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Toyota’s Bold Bet: Why It’s Doubling Down on Hydrogen as Rivals Go All-Electric

https://www.autoblog.com/news/toyotas-bold-bet-why-its-doubling-down-on-hydrogen-as-rivals-go-all-electric

While most automakers are doubling down on battery-electric cars, Toyota continues to chart its own course, one that keeps hydrogen fuel cells at the center of its long-term strategy. The company calls this approach “multi-pathway,” a philosophy that embraces hybrids, plug-in hybrids, battery EVs, and hydrogen together rather than treating one technology as the universal answer.

Toyota’s leadership has said repeatedly that hydrogen is the missing piece for achieving zero emissions in areas where batteries face limits, especially in heavy transport, industrial use, and high-demand fleet operations. The brand believes hydrogen could begin to replace diesel within the next decade, giving the technology both environmental and commercial potential.


Why Hydrogen Still Makes Sense

For Toyota, the appeal of hydrogen lies in its practicality. Refueling takes minutes rather than hours, and fuel cells deliver consistent range without the weight penalty of large battery packs. That makes hydrogen ideal for long-distance trucks, buses, and even stationary power systems.

It’s also an insurance policy. As global regulations evolve, Toyota wants flexibility across technologies and regions. While battery infrastructure expands in urban centers, many parts of Asia and the Middle East are investing in hydrogen pipelines and fueling networks. Toyota’s Mirai sedan, now in its second generation, remains a low-volume pioneer but acts as the company’s real-world test bed for scaling the technology.


Building the Ecosystem

The challenge for hydrogen has never been the vehicles themselves, it’s the infrastructure. Joseph, one of our contributing writers, highlights how innovative refueling technologies could cut costs and make hydrogen stations more compact, a development Toyota and its partners are watching closely.

To accelerate progress, Toyota has invested heavily in hydrogen research hubs, including its new “H2HQ” in California and a $139 million joint venture factory in Chengdu, China. These facilities will produce next-generation fuel cell stacks designed to be cheaper and longer-lasting, key steps to closing the cost gap with battery EVs.

Other automakers are beginning to follow suit. BMW’s upcoming X5 fuel cell model could help normalize hydrogen vehicles in mainstream markets. Toyota welcomes this competition, arguing that a larger ecosystem of hydrogen manufacturers and refueling providers will benefit everyone in the long run.


Why It Matters

Toyota’s persistence with hydrogen is about timing. Battery EVs dominate headlines, but they also face bottlenecks in charging infrastructure, mineral supply chains, and range limitations for heavy vehicles. Hydrogen, Toyota argues, can fill those gaps and serve industries that can’t easily electrify.

For now, hydrogen remains a niche bet, but Toyota sees it as the backbone of its next 20 years of carbon-neutral mobility. Whether powering trucks, ships, or factories, the company’s conviction is clear, that battery-electric cars may lead the present, but hydrogen will define the future.

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October 11, 2025 at 08:52AM

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China’s EV Boom Has a Dark Side: Thousands of Dealerships Are Shutting Down

https://www.autoblog.com/news/chinas-ev-boom-has-a-dark-side-thousands-of-dealerships-are-shutting-down

China’s auto dealers are facing their toughest moment in decades as the rapid shift to electric vehicles, overcapacity, and intense price wars squeeze profits to the brink. Once a vital link between automakers and consumers, the country’s 4S dealerships (sales, service, spare parts, and surveys) are closing in record numbers. According to Bloomberg, industry analysts estimate that more than 8,000 outlets have shuttered since 2020, with thousands more at risk of collapsing in the next year.

The pain stems from a perfect storm of industry change. Chinese automakers have ramped up EV production faster than demand can absorb, leading to deep discounting. Major brands, from BYD to Geely, continue slashing prices to hold market share, echoing the turmoil seen in Europe. The result for them is thinner margins, higher inventory costs, and a growing wave of dealer bankruptcies.


Direct Sales and Domestic EV Brands Are Changing the Game

Adding to the strain is the dominance of direct sales and online-first models. Tesla, NIO, and XPeng pioneered factory-owned retail stores inside shopping malls, effectively cutting dealers out of the equation. These companies sell cars directly to consumers, maintain centralized pricing, and offer mobile service, all of which bypass the traditional dealership network.

Even legacy global automakers are adopting aspects of that strategy in China. Ford’s recent rollout of the new electrified bronco basecamp illustrates how manufacturers now market high-tech lifestyle vehicles directly to customers online, leaving dealers with fewer touchpoints and little leverage.

At the same time, Chinese EV brands are redefining what consumers expect from a showroom. Instead of sprawling dealerships, many rely on boutique experience centers and digital sales journeys. The shift means fewer test drives, fewer service appointments — and much less profit for traditional 4S stores that rely heavily on aftersales revenue.


Price Wars and Overcapacity Are Accelerating Closures

Overproduction has made matters worse. With nearly 200 domestic carmakers competing for buyers, China’s EV market is oversaturated. Fierce undercutting has turned new-car retail into a zero-sum game. Many smaller dealerships are now forced to sell cars below cost just to meet factory quotas and hold onto franchise rights.

Even as China pushes to lead the world in electric mobility, the financial toll on its dealer network is mounting. The government has hinted at measures to stabilize the sector, but analysts warn that consolidation is inevitable. The country’s EV boom has produced extraordinary technological progress, from luxury overlanders like Ford’s Basecamp to extreme performance machines, yet it’s also reshaping an industry that has relied on decades of dealership infrastructure.


Why It Matters

China’s retail auto crisis is a warning to the global market. The traditional dealership model, built on combustion-era economics, is incompatible with an EV ecosystem defined by direct sales and software services.

Dealers that can’t pivot toward charging infrastructure, used EV sales, or digital service offerings will continue to vanish. For automakers, it’s a reminder that the EV transition disrupts the business of selling cars altogether.

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October 9, 2025 at 02:05PM

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Scientists Just Reversed Alzheimer’s in Mice. Could They Do It in Humans?

https://gizmodo.com/scientists-just-reversed-alzheimers-in-mice-could-they-do-it-in-humans-2000669049

Scientists on Tuesday reported that they had reversed Alzheimer’s disease in mice, a feat that offers hope of a potential cure for the devastating form of dementia in humans.

In a paper published Tuesday in Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy, a team of researchers describe how, by harnessing the brain’s garbage disposal system, they managed to repair the brain and reverse the progress of the disease in the animals.

Specifically, they used nanotechnology to target and restore the brain’s “vascular gatekeeper,” the blood-brain barrier, which protects the brain from toxins and streamlines blood flow in and out of the brain.

Maintenance work

The new method came from studying how the buildup of “waste” proteins such as amyloid-beta (A?) impairs neuron function. Sometimes, clever solutions to complex problems come from going back to the basics.

Typically, the blood-brain barrier filters out unwanted substances from the brain, but in people with Alzheimer’s, the barrier gets clogged or fails to respond properly to intruders.

“We think it works like a cascade: when toxic species such as A? accumulate, disease progresses,” Giuseppe Battaglia, study senior author and a neuroscientist at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia, said in a statement.

“But once the vasculature is able to function again,” Battaglia said, “it starts clearing A? and other harmful molecules, allowing the whole system to recover its balance.”

How they did it

Battaglia and his team developed nanoparticles that mimicked a protein called LRP1, a molecule typically responsible for reacting to toxins in the blood-brain barrier.

For the study, the researchers genetically engineered mice to produce more amyloid-beta proteins and to show significant cognitive decline similar to Alzheimer’s. Each mouse received three injections of the new drug, and the researchers observed changes in their behavior and brain activity for 6 months.

The results were impressive. A 12-month-old mouse (equivalent to a 60 year-old human) that received treatment, when reassessed at 18 months (90 year-old human) old, had “recovered the behavior of a healthy mouse,” the scientists found.

“What’s remarkable is that our nanoparticles act as a drug and seem to activate a feedback mechanism that brings this clearance pathway back to normal levels,” Battaglia said. Surprisingly, the treatment took just three injections for it to reverse the progression of Alzheimer’s in mice, the researchers reported.

As with all mice studies, it will take much more work before this treatment could be tested for use in humans. But the results suggest that the approach, which essentially coaxes the brain to return to a healthy state, could hold promise for this incurable disease.

via Gizmodo https://gizmodo.com/

October 8, 2025 at 08:28AM

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Taking These 50 Objects Out of Orbit Would Cut Danger From Space Junk in Half

https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/10/everyone-but-china-has-pretty-much-stopped-littering-in-low-earth-orbit/

A new listing of the 50 most concerning pieces of space debris in low-Earth orbit is dominated by relics more than a quarter-century old, primarily dead rockets left to hurtle through space at the end of their missions.

“The things left before 2000 are still the majority of the problem,” said Darren McKnight, lead author of a paper presented Friday at the International Astronautical Congress in Sydney. “Seventy-six percent of the objects in the top 50 were deposited last century, and 88 percent of the objects are rocket bodies. That’s important to note, especially with some disturbing trends right now.”

The 50 objects identified by McKnight and his coauthors are the ones most likely to drive the creation of more space junk in low-Earth orbit (LEO) through collisions with other debris fragments. The objects are whizzing around the Earth at nearly 5 miles per second, flying in a heavily trafficked part of LEO between 700 and 1,000 kilometers (435 to 621 miles) above the Earth.

An impact with even a modestly sized object at orbital velocity would create countless pieces of debris, potentially triggering a cascading series of additional collisions clogging LEO with more and more space junk, a scenario called the Kessler Syndrome.

McKnight, a senior technical fellow at the orbital intelligence company LeoLabs, spoke with Ars before the paper’s release. In the paper, analysts considered how close objects are to other space traffic, their altitude, and their mass. Larger debris at higher altitudes pose a higher long-term risk because they could create more debris that would remain in orbit for centuries or longer.

Russia and the Soviet Union lead the pack with 34 objects listed in McKnight’s Top 50, followed by China with 10, the United States with three, Europe with two, and Japan with one. Russia’s SL-16 and SL-8 rockets are the worst offenders, combining to take 30 of the Top 50 slots. Here’s the Top 10:

  1. A Russian SL-16 rocket launched in 2004
  2. Europe’s Envisat satellite launched in 2002
  3. A Japanese H-II rocket launched in 1996
  4. A Chinese CZ-2C rocket launched in 2013
  5. A Soviet SL-8 rocket launched in 1985
  6. A Soviet SL-16 rocket launched in 1988
  7. Russia’s Kosmos 2237 satellite launched in 1993
  8. Russia’s Kosmos 2334 satellite launched in 1996
  9. A Soviet SL-16 rocket launched in 1988
  10. A Chinese CZ-2D rocket launched in 2019

via Wired Top Stories https://www.wired.com

October 6, 2025 at 12:28PM

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Product of the Month

https://www.techbriefs.com/component/content/article/53940-product-of-the-month-tb-1025

Phoenix Contact, Middletown, PA, is introducing NearFi, a contactless real-time transmission technology. NearFi couplers can transmit up to 50 Watts of power and 100 megabits of data per second, all without physical contact. Many factory automation applications, such as robot tool changes, rotary tables, and automated guided vehicle systems (AGVS), have moving parts subject to wear and tear. NearFi couplers can replace plug-in connectors and slip rings in these applications, minimizing repair and downtime costs. When transmitting data alone, it can communicate across an air gap of 40 millimeters (mm). Power and data together or just power can be transmitted across an air gap of 12 mm. NearFi is protocol-independent and can transmit time-critical Ethernet protocols such as EtherNet/IP, PROFINET, Modbus, and EtherCAT. NearFi’s low latency also makes it suitable for standards like TSN.

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October 3, 2025 at 03:48AM

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Adobe Firefly Creates Videos from Your Images, Discover the AI Tool That Turns Imagination Into Motion

https://gizmodo.com/adobe-firefly-creates-videos-from-your-images-discover-the-ai-tool-that-turns-imagination-into-motion-2000666864

Everyone loves making cool videos, but the people and animals you want to film aren’t always reliable or willing subjects. Here’s where AI comes to the rescue, courtesy of Adobe — the new AI-powered Firefly Video Generator brings still images and illustrations to vibrant life, with your prompts acting as the creative powerhouse. All you need to create incredibly detailed video files is your imagination, a Firefly subscription, and a good internet connection to launch this web-based tool.

The Generate Video feature in Adobe Firefly is browser-based, working across platforms as part of the Adobe Creative Cloud ecosystem. Its AI power allows you to create images entirely from scratch via text prompts, or breathe life into static images and illustrations that exist inside of other Adobe apps like Photoshop, Illustrator, Adobe Express, and Premiere Pro. Something this powerful shouldn’t be this easy to use, yet Adobe Firefly’s Video Generator is exactly that — within minutes you’ll see your ideas coming to life, and your inner James Cameron will begin to blossom.

See at Adobe

All Roads Lead to Video

Adobe Firefly’s AI features can be deployed a few different ways. You can upload two still images to be used as keyframes for Firefly to generate motion between them, or you can upload a JPEG or PNG file and add a text prompt to tell Firefly exactly what you want it to do. You don’t need to be constrained by existing images, either — with Firefly’s Text to Image tool, your only constraint is your imagination. Firefly can also customize and optimize your images for whatever use you have in mind, with TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and other ideal settings just a click away, along with customizable aspect ratios and frame shapes.

You’re also not hemmed in with one style of video creation, either. Lifelike moving pictures are definitely included, but so are other style presets like claymation, anime, and line art. Many of the other Adobe tools you’re used to if you’re a Photoshop user, like Generative Remove to eliminate unwanted objects from your creative works of art.

Take It For a (Free) Spin

The commercial possibilities of these AI-powered videos are obvious, and thankfully Adobe’s Firefly Video Model is built with that in mind. As long as you have the rights to the original image, you can feel free to use your creations at will without worrying about licensing or rights issues.

If you have an Adobe Creative Cloud plan or a Firefly plan, you can take the AI Video Generator for a spin for free, with a limited number of uses. Once you’re hooked, there are paid plans for all levels of usage, with the option of purchasing more credits to keep your creative options flowing.

See at Adobe

via Gizmodo https://gizmodo.com/

October 5, 2025 at 03:22PM