How Siemens is pushing industrial design forward.
Category: transportation
TxDOT spends $748M to burrow bus-size tunnels under Central Austin
The Texas Department of Transportation is set to launch one of Austin’s largest underground construction projects in 2026, digging 6.5 miles of 22-foot-wide tunnels beneath the city’s busiest highway.
Explained
As part of the I-35 overhaul in Central Austin, which will lower sections of the highway below ground level, the transportation agency will build underground drainage tunnels to help prevent flooding along the corridor.
Safer lithium-ion battery design prevents thermal runaway that can cause fires
Conventional lithium-ion batteries are known to present a fire risk, and can even cause explosions in certain cases. The widespread usage of lithium-ion batteries, in everything from electric vehicles to electric toothbrushes, makes lithium-ion battery fire risk mitigation a major priority. There is a great need for lithium-ion battery designs that balance long cycle life, high voltage, and safety.
The fire risk arises when lithium-ion batteries undergo some kind of physical damage, are overcharged or even when they have manufacturing defects. This causes thermal runaway when anions—or negatively charged ions—break their bonds with lithium and release heat. Conventional lithium-ion batteries can undergo a temperature change of over 500°C when this occurs.
However, researchers in China have now found a way to drastically reduce the heat released when lithium-ion batteries are damaged. Their study, published in Nature Energy, details the new design and the experimental results of nail penetration tests, in which the temperature rise was only around 3.5°C.
All-solid-state battery researchers reveal key insights into degradation mechanisms
Researchers from UNIST, Seoul National University (SNU), and POSTECH have made a significant breakthrough in understanding the degradation mechanisms of all-solid-state batteries (ASSBs), a promising technology for next-generation electric vehicles and large-scale energy storage.
Jointly led by Professor Donghyuk Kim at UNIST’s School of Energy and Chemical Engineering, Professor Sung-Kyun Jung at SNU’s School of Transdisciplinary Innovations, and Professor Jihyun Hong from POSTECH, their study reveals that interfacial chemical reactions play a critical role in structural damage and performance decline in sulfide-based ASSBs. The findings are published in Nature Communications.
Unlike conventional lithium-ion batteries that rely on flammable liquid electrolytes, ASSBs use non-flammable solid electrolytes, offering enhanced safety and higher energy density. However, challenges such as interface instability and microstructural deterioration have impeded their commercialization. Until now, the detailed understanding of how these phenomena occur has remained limited.
How San Francisco became Waymo-pilled
Shifted from slightly against to strongly in favor. 2023: half oppose, 2025: only 29 oppose. People fear new technology… until it is no longer new.
Expect this to happen with things like cell ag (lab grown meat), nanobots, and the like. Most people are not ideologically oppose to them, they just want enough time for them to prove themselves as safe.
“Opposition to autonomous vehicles is on the decline, the poll showed: In 2023, more than 50% of voters opposed driverless cars; now, it’s 29%.”
And:
“Two-thirds of voters said they support allowing fully autonomous vehicles to operate in San Francisco. It’s a significant increase from 2023, when fewer than half agreed with the sentiment.”
(https://sfstandard.com/2025/10/08/san-francisco-became-waymo-pilled/)
NVIDIA Now Working On Its Own Robotaxis
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Because why not?
NVIDIA has actually been involved in the robotaxi world for years, providing different hardware needs to various automakers who have been automating more and more driving. For example, I just noticed that four years ago I wrote about AutoX robotaxis using NVIDIA Drive. NVIDIA also put out a blog post highlighting that “Cruise, Zoox, DiDi, Oxbotica, Pony.ai and AutoX [were] developing level 4/5 systems on NVIDIA’s autonomous vehicle platform.” It also acquired DeepMap at that time. “DeepMap expected to extend NVIDIA mapping products, scale worldwide map operations and expand NVIDIA’s full-self driving expertise,” the company announced in 2021.
World’s first full-cell dual-cation battery developed in Ireland
Researchers at University of Limerick (UL) have developed a battery that could reshape the future of electric vehicles and portable electronics. Their breakthrough in energy storage technology has seen the development of the world’s first full-cell dual-cation battery.
This innovative system combines lithium and sodium ions to significantly enhance both battery capacity and stability, marking a new frontier in sustainable energy research.
The work, published in Nano Energy, was led by Hugh Geaney, Associate Professor of Chemistry at UL’s Department of Chemical Sciences and Principal Investigator at UL’s Bernal Institute, and Government of Ireland postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Syed Abdul Ahad, his colleague at the Department and the Bernal Institute.
A low-cost catalytic cycle could advance the separation, storage and transportation of hydrogen
Hydrogen (H2) is an Earth-abundant molecule that is widely used in industrial settings and could soon contribute to the clean generation and storage of electricity. Most notably, it can be used to generate electricity in fuel cells, which could in turn power heavy-duty vehicles or serve as back-up energy systems.
Despite its potential for various real-world applications, hydrogen is often expensive to produce, store and safely transport to desired locations. Moreover, before it can be used, it typically needs to be purified, as hydrogen produced industrially is typically mixed with other gases, such as carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO₂), nitrogen (N₂) and light hydrocarbons.
Researchers at Fudan University and other institutes in China recently devised a new strategy to separate hydrogen from impurities at low temperatures, while also enabling its safe storage and transportation. Their proposed method, outlined in a paper published in Nature Energy, relies on a reversible chemical reaction between two organic compounds that act as hydrogen carriers, enabling the reversible absorption and release of hydrogen.
Novel feature-extended analysis unlocks the origin of energy loss in electrical steel
Magnetic hysteresis loss (iron loss) is an important magnetic property that determines the efficiency of electric motors and is therefore critical for electric vehicles. It occurs when the magnetic field within the motor core, made up of soft magnetic materials, is repeatedly reversed due to the changing flow of current in the windings. This reversal forces tiny magnetic regions called magnetic domains to repeatedly change their magnetization direction.
However, this change is not perfectly efficient and results in energy loss. In fact, iron loss accounts for approximately 30% of the total energy loss in motors, leading to the emission of carbon dioxide, which represents a pressing environmental concern.
Despite over half a century of research, the origin of iron loss in soft magnetic materials remains elusive. The energy spent during magnetization reversal in these materials depends on complex changes in magnetic domain structures. These have mainly been interpreted visually, and the underlying mechanisms have been discussed only qualitatively.