Fusion took a key step forward in its movement from the lab to commercial viability with the successful test of a key technology — a very powerful magnet that uses very little energy.
In the test, the magnet reached 20 tesla, which is a unit of measurement showing the strength of a magnet. (Like the car company, it’s named after the engineer Nikola Tesla.) For reference, 20 tesla is 12 times more than the magnetic field of a traditional MRI, or magnetic resonance imaging scan.
It did this while consuming only about 30 watts of energy — several orders of magnitude less than the traditional copper-conducting magnet that MIT had tested previously, which used 200 million watts, said Dennis Whyte, Director of MIT’s PSFC and a co-founder of CFS, on a conference call with reporters on Wednesday.
Nuclear fusion is the reaction that powers the sun and the stars. It occurs when two smaller, lighter nuclei merge together to form a single heavier nucleus, releasing energy.
If fusion can be achieved on earth and commercialized, it will provide a nearly unlimited source of clean energy without producing the waste of nuclear fission, which can remain radioactive for thousands of years.
In a donut-shaped fusion machine, called a tokamak, magnets hold and insulate burning plasma for nuclear fusion reactions to occur.
The new magnet from CFS and MIT is strong enough that when the team builds a its donut-shaped fusion machine, called a tokamak, with these magnets, it will be able to achieve “net energy,” meaning that the fusion machine makes more energy that it takes to initiate and sustain the reaction, CFS and MIT’s PSFC said.
So far, no company has been able to achieve net energy fusion. So far, all of the energy created by fusion reactions is usurped in initiating and sustaining the reaction.
“Nobody — no companies, universities, national labs, or governments — have achieved the goal of break-even fusion to date,” Andrew Holland,Chief Executive Officer of the Fusion Industry Association, told CNBC.
The scientists and engineers at CFS and MIT’s PSFC said the successful performance of their new magnet technology is a key step in their technological development of commercialized fusion.
“This magnet will change the trajectory of both fusion science and energy, and we think eventually the world’s energy landscape,” said Whyte.
The performance of these magnets give Holland confidence that CFS and MIT’s PSFC will be able to achieve the goal of commercialized fusion. “Its a big deal,” Holland told CNBC.
“This is not hype, this is reality. With advances from across the fusion industry, we’re seeing a new, clean, sustainable, always available energy source being born,” Holland said.
Team members from CFS and MIT here are lowering the superconducting magnet into the test stand.
Credit: Gretchen Ertl, CFS/MIT-PSFC, 2021
To build the magnets that are able to reach 20 tesla in their experiment on Sunday, CFS and MIT used high temperature superconductors.
“The scale and performance of this magnet is similar to a non-superconducting magnet that was used in the MIT experiment that concluded its experiments five years ago,” Whyte said. But “the difference in terms of energy consumption is rather stunning.”
The high temperature superconducting magnet demonstrated on Sunday will be used in its test fusion device, called SPARC, which is already under construction in Devens, Mass., and is and on track to demonstrate net energy from fusion by 2025, the teams said.
Its first fusion power plant, called ARC, is slated to be online by the early 2030’s.
SPARC is “not a commercial system in the sense that you can rely on it for 30 years to sit there and pump out electricity to people who if it’s not running, their lights go out,” Bob Mumgaard, the CEO of CFS, said on a conference call with reporters on Wednesday.
The difference between SPARC and ARC (which are not acronyms so technically they don’t stand for anything) is “the reliability and the lifetime,” Mumgaard said. First you build a test plane, and then the passenger plane, Mumgaard said.
SPARC “is doing most of the things that the passenger plane is doing, but not quite all of them,” Mumgaard said. “It’s doing it in a way that’s flexible, that we can try out, that we can we can break and fix it … so that we develop the technologies and supply chains that you need to build the next one.”
Danish energy giant Ørsted has canceled plans for the Hornsea 4 offshore wind farm, dealing a major blow to the UK’s renewable energy ambitions.
Hornsea 4, at a massive 2.4 gigawatts (GW), would have become one of the largest offshore wind farms in the world, generating enough clean electricity to power over 1 million UK homes. But Ørsted announced that it’s abandoning the project “in its current form.”
“The adverse macroeconomic developments, continued supply chain challenges, and increased execution, market, and operational risks have eroded the value creation,” said Rasmus Errboe, group president and CEO of Ørsted.
Reuters reported that Ørsted’s cancellation of Hornsea 4 would result in a projected loss of up to 5.5 billion Danish crowns ($837.85 million) in breakaway fees and asset write-downs. The company’s market value has declined by 80% since its peak in 2021.
The cancellation highlights significant challenges currently facing offshore wind development in Europe, particularly in the UK. The combination of higher material costs, inflation, and global financial instability has made large-scale renewable projects increasingly difficult to finance and complete.
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Ørsted’s decision is a significant setback to the UK’s energy transition goals. The UK currently has around 15 GW of offshore wind, and Hornsea 4’s size would have provided almost 7% of the additional capacity needed for the UK’s 50 GW by 2030 target, according to The Times. Losing this immense project off the Yorkshire coast could hamper the UK’s pace of reducing dependency on fossil fuels, especially amid volatile global energy markets.
The UK government reiterated its commitment to renewable energy, promising to work closely with industry leaders to overcome financial and logistical hurdles. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband told reporters in Norway that the UK is “still committed to working with Orsted to seek to make Hornsea 4 happen by 2030.”
Ørsted says it remains committed to its other UK-based projects, including the Hornsea 3 wind farm, which is expected to generate around 2.9 GW once completed at the end of 2027. Despite the challenges, the company emphasized its ongoing commitment to the British renewable market, pointing to the critical need for policy support and economic stability to ensure future developments.
Yet, the cancellation of Hornsea 4 demonstrates that even flagship renewable projects are vulnerable in the face of economic pressures and global uncertainties, which have been heightened under the Trump administration in the US.
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The Tesla Roadster appears to be quietly disappearing after years of delay. is it ever going to be made?
I may have jinxed it with Betteridge’s Law of Headlines, which suggests any headline ending in a question mark can be answered with “no.”
The prototype for the next-generation Tesla Roadster was first unveiled in 2017, and it was supposed to come into production in 2020, but it has been delayed every year since then.
It was supposed to get 620 miles (1,000 km) of range and accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in 1.9 seconds.
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It has become a sort of running joke, and there are doubts that it will ever come to market despite Tesla’s promise of dozens of free new Roadsters to Tesla owners who participated in its referral program years ago.
Tesla uses the promise of free Roadsters to help generate billions of dollars worth of sales, which Tesla owners delivered, but the automaker never delivered on its part of the agreement.
Furthermore, many people placed deposits ranging from $50,000 to $250,000 to reserve the vehicle, which was supposed to hit the market 5 years ago.
“With respect to Roadster, we’ve completed most of the engineering. And I think there’s still some upgrades we want to make to it, but we expect to be in production with Roadster next year. It will be something special.”
He said that Tesla had completed “most of the engineering”, but he initially said the engineering would be done in 2021 and that was already 3 years after the prototype was unveiled and a year after it was supposed to be in production:
There was one small update about the Roadster in Tesla’s financial results last month.
The automaker has a table of all its vehicle production, and the Roadster was updated from “in development” to “design development” in the table:
It’s not clear if that’s progress or Tesla is just rephrasing it. Either way, it is not “construction”, which makes it unlikely that the Roadster is going into production this year.
If ever…
Electrek’s Take
It looks like Tesla owes about 80 Tesla Roadsters for free to Tesla owners who referred purchases, and it owes significant discounts on hundreds of units.
It’s hard for me to believe that Tesla is not delivering the new Roadster because the vehicle program would start about $100 million in the red, but at this point, I have no idea. It very well might be the reason.
However, I think it’s more likely that Tesla is just terrible at bringing multiple vehicle programs to market simultaneously. Case in point: it launched a single new vehicle in the last five years.
At this point, I think it’s more likely that the Roadster will never happen. It will join other Tesla products like the Cybertruck Range Extender.
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The 2025 Lucid Air isn’t just any luxury sedan. It’s the world’s most efficient car with over 400 miles of range. After introducing new discounts this month, Lucid is offering over $20,000 in savings on select 2025 Air models.
Lucid Air EV discounts top $20,000 in May
In the first quarter, the Lucid Air was the best-selling EV and the third top-selling sedan overall in its segment, including gas-powered cars.
After launching the 2025 Air Pure last summer, Lucid claimed it was the “world’s most efficient car” at 5.0 miles of range per kWh. That translates to over 420 miles of EPA-estimated range and the highest MPGe rating of any EV at 146 MPGe.
Lucid introduced new discounts this month, making the 2025 Air significantly more affordable. The 2025 Lucid Air Touring is available with up to $20,500 in savings with leases starting at just $599 for 36 months.
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The promo includes a $1,000 on-site bonus, a $2,000 conquest offer, a $10,000 Air Credit, and a $7,500 EV credit.
Other trims, including the Lucid Air Pure and Lucid Air Grand Touring, offer discounts of up to $18,000 and $15,500, respectively.
2025 Lucid Air offers (Source: Lucid)
The 2025 Lucid Air Touring starts at $78,900 with 620 HP and 406 miles of range. Lucid is offering 2025 Air Pure models from $69,900, with up to 420 miles of range. The Grand Touring gets up to 512 miles with prices starting at $110,900.
Lucid increased its Tesla trade-in allowance this month, which can save you an additional $4,000. To take advantage of the deals, you must take delivery by May 31, 2025.
That’s based on an MSRP of $94,900 with a down payment of $8,030. Later this year, Lucid will launch the lower-priced Touring model, starting at $79,900.
Ready to check out Lucid’s luxury EVs for yourself? You can use our links below to view current offers on Lucid Air and Gravity models in your area.
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