IEN Radio

The name VinFast might ring a bell - not because you’ve likely seen its auto badge out on the road, but because the company has made some headlines over the past few years. This Vietnam-based EV maker, in 2022, pledged to build a $2 billion factory in Chatham County, North Carolina. The goal of this plant was to open in 2026 and produce 150,000 VinFast vehicles each year, a task they said would employ 7,500 workers. Since then, the plant project has amounted to little more than a pile of dirt...

Researchers from North Carolina State University are using powdered eggshells to make high-quality magnesium alloys that could be used in an array of automotive, aerospace and biomedical applications. And while Americans consume roughly 275 million eggs every single day, we certainly have a substantial waste stream to work with. The researchers believe the eggshells could help create a low-cost, more sustainable alternative to conventional calcium materials made from mined ore in energy...

When Figure, a company developing humanoid robots, needed ideas for disposing of its previous generation, an elegant solution came from a somewhat unlikely source. The company said that with its fleet of Figure 03 bots growing, it no longer had the time and space to support Figure 02. But it couldn’t just throw out the humanoids and risk someone getting their hands on all types of proprietary technology, and disassembling the Figure 02 bots would take too much time. So, the company asked the ...

When the pigeons started getting a little too familiar at one Ford factory, plant managers turned to another bird for help. Ford’s 12 million-square-foot facility in Hermosillo, Mexico employs more than 4,000 workers and builds more than 300,000 pickup trucks and SUVs every year. It also used to have a serious pigeon infestation issue. According to the Wall Street Journal, the stout-bodied birds would wait outside the doors before the factory opened. Once inside, they would get in the way of ...

Researchers from the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) have created a new biomimetic autonomous drone. Released from the air, the Albatross falls like a maple seed, lands on the water and then rights itself to sail autonomously by harvesting wind energy. These drones could one day monitor environmental conditions for weeks at a time. After all, remote waters are difficult to monitor, and it can take a while for boats to get there, so why not seed it with autonomous drones f...