In Maracaibo, a once wealthy Venezuelan oil city, two innovators are trying to push a new trend: small electric and solar-powered cars that offer an alternative for people fed up with regular fuel shortages and long lines as the gas station.
Jose Cintron, a 43-year-old electrical technician, has developed a solar-powered car, while Augusto Pradelli, 61, has created a micro electric vehicle (EV) that can also use solar panels. The two cars are built on the frame of old golf carts with more powerful batteries.
“These electric motors don’t make noise, they don’t vibrate, they don’t pollute, they are the future,” Pradelli said in his workshop in the capital of Zulia State, in the far northwest of Venezuela. “The world has to think about how to get out of pollution and global warming.”
Photo: REUTERS
The small vehicles can carry four people and travel 25km to 40km with one charge, he said.
The batteries can be recharged with the solar panels in 10 hours or faster through an electric charging point, he added.
“The beauty of solar charge is that as long as there is sun the car is always charging,” he said. “The sun is free and that’s what you have to take advantage of.”
Photo: AFP
The two men, who self-funded their innovations, are hoping to work together to develop a hybrid EV and eventually attain national production, a big dream in a country that was once one of the world’s top oil producers.
“Solar energy is the future, we have to stop relying on fossil fuels,” Cintron said. “But it’s not overnight and oil is not going to go away that easily.”
However, both men said the environmental benefits were only part of the lure for people in the city, known as Marabinos. More of an attraction was the way solar-powered cars could help with incessant power outages and fuel shortages.
Production has dropped in Venezuela’s state-owned oil sector after years of poor maintenance and a lack of investment. Long lines at gas stations are common.
Maracaibo is Venezuela’s second-largest city, with tropical temperatures of more than 34°C almost all year round.
The heat makes walking uncomfortable — a selling point for EVs.
The solar panels also provide a solution to regular power cuts that have hit the region.
Pradelli said Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro had even indicated support at a science and technology event last month, when his vehicle had been on display.
“The president told me: ‘Augusto, I’ll buy it from you,’” Pradelli said, adding that he then told Maduro he would need the means to produce it.
“It would be necessary to manufacture them, mister president, and for that an industry, an assembler, is needed,” he recalled telling Maduro.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to