a long battle with lung cancer. He was an expert on nonlinear control theory and its applications to transportation. See also the Daily Cal's obituary for Prof. Hedrick.
Kenichi Soga

Hashtagging the way to safer infrastructure

11/29/16 — Civil and environmental engineering professor Kenichi Soga delivered a CITRIS talk about using social media and sensor-laden environments to build smart infrastructure.
Sign for Nobel laureate bike parking space

Nobel (bike) parking

11/01/16 — Reserved parking for Nobel laureates won't be limited to cars anymore. New, gold-colored bike racks were installed just outside of the Free Speech Café in recognition of Berkeley's contributions to the 2007 Nobel-prize winning International Panel on Climate Change.
Plants growing on high-rise building

Green cities

11/01/16 — The majority of the world's population is projected to live in cities by the year 2050. Although cities are considered strains the environment, nuclear engineering professor Daniel Kammen see the potential for cities to be models of sustainability.
Berkeley research team and their autonomous car

Berkeley team recognized for autonomous car research

10/05/16 — ME professors Francesco Borrelli and Karl Hedrick, Ph.D. student Ashwin Carvalho, and Associate Director for Self-Driving Vehicle Development Chan Kyu Lee were in attendance for the U.S. Department of Transportation's announcement of a new policy on Automated Vehicle Development.
Jitendra Malik of UC Berkeley and Fei-Fei Li of Stanford

A lesson of Tesla crashes? Computer vision can’t do it all yet

09/21/16 New York Times — EECS department chair Jitendra Malik, a researcher in computer vision for three decades, doesn't own a Tesla, but he has advice for people who do. “Knowing what I know about computer vision,,” he said, “I wouldn't take my hands off the steering wheel.”
Bikes, streetcars, buses and more vehicles on a San Francisco street

SF, UC Berkeley to continue collaborating on ‘smart cities’

09/09/16 — This year's bid by San Francisco and UC Berkeley failed to win the U.S. Department of Transportation's Smart City Challenge, but the city and university have agreed to continue to jointly explore innovative urban transportation options, and ways that technology can improve city life in general.
Otto self-driving truck on highway test run

Uber Is betting we’ll see driverless 18-wheelers before taxis

09/08/16 MIT Technology Review — With its acquisition of self-driving truck startup Otto, Uber is hoping for a shortcut in the race to profit from driverless vehicles. But research engineer Steven Shladover of Berkeley's California Partners for Advanced Transportation Technology Program (PATH) sees challenges - real and perceived - in putting 40-ton trucks on the road with only software behind the wheel.