Germany and Sweden are world leaders when it comes to real-world studies on electric roads. On Gotland, the world's first wireless e-road has been finished.

Electric roads are one of the studied technologies in the race to decarbonise heavy traffic and within a few years the first commercial electric road could be a reality. This will probably happen in Sweden or Germany.

Traffic and transport account for more than a quarter of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, which makes it necessary to phase out fossil fuels. Today, the proportion of electric vehicles is rapidly increasing and  charging networks such as Vattenfall InCharge are being expanded at an ever faster pace.

Volta Trucks, a leading and disruptive full-electric commercial vehicle manufacturer and services provider, has announced that Sibros, a pioneer of deep Over-the-Air (OTA) connected vehicle systems, will provide Sibros’ connected software-based solutions for the Volta Zero - the world's first purpose-built full-electric 16-tonne commercial vehicle created specifically for city centre freight distribution.

Hyundai Motor Group (the Group) introduced ‘Factory Safety Service Robot (hereafter referred to as the Robot)’, a robot for industrial site safety, and announced its pilot operation at Kia’s plant in South Korea. The Group has also released a video of the Robot on its YouTube channel.

The Robot is based on Boston Dynamic’s quadruped robot, Spot, with applied artificial intelligence (AI), autonomous navigation, teleoperation technologies, and computing payload (AI Processing Service Unit) developed by the Group’s Robotics Lab for the Robot’s usage in various industrial tasks.

Wolfscape’s pilot project transforms an industrial seaside neighborhood in North Tallinn, known as Paljassaare Harbour, into a smart neighborhood that is circular by design. It will be the first new major region built in the 21st century in Tallinn and the biggest climate-neutral district project in the Baltics.

With a population of only 1.3 million, Estonia is at the forefront globally in terms of unicorns. One of those promising future unicorns is Skeleton Technologies, which has maximised its business model and niche value, and rapidly accelerated its growth in a competitive market. The company announced a funding round of EUR 41.3 million in November 2020, and another round of EUR 51 million in 2021.

Electraflyer has announced that it has passed crossover, meaning it now sells more battery-electric aircraft than polluting ones. Pipistrel sold over 100 battery-electric aircraft last year as they take over from its traditional offerings. Bye Aerospace does not even make conventional aircraft. With its Tesla-style approach, its order book exceeds 720 battery-electric aircraft evenly split between two and four-seaters.

DHL Express, the world’s leading express service provider, and Eviation, the Seattle-area based global manufacturer of all-electric aircraft, today write aviation history in announcing that DHL is the first to order 12 fully electric Alice eCargo planes from Eviation. With this engagement DHL aims to set up an unparalleled electric Express network and make a pioneering step into a sustainable aviation future. Eviation’s Alice is the world’s leading fully electric aircraft, which enables airlines – both cargo and passenger – to operate a zero-emission fleet. Eviation expects to deliver the Alice electric aircraft to DHL Express in 2024.

Carbon Robotics, an autonomous robotics company, unveiled its third-generation autonomous weed elimination robots. The Autonomous Weeder leverages robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), and laser technology to safely and effectively drive through crop fields to identify, target and eliminate weeds.

Unlike other weeding technologies, the robots utilize high-power lasers to eradicate weeds through thermal energy, without disturbing the soil. The automated robots allow farmers to use less herbicides and reduce labor to remove unwanted plants while improving the reliability and predictability of costs, crop yield and more.

Longensis, a startup based in Latvia and Hong Hong, has taken home the main prize at TechChill – 10,000 EUR, no strings attached. Gelatex and VREACH divide 250,000 EUR in angel investment from the pan-Baltic syndicate. The leading Baltic tech and startup event brought together over 1,700 attendees from over 600 different organizations from 29 countries, with 178 speakers taking the virtual stage.

Longenesis is a B2B startup offering a platform to biomedical organizations to reduce the length of clinical trials. This is done through enabling direct communication for safe data curation and compliant, consent-enabled biomedical data utilization for research. 

Nokia has announced further details after being named by NASA as a partner to advance “Tipping Point” technologies for the Moon, deploying the first LTE/4G communications system in space and helping pave the way towards sustainable human presence on the lunar surface.

Nokia Bell Labs’ pioneering innovations will be used to build and deploy the first ultra-compact, low-power, space-hardened, end-to-end LTE solution on the lunar surface in late 2022. Nokia is partnering with Intuitive Machines for this mission to integrate this groundbreaking network into their lunar lander and deliver it to the lunar surface. The network will self-configure upon deployment and establish the first LTE communications system on the Moon.