Tech Digest daily roundup: Tesla to open up supercharger network

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CEO Elon Musk confirms plans on Twitter to begin allowing access to rival EV brands at its US supercharger network later this year, with global network to follow suit. Tesla plans to open up its global charging network to allow rival brands of electric vehicles to power up their batteries in future, the company’s CEO Elon Musk has confirmed. From later this year, Tesla plans to begin opening up its US network to allow all brands of battery cars to use its charging points, with the rest of the EV giant’s global charging network set to follow suit thereafter, Musk revealed on Twitter last week. Tesla’s charging network currently consists of around 2,500 stations housing 25,000 charging points worldwide. That includes more than 600 ‘Supercharger’ points across the UK and Ireland, which are at present only accessible to Tesla drivers. Business Green

The UK’s former cybersecurity chief has raised the alarm over the sale of a Welsh microchip manufacturer to a Chinese-backed company. Ciaran Martin, the former chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), said the purchase of Newport Wafer Fab by Nexperia, a Dutch subsidiary of the Chinese company Wingtech, poses a greater threat to British interests than Huawei’s involvement in the 5G network. Boris Johnson has asked national security adviser Sir Stephen Lovegrove to look at the deal, worth a reported £63m, while MPs have called on ministers to intervene. But, Charles Smit, a board member and general counsel at Nexperia, told the BBC earlier this week: “We’re not owned by the Chinese state, the Chinese state is not involved in Wingtech.” Sky News

Nasa’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter covered its first mile on the Red Planet in its 10th and highest flight yet. “With the Mars Helicopter’s flight success today, we crossed its one-mile total distance flown to date,” Nasa officials from the space agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) wrote in an Instagram post late Saturday. According to Nasa, this flight was the chopper’s most complex yet, with over 10 waypoints it had to cover in its path. During its flight, the Mars helicopter took off from its sixth airfield, and attained a new record maximum flight altitude of 12 metres, covering about 95m in 165 seconds. It also took bird’s eye view pictures of a region of the Red Planet called the Raised Ridges to which Nasa is considering sending its Perseverance rover. Independent 

Aerospace giant Boeing is set to attempt its second uncrewed flight to the International Space Station (ISS) as part of a test to show it can get to and from the orbiting lab safely. The CST-100 Starliner capsule will carry supplies and test equipment to the space station but the main aim of the mission will be to demonstrate that the spacecraft can launch, dock, re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere and perform a desert landing safely. Nasa and Boeing are targeting July 30 for the lift-off, which will take place at the Kennedy Space Centre at Cape Canaveral in Florida. Yahoo!

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