Technology: VW’s New “Mobile Charging Robot” Turns Every Carpark Into EV Charging Stations

From a VW media online news release December 26, 2019:

“The mobile charging robot will spark a revolution when it comes to charging in different parking facilities, such as multistorey car parks, parking spaces and underground car parks because we bring the charging infrastructure to the car Revolution_in_the_underground_car_park__Volkswagen_lets_its_charging_robots_loose-Small-10821and not the other way around. With this, we are making almost every car park electric, without any complex individual infrastructural measures”, summarises Mark Möller, Head of Development at Volkswagen Group Components.

“It’s a visionary prototype, which can be made into reality quite quickly, if the general conditions are right”, Möller continues. Volkswagen Group Components is researching different approaches to the assembly of charging infrastructure and has already developed several successful products. The flexible quick charging station and DC wall boxes are already part of a future charging family. Customer-oriented, intelligent and flexible approaches to charging are at the centre of the research. Other innovative products such as the charging robot are currently being developed.

  • Volkswagen Group Components presents a new and visionary charging concept
  • Mobile robots will charge electric vehicles completely autonomously in future
  • Every parking space can become a charging point

Volkswagen provides a glimpse into the future in which the search for charging stations for electric cars comes to an end. Volkswagen Group Components’ mobile charging robot takes over this task – and drives to the electric car completely autonomously.

Read VW news release

History: The Early Promise, Fiery Failure Of Eucalytus Trees In California

From a The Economist magazine article and podcast:

The Economist podcastsThe real California, though, the California of immigrant dreams that break and get reborn, of lives as they turn out not as they are planned, is the California of the eucalyptus.

The Long and Tangled History of California's Eucalyptus Trees The Economist December 2019Like his friend John Muir, Lukens believed that California desperately needed more forests. Since the mid-19th century forests, and their loss, had been the principal focus of conservationist thought in America. According to Jared Farmer, who traces the history of the eucalyptus in California in “Trees in Paradise” (2013), Lukens and Muir were particularly keen on growing forests as a way to provide water—always a key to power in the state. Trees brought rain and captured fog and moisture; without forests, the men feared the state’s great cities would dry up.

“EUCALYPTUS PROMISES TO BE GREAT INDUSTRY”, announced the front page of the San Luis Obispo Daily Telegram, later claiming that what the speculators following where Lukens had led were planting “will be the largest artificial forest in the world when completed”.

Read The Economist article

1930’S Racing Cars: Amazing “Bugatti Type 59” Reunion (Classic Driver)

From a Classic Driver Magazine online article:

Bugatti Type 59 Classic Driver photo 2019During this year’s Monterey Car Week, all four of Bugatti’s hallowed Type 59s were reunited for the first time since 1935. We spoke to the man who pulled off arguably the most historically significant automotive rendezvous of the decade…

In the fabled legend of Bugatti’s racing cars, there is one model that is so beautiful and so elusive that is stands at the top of every enthusiast of the great French marque’s wish list: the Type 59. Along with the input of Jean Bugatti, who had been one of the Classic Driver logodriving forces behind the introduction of the twin-cam engine, Ettore Bugatti created the ultimate expression of his jewel-like Grand Prix car.

Read Classic Driver article

Art Videos: “J.M.W. Turner – Watercolors From Tate” At Mystic Seaport Museum

British painter J.M.W. Turner was both prolific and peripatetic, producing more than 30,000 watercolors during a lifetime in which he traveled throughout Europe.

J.M.W. Turner Watercolor Paintings Exhibitions PBS Newshour December 26 2019

But these works are extremely susceptible to light damage and can be shown only once in a generation. Now, they’re on view at the Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut — their only North American stop. Jared Bowen of WGBH reports.

Video Profiles: Beach Boys Singer Mike Love (PBS)

Singer and songwriter Mike Love is best known as one of the founding members of the Beach Boys, whose infectious harmonies and unique California sound first hit the airways nearly 60 years ago, in 1961. Through the ups and downs of a long career, Love still considers it a “precious miracle” the way fans connect with his music. He shares his Brief But Spectacular take on his life as a Beach Boy.

Art Videos: Vincent Van Gogh’s Route Crossing Europe (1853-1890)

Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam logoVincent van Gogh (1853-1890) is one of the world’s most loved artists. His paintings, drawings and letters inspire people of all ages. His work can be admired in numerous museums around the world. Many places where the artist lived and worked can be visited, from the Netherlands to the South of France. About 25 organisations and museums in the Netherlands, Belgium and France have joined forces under the name Van Gogh Europe. Together they are actively engaged in maintaining and promoting Van Gogh’s heritage.

Van Gogh Museum

Photography & Art: “Surrealist Lee Miller” Was “Caustically Brilliant”

Surrealist Lee Miller by Antony Penrose Lee Miller Archives Farley House and Gallery Publisher 2020The Surrealist eye informed everything Miller did, and her work presents the world in a way that encourages us to view it in a different manner. Written and collected by her son Antony, Surrealist Lee Miller amasses more than one hundred full-page images from throughout the artist’s life as an attestation to her wonderful way of seeing.

A Surrealist before she even knew of the movement, Lee Miller was one of the most original photographic artists of the twentieth century. David E. Scherman, LIFE photographer and Miller’s close friend, described her as “caustically brilliant, yet totally loyal, unpretentious, human and intolerant of sham.

She was a consummate artist and a consummate clown; at once an upstate New York hick and cosmopolitan grande dame; a cold, soignée fashion model and a hoyden. . . . She was the nearest thing I knew to a mid-20th century renaissance woman.”

Publisher

New American Cars: “2020 Corvette C8”, Mid-Engine With Retractable Hardtop

From a New York Times online article:

The 2020 Corvette Stingray has moved its engine behind the driver and passenger, adopting the physics-approved layout that brought Ferdinand Porsche his first racing successes in the 1930s. Today, this approach is associated with money-torching supercars from Ferrari, Lamborghini and McLaren.

The long-awaited “mid-engine” Corvette easily outruns its formidable predecessor, as I learned during a time-warping desert drive near Tortilla Flat, Ariz. The eighth-generation “C8” Corvette is earning rapturous reviews and dominating industry awards, as a car that can take on European exotics that cost $200,000 and more, but at a $59,995 base price that reads like a misprint.

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Top New Art Books: “Wayne Thiebaud – Mountains 1965 – 2019” (Rizolli)

Wayne Thiebaud Mountains 1965 - 2019 Rizolli Book January 2020In the 2000s, California-based painter Wayne Thiebaud began focusing on a series of mountain paintings, a subject he had first addressed in the 1960s and 1970s. Rendered in his signature confectionary palette, these colorful works combine memories of mountains he had seen in childhood and observations of the summits of the Sierra Nevada Range in Yosemite. With their heroic, exaggerated proportions and unusual perspectives, these paintings seem to combine fiction and reality. Conveying a sense of the sublime and the vast magnitude of our surroundings, they draw upon the history of landscape painting of the American West.

About The Author

Michael M. Thomas is a former curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and former investment partner of Lehman Brothers. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Margaretta Lovell is professor of American Art at UC Berkeley.

Publisher website

Travel & Food: “Bellevue” Area Of Zurich Is Home Of Legendary “Kronenhalle Restaurant” (Podcast)

In 1924, Hulda and Gottlieb Zumsteg took over the erstwhile “Hôtel de la Couronne” on Rämistrasse 4, at the corner of Bellevue in Zurich. They reopened as the Restaurant Kronenhalle. Under the skilled management of restaurateur Hulda Zumsteg it soon became the meeting point of writers and artists.

Restaurant Kronenhalle Zurch MenuThe restaurant became popular with the local establishment and names such as Coco Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent, Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti, James Joyce, Richard Strauss, Max Frisch and Friedrich Dürrenmatt also graced the guest list. The Kronenhalle owes as much to its renowned guests as to Gustav Zumsteg, Hulda’s son, who followed in his mother’s footsteps, while putting his own inimitable stamp on it. His passion for art contributed to the Kronenhalle’s considerable prominence. Since 2005, his estate is being administered by the Hulda und Gustav Zumsteg foundation according to his last will.

Kronenhalle website

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