EuroWire May 2017

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and these assistance systems are key to achieving our goal.
We do believe that accident-free driving is a realistic vision. And
that is why we’re very supportive of perfecting these assistance
systems, which ultimately will lead to Stage 5 autonomous
driving as well.
I would say that, by the beginning of the next decade, it [will
become] more and more di cult to have an accident with a
Mercedes.
† As de ned in Wired (26th August, 2016), a Stage 5 car can
handle all driving tasks and go anywhere: “No human, no
steering wheel, no pedals. Climb in, tell it where you want to
go (if it doesn’t already know from reading your calendar),
and get back to looking at your phone.”
Energy
One of the greatest potential sources of
renewable energy, the Sun, inspires an
electrically powered German rival
“Our parent star is a very nicky worker. It refuses to work at
night, dislikes cloudy days, doesn’t do as well at higher latitudes,
and in some parts of the world it disappears entirely for months
at a time.”
Writing from Monroe, Washington, in New Atlas, David Szondy
reviewed the public debut of the brainchild of scientists and
engineers at the German Space Center (DLR) who, needing a
more reliable and controllable Sun for laboratory work, built
one of their own. Their three-storey “Synlight” in Jülich, North
Rhine-Westphalia, will support such research projects as the
development of processes for producing hydrogen fuel from
sunlight. (“World’s Largest Arti cial Sun Rises in Germany,”
23rd March)
Essentially a sunlamp powered by electricity, the huge device
works like a backwards parabolic re ector. As explained by
Mr Szondy, where a more conventional spotlamp uses a single
powerful light source focused by re ection from a parabolic
mirror, Synlight is itself a giant parabola made up of 149 xenon
short-arc lamps.
These can be adjusted to focus on a single spot measuring 8
inches square and exposed to solar radiant power of disparate
strengths.
At maximum setting, the device reportedly can deliver 320
kilowatts (kW), or 10,000 times the normal solar radiation
experienced on Earth’s surface, and temperatures up to 3,000ºC
(5,400ºF).
According to DLR, these extremely high temperatures are
necessary to carry out research on processes that use the Sun to
produce solar fuels.
As noted in New Atlas, although hydrogen is seen by some as
the “green” fuel of the future because it leaves behind only water
when it burns, producing it requires large amounts of energy –
usually from the burning of fossil fuels. Synlight may provide the
solution. In addition to solar-generated hydrogen, DLR envisions
it proving useful in the study of how materials age under
extreme UV rays.