Electric car sales in 2020 exceeded these expectations. Backed by existing policy support and additional stimulus measures, the IEA preliminary estimate is that electric car sales worldwide climbed to over 3 million and reached a market share of over 4%, making 2020 a record-breaking year for electric mobility. This is equivalent to a growth of over 40% in global sales from the 2.1 million elec...

Sila Nanotechnologies, a Silicon Valley battery materials company, has spent years developing technology designed to pack more energy into a cell at a lower cost — an end game that has helped it lock in partnerships with Amperex Technology Limited as well as automakers BMW and Daimler.Now, Sila Nano, flush with a fresh injection of capital that has pushed its valuation to $3.3 billion, is read...

When it comes to chess, computers seem to have nothing left to prove.Since IBM’s Deep Blue defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997, advances in artificial intelligence have made chess-playing computers more and more formidable. No human has beaten a computer in a chess tournament in 15 years.In new research, a team including Jon Kleinberg, the Tisch University Professor of Compute...

Europe’s threat to withhold vaccine exports until it has its share could hamper progress against the virus.LIKE ALL countries, the members of the European Union want to vaccinate their people against covid-19 as quickly as possible. The EU has ordered 1.7bn doses of vaccines (with options for 600m more) from six manufacturers. The EU’s medicines agency has so far approved three for use, of wh...

Mass transit operates below ground and shops, workplaces and leisure destinations are all within walking distance. Introduced by His Royal Highness Mohammed bin Salman, Crown Prince, The Line is a 170 kilometre long urban development running from Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Coast inland to the mountains in the north west. Located in a region called Neom, the area has been designated a living labora...

As an outdoorsy person, you always dream of one vehicle that can satiate your adventure lust, whether it be on land as well as water. That ideation of an amphibious vehicle that can tread the demanding terrain on land as well as dive in the water like a submersible has been a pipedream a bit too far for practicality aspect. However, Slovakia-based Andrej Zachar with the Audi X travel companion...

ARK seeks to gain a deeper understanding of the convergence, market potential, and long-term impact of disruptive innovation by researching a global universe that spans sectors, industries, and markets. We are witnessing an acceleration in new technological breakthroughs. To enlighten investors on the impact of these breakthroughs and the opportunities they should create, we began publishing Bi...

The internet is buzzing over a new technology created by Microsoft developers that could make it possible to have a virtual conversation with a deceased loved one (well, kind of).A patent granted to Microsoft (MSFT) last month details a method for creating a conversational chatbot modeled after a specific person — a "past or present entity ... such as a friend, a relative, an acquaintance, a c...

In June of 1999, Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins invested $25 million into an early-stage company developing a new search engine called Google, paving the way for a revolution in how knowledge online was organized and shared.Now, Sequoia Capital is placing another bet on a different kind of search engine, one for physical objects in three dimensions, just as the introduction of three-dimens...