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Franky Zapata announced the crossing attempt earlier this month. Franky Zapata started the flight from Sangatte in France.   Photo: DENIS CHARLET/AFP/Getty Images A French inventor’s attempt to become the first man to cross the English Channel on a hoverboard has ended in failure after he crashed while trying to land on a re-fueling station in the middle of the Channel,  BBC News  reports. Franky Zapata, who invented the jet-powered Flyboard Air, took off from near Calais earlier this morning, and had hoped to make the crossing to St Margaret’s Bay on the English coast in around 20 minutes. Zapata, who was not injured by his fall into the water, had previously indicated that he only thought he had around a 30 percent chance of successfully making the crossing. Nevertheless, his failure suggests that the difficulty of piloting the noisy Flyboard Air means it has limited practical use. The inventor has previously said that it takes a minimum of 50 to 100 hours of practice just to

Tap an app, and send your car to its parking space. Image: Daimler AG Daimler, the parent company of Mercedes-Benz, and Bosch, a global auto supplier, received approval from local authorities in Stuttgart, Germany, to test an autonomous parking valet system, the companies announced on Tuesday. The testing will take place in the Mercedes-Benz Museum parking garage, which has been fitted with sensors to guide and monitor the vehicles as they park themselves autonomously. A car owner simply taps an app to send their vehicle away to its parking space, and summoning the car back is just as simple. No human driver is needed, the companies claim. NO HUMAN DRIVER IS NEEDED, THE COMPANIES CLAIM One aspect of the pilot project involved testing lighting concepts on the vehicles. Turquoise lighting was used to indicate that a vehicle was in automated driving mode as a way to inform passers-by and other road users that the vehicle was driving itself. Image: Daimler AG The garage’s inte

10 double-decker rail cars towed over 1,000 feet. In 2017,   Ford announced   that it would sell an all-electric version of its best-selling F-150 pickup truck. It plans to start selling a hybrid version in 2020, and as a way to start priming the pump (or plug, as it were) for a vehicle that will no doubt be a very big deal, the company released a video Tuesday demonstrating the electric truck’s remarkable towing capacity. AN ALL-MALE RETINUE OF FLUORESCENT VEST WEARING TRUCK OWNERS ARE BROUGHT IN TO GAWK AND SHOUT “NO WAY” The electric prototype is seen pulling 10 double-decker rail cars over 1,000 feet. It does it once when the rail cars are empty and a second time with them loaded with 42 regular, gas-burning F-150s. The latter stunt puts the entire load at 1.25 million pounds, according to Linda Zhang, chief engineer on the electric truck project. An all-male retinue of fluorescent vest wearing truck owners are brought in to gawk and shout “no way” at the battery-power

Franky Zapata plans to cross the Channel on the Flyboard Air on Thursday. The inventor recently flew above the crowds during Bastille Day.   Xinhua/Jie Ke·chen via Getty Images The inventor of the Flyboard Air, Franky Zapata, says he plans to cross the English Channel on his jet-powered hoverboard on Thursday to mark the 110th anniversary of the first airplane flight between Britain and France,  The Guardian  reports. Zapata says he’ll fly between Sangatte and St Margaret’s Bay in a crossing that should only take around 20 minutes at speeds up 140 km/h (around 87 mph). The crossing will be a challenge for the French inventor, who has previously said that it takes between 50 and 100 hours of practice on the company’s previous water-powered Flyboard just to be able to stand up on the jet-powered Flyboard Air. Speaking to  The Parisien   Zapata said that his last flight, a demonstration flight over the crowds at Bastille Day, used about 3 percent of the hoverboard’s capabilities, c

TUM Hyperloop broke the old speed record of 284 mph. The record was achieved by TUM Hyperloop’s fourth-generation pod.  |  Image: Photo: A. Heddergott / TUM Hyperloop TUM Hyperloop has set a new speed record of 463 km/h (288 mph) at the fourth SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition. The win was announced by Hyperloop’s official Twitter account. After confirming the speed record, Elon Musk announced that next year’s competition will take place in a 10 km vacuum tunnel with a curve rather than the current 1 mile (1.6 km) straight above-ground tube at the SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California. Although the win was another step forward for the theoretical transportation technology, TUM only beat the previous record by 4 mph, far short of the technology’s theoretical 760 mph max speed. The previous record was set by the same team (then known as WARR Hyperloop), in last year’s competition. Elon Musk ✔ @elonmusk Next year’s @ Hyperloop competition will be in a