Net Work
Alan Winstanley
This month’s Net Work brings you the latest topical news about EVs, the ‘fun’ of upgrading to
Windows 11 and updates on satellite and space technology.
I
n the past year, Net Work
has covered some of the trends
emerging in the electric vehicle
(EV) sector, and the EV revolution
shows no sign of abating. Thanks to
CAD, modern microelectronics and
rapidly developing battery technology,
a dizzying range of futuristic-looking
EVs is becoming available. However,
their high initial purchase price is a
hurdle for many buyers and Britain’s
impractical charging network is still
lagging behind, which doubtless deters
many motorists from buying an EV, no
matter how ‘green’ their aspirations
may be. Furthermore, the continuing
shortage of semiconductor chips has
impacted car production around the
world, causing ongoing delays in the
motor supply chain. In the UK, this
shortage of new cars has seen a spike
in used car prices, which in some
cases exceeds the price of a new one.
One Ford dealer said they had had no
new cars to sell in three months, and
that the production of one model had
stopped entirely.
WLTP
Some of the EV jargon being bandied
around was previously outlined in
the December 2020 issue, which mentioned new EVs launched by MG Cars
and Honda among others. With ‘range
anxiety’ still in mind, manufacturers
are moving towards improving the
WLTP (Worldwide Harmonized Light
Vehicles Test Procedure) rating by increasing efficiency and battery capacity,
also reducing emissions and shortening the car’s charging times. There is
still plenty of life left in petrol and
diesel vehicles though, but motorists
will face some stark choices in coming
years as travel becomes electric-powered, and drivers may have to plan
their journeys differently. In Britain,
long-distance trips might mean factoring in a coffee break or two along the
way while your car charges up, and
drivers will ponder the kW ratings of
chargers – if they can find one. The
driving range is also affected by weather and the frugality of the driver, but
no doubt EV chargers will gradually
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The ZipCharge Go offers a user-friendly top-up of electric vehicles. It is controlled by an
app and has many security features.
become the norm at filling stations,
and petrol pumps will be relegated
to second place.
Charging options
Other charger options are starting to
spring up: an interesting new semi-portable charger for electric vehicles called
the ZipCharge Go was unveiled at the
COP26 UN Climate Change conference
held in Glasgow last month. The ZipCharge Go is effectively a powerbank
for EVs and promises a quick 20-40mile top-up charge delivered in 30-60
minutes, they say. It has a user-friendly
rolling suitcase style of form factor and,
of course, there is a smartphone app
to manage it. The product looks to be
quite ‘nickable,’ so I enquired about its
security features: the designers say the
charger can only be authenticated by
its owner through the app and charging
can be switched on and off remotely or
disabled altogether as one would with
a stolen mobile device. The cable itself
is locked in situ to the charger and the
car. As for the batteries, they are welded
in place and the bespoke electronics
have no second-hand value. A battery
replacement guarantee will be offered if
they are stolen while on charge in public
places. ZipCharge Go is still in R&D, with
a likely launch date at the end of 2022.
More details at: www.zipcharge.global
Massachusetts-based startup Sparkcharge is taking a different approach in
the US by offering mobile on-demand
charging for EVs. Unlike the ZipCharge
Go, Sparkcharge operates through a
network of service providers and its
rugged ‘Roadie’ battery system claims
to offer ‘a mile [of driving] for a minute
of charging’. More details are at: www.
sparkcharge.io
NIO Logic
On the EV front, MG Cars, the British
sports car brand now owned by China’s state-owned SAIC Motor (see Net
Work, December 2020 and January
2021) has started to refresh its range of
EVs coupled to a fresh TV campaign.
The revised MG ZS EV has a 72.6kWh,
water-cooled lithium-ion battery and a
claimed range of [up to] 273 miles. This
electric SUV still costs the best part of
The Sparkcharge ‘Roadie’ provides kerbside
EV charging through a network of service
agents in the US.
Practical Electronics | January | 2022
fuel producer. More exam- round a breaker’s yards searching for
ples of NIO’s adventurous a reclaimed drive shaft or gearbox for
approach include the provi- our fossil-fuelled cars. Websites such
sion of mobile chargers built as www.breakerlink.com save lots of
into a fleet of service vans legwork and can source quotes for
that will offer NIO cars a used car spares from breakers’ yards.
10-minute boost and 100km A few years ago, I needed a replacerange. An on-demand ‘valet ment car headlight and was deluged
charging service,’ where a with offers this way.
America had a head start on EV sales
NIO Power Swap in action: a NIO EV battery is valet takes your NIO car
as
Tesla has produced all-electric cars
away
to
be
charged,
has
also
automatically swapped out for a newly charged one.
been advertised. Smartphone for a dozen years, starting with the Tesla
(Image: YouTube/ Crossing China)
helper apps are also heavi- Roadster based, ironically enough, on
£30,000 though, which is not exactly ly integrated into NIO’s ecosystem.
the chassis of the British Lotus Elise
trivial. More details of UK-spec cars at:
One possibility (or aspiration) is that sports car. Readers might recall Elon
www.mg.co.uk/new-cars/new-mg-zs-ev all EV batteries could become inter- Musk launching one into space, with
SAIC clearly understands the value changeable, and drivers could just queue his Starman manikin at the wheel (Net
of brand awareness to consumers. up for another one regardless of the make Work, September 2019). Incidentally,
More competition in the EV market of car. It would make getting a battery the car’s current location is shown at:
is waiting in the wings: after a rocky swap as routine as using a car wash. www.whereisroadster.com
financial start the Chinese brand NIO, As NIO starts to learn from its NorweWith scrap yards in mind, interested
so far largely unheard of in Europe, gian experience, time will tell whether readers might like the work of Rich Benoit
now has global ambitions after receiv- the marque and the Power Swap bat- (a.k.a. ‘Dr Tesla Frankenstein’) who speing state investment and is carefully
tery-swapping system is viable enough cialises in salvaging parts from Tesla cars
scoping the EV market beyond China to expand into other EU countries.
or rebuilding them from scrap. His skills
(see Net Work, April 2021, p.14). This
A NIO owner shared his experienc- are remarkable; a video at https://youtu.
upcoming EV maker takes the idea of es of the first version of NIO’s battery be/NuAMczraBIM shows his dedication
‘thinking outside the box’ to a whole swapping system in a YouTube video to recycling, not scrapping.
new dimension. NIO is happy to play a year ago: https://youtu.be/0StTrsthe long game, recognising the need
doD3c. How NIO’s latest version of its The Cat’s away
to develop brand awareness and cus- ‘Battery as a Service’ works in prac- I wrote back in the March issue how
tomer loyalty in the minds of European tice is showcased in their promo at: China’s Great Wall Motor (GWM),
buyers, implied NIO’s President Lihong https://youtu.be/aBdQQxgxDrY – plus the country’s largest maker of pickup
Qi in an Automotive News report last a driver’s eye view of this new system trucks, had an ill-starred foray into
the UK market some years ago. Their
year. NIO chose Norway as a bridge- is at: https://youtu.be/EvMr42VnFyo
head before entering mainland Europe. (Details of NIO’s range can be found rugged pick-ups found favour with
some of Britain’s farmers for a time,
Norway has an extremely high uptake at: www.nio.com)
but the engines couldn’t meet new
of electric vehicle sales, with more than
emission tests, parts were hard to get
90% of cars sold in September 2021 Battery recycling
being electric or hybrid, helped by Nor- What will happen when an EV reaches and the brand quietly disappeared.
its end of life? No doubt the EV revolu- GWM is pinning its latest hopes on
wegian EV-friendly tax concessions.
tion will eventually cause a sea-change a very stylish all-new EV to be sold
Power Swap – the fastest ‘charge’ in the demand for spare parts and ma- under their Ora brand. Known locally
Apart from offering high-tech home terial recycling. Car scrap yards of the as the ‘Haomao’ (Mandarin for ‘Good
chargers for their cars (the slimmest future will probably look nothing like Cat’), the car is destined for Britain
DC chargers in the world, they claim), the oily, teetering heaps of rusting metal soon and will be called the Ora Cat
NIO cars have one major feature that’s that we’ve all seen in the past. In Britain, 01. Its cutesy retro style apes severcurrently missing on other electric ve- the motor dismantling trade has cleaned al popular cars like the MINI and, by
hicles: ‘battery swap’ technology, which up its act considerably in recent years, EV standards, Ora is not pussy footing
NIO calls ‘Power Swap’. The technol- and sourcing used parts online means around with its UK sales drive. The
ogy is truly mind-boggling: simply that it’s no longer necessary to tramp car will be very aggressively priced
drive into a Power Swap station, a bit
like visiting a tyre bay. The car more
or less parks itself automatically, and
the car’s battery is swapped robotically for a fully charged one in just three
minutes. Plans for NIO’s first Power
Swap station near Oslo have reportedly already been approved.
Each station has nearly 240 sensors and multiple cloud computing
platforms that recognise the vehicle,
handling the entire process while the
driver remains seated. Over 300 battery swap-outs can be handled per day
this way, they claim, and NIO plans to
build 5,000 such stations in China as Coming to UK shores is the retro-style Haomao ‘Great Cat’ EV from Great Wall’s Ora
a joint venture with China’s Sinopec brand. Might their Heimao ‘Black Cat’ challenge the Honda ‘e’ in the future?
Practical Electronics | January | 2022
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An impression of a compact nuclear power station based around Rolls-Royce’s small
modular reactor or SMR. (Image: Rolls-Royce Group)
(about £25,000) and is unashamedly
designed to take a bite out of major
European EV car sales. More details
are at: https://uk.ora-eu.com
Meanwhile, on the GWM global
website at https://bit.ly/pe-jan22-gwm
I spotted the Ora Heimao R1 or ‘Black
Cat’ which has taken some styling cues
from the expensive but funky Honda
‘e’ city car (Net Work, December 2020).
Perhaps sales will follow in the Good
Cat’s tracks. While we’re on the subject,
for an eye-opening view of GWM’s firepower, take a look at their 2020 sales
report at: https://bit.ly/pe-jan22-gwm2
Sourcing the juice
Despite all these futuristic ‘zero-emission’ vehicles heading our way, the
slow roll-out of Britain’s EV charging network has yet to inspire much
confidence, and the precarious state
of the UK (if not European) electricity
generation network is finely balanced
as well. Early adopters of EVs will get
to learn about their car’s real-life range
in typical British weather conditions,
how long the batteries will last in
service and how expensive they will
be to replace, assuming it’s possible
to replace them at all. The upsurge
in EVs is likely to constrain battery
supplies as well. In England, major
lithium deposits have been found by
geothermal engineers in Cornwall,
with 4,000 tonnes potentially being
extracted annually in the future, see
https://bit.ly/pe-jan22-li which may
eventually help meet the insatiable
demand globally for batteries of all
shapes and sizes.
The overarching question is, of
course, how will all this ‘extra’ electricity demand be met in the first place?
In Britain, an option that is taking shape
is the small modular reactor (SMR), a
concept that has been floated for some
years. This is a compact nuclear-powered generation plant that promises
lower construction costs and faster
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turnaround compared with the construction of traditional nuclear power
stations. The clever modular construction could be 80% British-made and
would have a truly massive export potential. Ninety percent of the power
plant would be made on production
lines and then shipped by road or air
for assembly and commissioning on
site; one 470MW SMR would have a
footprint the size of just two football
pitches. The UK Government is helping
to kickstart the concept by investing
£210m ($275m) in Rolls-Royce Group,
which has produced nuclear power
plant for Britain’s submarine fleet since
the 1950s. A further £250m has been
raised privately to take the feasibility
study forward. The distinctive shape
of an SMR power station may become a
familiar sight on our landscape within
a decade. Learn more at https://www.
rolls-royce-smr.com/
Stuck in the middle with
Windows 11
My thanks to long-term PE reader Dave
Bancroft, who writes: ‘I bought the very
first issue of Practical Electronics that
included how to make your own bass
guitar in the Autumn of 1964, and the
next issue, and the next. It was a dent
in my pocket money, but I treasured
every issue! I’ve read your Net Work
articles for many years and your article
in the September issue about upgrading a PC to Windows 11 set me looking
more deeply into something I’ve uncovered in my PC. I have a three-year
old, average Windows desktop made
by HP, with a 3.00GHz i5-7400 CPU,
16GB RAM, 1TB+ of SSD storage…
etc. I have faithfully kept up with all
the Windows 10 Pro updates. Recently, Windows Update has started telling
me: “You’re up to date” followed by
“This PC doesn’t currently meet all the
system requirements for Windows 11.”
‘I followed the Microsoft link supplied to install and run their “PC Health
Check,” which confirmed that the PC
supports Secure Boot, it has TPM [Trusted Platform Module] 2.0 enabled and
there is at least 4GB of system memory
(RAM). Then came the bad news: “The
processor isn’t currently supported for
Windows 11.”
‘Delving into the Intel portion of the
fully supported CPU list for Windows
11 (see: https://bit.ly/pe-jan22-W11A)
I eventually found the Intel Core i5
section of the rather long list, I see
that there is a range of CPU number
suffixes from i5-10200H to i5-11600T
inclusive, then a second range from i58200Y to i5-9600T. My CPU subtype,
i5-7400 is a “lower” number and, most
importantly, was absent from the list!
No doubt this is what has triggered
the incompatible-CPU error message.
‘I went round in futile circles trying
to get answers from Microsoft before I
finally got some sense from HP themselves. They confirmed that my Intel
i5-7400 CPU is not some stunted,
semi-crippled OEM version, but a
perfectly valid candidate for Windows
11 compatibility. HP Sales added that
it’s an ongoing evolving situation and
not to worry too much, because if this
illogical incompatibility situation persisted, millions of people would be
affected and something would get done
to fix it, really quickly.’
By co-incidence, Dave’s email arrived
just as I was checking two of my own
W10 PCs. Windows Update can be accessed easily by hitting the Windows
key and typing ‘Update’. A pop-up
about Windows 11 may appear automatically. You can also type Winkey
then ‘System’ to view your PC’s system
data. On my older machine I experienced exactly the same thing as Dave,
with Microsoft’s PC Health Check app
citing the lowly CPU spec as incompatible, and, like Dave, I was a bit irked
to be told that this PC might not be a
candidate for Windows 11.
I ran Microsoft’s Health Check app
on my recent home-brew PC and it
complained about the lack of TPM
2.0. Here’s another tip: type tpm.
msc after hitting Winkey and the
TPM Management Console will open:
again, my PC claimed (hopefully erroneously) that a TPM could not be
found on my computer even though
it has a Secure Boot option and the
Asus motherboard webpage clearly states that mine is ‘Windows 11
Ready’. Asus has checked W11 compatibility across their range and it’s
probable that my PC will be upgradeable. Sometimes, a BIOS update may be
needed first, and/or the BIOS settings
may need altering to make a system
W11 compliant. It’s worth checking
Practical Electronics | January | 2022
Latest SpaceX news
SpaceX Starships ready for tests – future Starships are destined to transport people to
the moon and possibly Mars. (Image: SpaceX)
your PC or motherboard maker’s
website for up-to-date news and, as
Dave found, we can expect a lot of
conflicting advice about Windows 11
compatibility before the dust finally
settles. A brand-new Asus Windows
10 notebook immediately offered to
upgrade to Windows 11 during setting up – but, until I know more, I
declined the update, at least for now.
The web is alive with Windows
11 tips and workarounds, and one
final option might be to ‘force’ a Windows 11 installation using the classic
media creation tool, or create an ISO
image. The place to start is https://bit.
ly/pe-jan22-W11B
If the host PC is supposedly incompatible, it’s not clear whether such Windows
11 installations will enjoy future security updates though. Good luck!
The James Webb Space Telescope
ensconced inside the cleanroom at its
launch site at Guiana Space Center, prior to
assembling into an ESA Ariane 5 launcher.
(Image credit: NASA/Chris Gunn)
Practical Electronics | January | 2022
A satellite state
The Rwanda Space Agency has submitted plans to build two satellite
constellations to deliver broadband
under its ‘Cinnamon’ project, comprising nearly 330,000 – a third of a
million – CubeSats operating in LEO
(low earth orbit). A CubeSat (see Net
Work October 2020, p13) has a tiny
form factor and at 1U is just 10 × 10
× 10cm. Sources claim that following
approval, the network could be built
in three years.
Rwanda has a troubled history in
bringing broadband services to the
country. Early hopes were pinned on
satcomms firm OneWeb before it was
made bankrupt and then rescued by
the UK Government and India’s Bharti
Global. Who is behind Rwanda’s latest
ambitions is less clear, but sources
claim the project’s being masterminded by Greg Wyler, the original founder
of OneWeb and someone with a long
history of working in Rwanda’s telecoms sector.
London-based OneWeb is going from
strength to strength and is now partnering with the UK’s British Telecom (BT)
Group to deliver space-based broadband
services to less accessible areas of the
UK. I can think of at least one family
friend, marooned in Scotland who depends on archaic, windswept copper
wires for ADSL2 or FTTP (no-one seems
to know), who would benefit from such
a satellite-based system.
Meantime, Boeing has plans of its
own and intends to build a small fleet
of about 150 satellites, while Amazon’s
Project Kuiper satcomms network of
3,200 satellites is slowly limbering
up, with launches of prototype satellites expected in late 2022. Astra, the
American satellite launching company, is entering the fray and has filed
its own plans for launching an array of
13,600 broadband satellites into LEO.
Readers might recall my mention of
the diminutive ‘SpaceBEE’ CubeSats
proposed by Swarm Technologies for
handling IoT data (see photo, Net
Work, October 2020 p.14). These tiny
(¼U) satellites fit in the palm of your
hand and will carry data for connected
cars, agriculture and marine applications, and earlier this year Swarm
became a wholly owned subsidiary
of SpaceX.
There was a time when almost every
rocket launch was celebrated as a marvellous spectacle, but they have fast
become routine events, with SpaceX
showing how it’s possible to lob 60
satellites at a time into space and recover the spent launchers for re-use
afterwards. Technical filings highlight
tension between the main satellite
operators who are worried about the
risk of collisions and the possibility
of interference across various wavebands that their relentless drive for
LEO satcomms networks may cause.
Space enthusiasts are eagerly eyeing
the next SpaceX milestone: the SN20
(Serial Number 20) Starship powered
by a Super Heavy rocket stage. The
prototype fired some of its Raptor
engines for the first time in October.
SpaceX’s Starship has been chosen by
NASA’s Artemis program to propel men
and women to the moon and possibly
beyond. YouTube is full of SpaceX
videos and commentaries, but https://
youtu.be/TeVbYCIFVa8 gives an insight
of the Starship taking shape. Future
ambitions of SpaceX include landing
on Mars and building a sustainable
base there. This could be entirely possible in years to come, and you can see
more about their Mars-bound program
at: https://bit.ly/pe-jan22-spx
Last, this month, another ambitious
project is fast coming together in the
form of the James Webb Space Telescope
(JWST), described as the world’s largest
and most complex space science observatory ever built. The telescope is an
international effort and is destined to
launch from French Guiana in mid-December. As the space observatory starts
to explore the deepest mysteries of the
cosmos, readers will hear a lot about
new discoveries and mention of the
‘James Webb telescope’ will become
as commonplace as ‘Hubble’ used to
be, so rest assured I’ll be covering progress in future columns.
That’s this month’s roundup of news
from Net Work – enjoy the Christmas
festivities wherever you are, and join
us next month!
The author can be reached at:
alan<at>epemag.net
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