BP fuel stations across the UK are now able to accept card payments after a glitch which lasted over three hours.

BP had said earlier its stations were only able to accept cash and that it was directing customers to its ATMs.

The oil giant said all its sites had now returned to normal service, and it was launching "a full

At WWDC, Apple pitched Shortcuts as a way to &take advantage of the power of apps& and &expose quick actions to Siri.& These will be suggested by the OS, can be given unique voice commands, and will even be customizable with a dedicated Shortcuts app.

But since this new feature won&t let Siri interpreteverything, many have been lamenting that Siri didn&t get much better — and is still lacking compared to Google Assistant or Amazon Echo.

But to ignore Shortcuts would be missing out on the bigger picture. Apple strengths have always been the device ecosystem and the apps that run on them.

With Shortcuts, both play a major role in how Siri will prove to be a truly useful assistant and not just a digital voice to talk to.

Your Apple devices just got better

For many, voice assistants are a nice-to-have, but not a need-to-have.

Itundeniably convenient to get facts by speaking to the air, turning on the lights without lifting a finger, or triggering a timer or text message & but so far, studies have shown people don&t use much more than these on a regular basis.

People don&t often do more than that because the assistants aren&t really ready for complex tasks yet, and when your assistant is limited to tasks inside your home or commands spoken inton your phone, the drawbacks prevent you from going deep.

If you prefer Alexa, you get more devices, better reliability, and a breadth of skills, but therenot a great phone or tablet experience you can use alongside your Echo. If you prefer to have Google Assistant everywhere, you must be all in on the Android and Home ecosystem to get the full experience too.

Plus, with either option, there are privacy concerns baked into how both work on a fundamental level & over the web.

In Appleecosystem, you have Siri on iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, AirPods, HomePod, CarPlay, and any Mac. Add in Shortcuts on each of those devices (except Mac, but they still have Automator) and suddenly you have a plethora of places to execute these all your commands entirely by voice.

Each accessory that Apple users own will get upgraded, giving Siri new ways to fulfill the 10 billion and counting requests people make each month (according to Craig Federighi statement on-stage at WWDC).

But even more important than all the placeswhereyou can use your assistant ishow& with Shortcuts, Siri gets even better with each new app that people download. Therethe other key difference: the App Store.

Actions are the most important part of your apps

iOS has always had a vibrant community of developers who create powerful, top-notch applications that push the system to its limits and take advantage of the ever-increasing power these mobile devices have.

Shortcuts opens up those capabilities to Siri & every action you take in an app can be shared out with Siri, letting people interact right there inline or using only their voice, with the app running everything smoothly in the background.

Plus, the functional approach that Apple is taking with Siri creates new opportunities for developers provide utility to people instead of requiring their attention. The suggestions feature of Shortcuts rewards &acceleration&, showing the apps that provide the most time savings and use for the user more often.

This opens the door to more specialized types of apps that don&t necessarily have to grow a huge audience and serve them ads & if you can make something that helps people, Shortcuts can help them use your app more than ever before (and without as much effort). Developers can make a great experience for when people visit the app, but also focus on actually doing something useful too.

This isn&t a virtual assistant that lives in the cloud, but a digital helper that can pair up with the apps uniquely taking advantage of Applehardware and software capabilities to truly improve your use of the device.

In the most groan-inducing way possible, &therean app for that& is back and more important than ever. Not only are apps the centerpiece of the Siri experience, but ittheir capabilities that extend Siri& the better the apps you have, the better Siri can be.

Control is at your fingertips

Importantly, Siri gets all of this Shortcuts power while keeping the control in each personhands.

All of the information provided to the system is securely passed along by individual apps & if something doesn&t look right, you can just delete the corresponding app and the information is gone.

Siri will make recommendations based on activities deemed relevant by the apps themselves as well, so over-active suggestions shouldn&t be common (unless you&re way too active in some apps, in which case they added Screen Time for you too).

Each of the voice commands is custom per user as well, so people can ignore their apps suggestions and set up the phrases to their own liking. This means nothing is already &taken& because somebody signed up for the skill first (unless you&ve already used it yourself, of course).

Also, Shortcuts don&t require the web to work & the voice triggers might not work, but the suggestions and Shortcuts app give you a place to use your assistant voicelessly. And importantly, Shortcuts can use the full power of the web when they need to.

This user-centric approach paired with the technical aspects of how Shortcuts works gives Appleassistant a leg up for any consumers who find privacy important. Essentially, Apple devices are only listening for &Hey Siri&, then the available Siri domains + your own custom trigger phrases.

Without exposing your information to the world or teaching a robot to understand everything, Apple gave Siri a slew of capabilities that in many ways can&t be matched. With Shortcuts, itthe apps, the operating system, and the variety of hardware thatwill make Siri uniquely qualified come this fall.

Plus, the Shortcuts app will provide a deeper experience for those who want to chain together actions and customize their own shortcuts.

Therelots more under the hood to experiment with, but this will allow anyone to tweak - prod their Siri commands until they have a small army of custom assistant tasks at the ready.

Hey Siri, letget started

Siri doesn&t know all, Can&t perform any task you bestow upon it, and won&t make somewhat uncanny phone calls on your behalf.

But instead of spending time conversing with a somewhat faked &artificial intelligence&, Shortcuts will help people use Siri as an actual digital assistant & a computer to help them get things done better than they might&ve otherwise.

With Sirinew skills extendeding to each of your Apple products (except for Apple TV and the Mac, but maybe one day), every new device you get and every new app you download can reveal another way to take advantage of what this technology can offer.

This broadening of Siri may take some time to get used to & it will be about finding the right place for it in your life.

As you go about your apps, you&ll start seeing and using suggestions. You&ll set up a few voice commands, then you&ll do something like kick off a truly useful shortcut from your Apple Watch without your phone connected and you&ll realize the potential.

This is a real digital assistant, your apps know how to work with it, and italready on many of your Apple devices. Now, ittime to actually make use of it.

In 2008, the electric motor vehicle experienced a rebirth triggered by a rise in oil prices. Now in 2018, it is the time for another rebirth — in electrical aviation. Over the decades, advances have been made across the aviation field and on all fronts. In 1986, Burt Rutan made the first non-stop, unrefueled flight around the world.

Now, 30 years later another trip around the world was completed, marking the first electrical powered circumnavigation. The lofty journey started in Abu Dhabi and16 months laterlanded back where its journey began. This plane, unlike others that have made the journey before, emitted no emissions and burned no fuel. Instead, it used solar panels, an electric motor and 4 massive 41 kWh lithium-ion batteries.

Called Solar Impulse 2, it changed the world of aviation when it completed its flight in 2016. Since then, the vision of an electrically powered commercial airplane has gone from a dream to a possibility.

A future that includes electric flight is a positive one, slashing the fuel use of current aviation, reducing emissions, and a creating a cleaner environment.

According to the European Commission,airplane emissions currently account for about 3% of total EU Greenhouse gas emissions, and about 4% of world greenhouse gas emissions. Ita pretty significant percentage thatgrowing at a fast rate. By comparison, the emissions per person on a flight from London to New York, is roughly equivalent to a person in the EU heating their home for a whole year.

With electric aviation, these rising emissions could be reduced. It will make the ambitious EU goal of cutting greenhouse emissions to 40% below their 1990 levels by 2030, and to 80% of 1990 emissions by 2050 more feasible.

From the passengerperspective, electric aircraft are a massive win. The new planes would result in a cheaper ticket, decreased noise, and a higher rate of climb. With an electric engine, planes are able to maintain performance at higher altitudes where the air resistance is less, unlike combustion engines that operate less efficiently at these altitudes. The aircraft engine would therefore have to be less powerful to generate equivalent speed.

Photo courtesy Getty Images

Challenges

For all the hype and innovation surrounding the ideal of electric flight, there is still a long way to go before our commercial flights are powered by electric engines.The Burt-Rutan designed Long-EZis an instance of electric flight in recent time. In 2012, as one of the fastest electric aircraft flown, the plane traveled at 202.6 mph, and carried a single passenger. Contrast that to a Boeing 787, which flies at 585 mph, and carries more than 242 passengers. There is still a long way to go, and at the current pace of battery and electrical engine technology it won&t be until 2030 that even hybrid electric technology is used in commercial aviation.

Currently there is a project underway known as the NASA Electric Aircraft Testbed. This project is looking at the current technology obstacles of electric flight. With this test bed, increased efficiency and reduced weight are the goals. The test bed can be adapted to power larger and larger engines as technology is improved.

Another challenge that exists is creating a practical cooling system that can be used. Thermal management for these systems will require a system that can reject anywhere from50 to 800 kW of heat in flight. A cooling system is required for the integrated power module used for high power electronics. Materials will need to be developed for improved thermal performance, and a lightweight system developed for the power electronics cooling. Superconductivity and supercooled electronics will be required to reduce the electrical resistance of the aircraft.

The Batteries

The most significant limiting factor at this point is not the weight of the engines, or the design of the aircraft, but it is rather the batteries. Batteries at this point cannot provide the power-to-weight ratio needed for electric aviation to be feasible. Currently, jet fuel yields about 43 times more energy than an equivalent mass of battery. The electric aviation industry is making a big bet that energy storage technology will improve significantly in the future. It is possible with battery energy density rising by 5 to 8 percent per year. For batteries to be at a point where it is economically feasible to work in small-scale aviation they will need to achieve aboutfive times their current density. The good thing, is that airplanes are becoming better designed, and will require less and less power as time progresses.

Once all this is figured out and solved another problem exists. How does one swap the batteries out quickly and efficiently enough to allow the planes a quick turnaround time from landing to then picking up new passengers and taking off The best solution is battery swapping, but even this solution has its difficulties. Batteries have a higher maintenance costs than gas turbines do, and on top of that require replacement after only 1,500 charge cycles. In addition, electricity consumption is highest in the day when these batteries are needed to be charged.

Current Competition

Zunum Aerois a company backed by Boeing and JetBlue that has been working since 2013 on a family of 10 to 50 seat hybrid electric regional aircraft. They started development in October 2017 for a 12 seat aircraft, aiming to fly in 2020. The design includes a series of hybrid ducted fans that are powered by batteries alone for short trips and a range-extending generator providing 1 MW to 4-5 MW. A gas turbine would be used to drive two 550kW generators in order to extend the range of the plane to 700 nautical miles. In February 2018 it was announced thatZunumis building its first prototype.

Photo courtesy of Zunum

Airbus E-Fan Xis being developed with Rolls-Royce and Siemens as a hybrid-electric airline demonstrator. Development of this aircraft is building on work completed with the Airbus E-fan, a prototype two-seater electric aircraft that was under development by Airbus. It uses on-board lithium-ion batteries to power two electric motors. First flown in 2014, the E-Fan has an endurance of 60 minutes.The E-Fan Xdoes includes a motor and generator that are not cryogenically cooled and not superconducting leading to more than a 15% loss in efficiency. What they hope to do on the way to an all-electric plane is create a hybrid electric modelcapable of flying in 2020, while further developing the technology.

Photo courtesy of Airbus

Eviation Aliceis an Israeli electric aircraft that is under development byEviation Aircraft. This plane features three propellers, two on the wingtips and one in the rear of the plane body. The plane features an electric propulsion system and is developed from 95% composite materials.The company was started in 2015 and is currently underway to manufacture the first prototype of its all electric business and commuter aircraft.

Photo courtesy of Eviation

Wright Electricis a startup aiming to create a commercial airliner that runs on batteries and for distances of under 300 miles.The company was founded in 2016, and has received venture capital from groups such as Silicon Valley accelerator Y combinatory. In September 2017, UK budget carrier EasyJet announced it was developing an electric 180 seater aircraft to be developed by 2027 with Wright Electric. So far the company has built a two seat proof of concept, which contains 600 lbs of batteries.

Photo courtesy of Wright Electric

Ampaireis a recent startup currently undertaking the big task of developing a retrofitted electric aircraft with the aim to be FAA certified by the end of 2020.The aircraftwill be able to carry 7-9 passengers, and have a range of up to 100 miles. The company is hoping to develop a battery swapping system, and is hoping to test fly next year.

Joby Aviationhas spent the last decade developing their own electric motors and their current VTOL design from the ground up. The company recently secured $100 million in series B financing to prepare for production and certification. According to reports, the new vehicle is being developed to fly as many as five people as far as 150 miles on a single electric charge. This is quite significant for an electric aircraft, and could be used within the commercial aviation area for very short haul flights.

Photo of Joby/NASA collaboration on X57 courtesy of NASA

As streets fill with electric cars in the coming years, let us not forget that there is still a long way to go until our skies are on the same path as our roads. As we follow the long path to successful electric aircraft, we will be reminded of the perilous journey that was followed to achieve successful electric vehicles. Once past the barriers of batteries, engines, and design, these planes will soon be taking off.