It is a sparkling, sunny August morning in 2043, as your Air China flight from Beijing touches down gracefully (and almost silently) at LAX. The sleek plane is one of a new generation of hydrogen-powered wide-body jets manufactured by Commercial Aircraft Corp. of China -- the kind of innovation that helped the state-owned company sail past Boeing and Airbus in the 2030s to become the world's largest aerospace group. Starting with the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, the last two decades have seen massive efforts to clean up transportation all around the United States and throughout the world. Back in the early 2020s, transportation accounted for 29% of America's greenhouse gas emissions, but that number has been steadily dwindling to almost zero -- resulting in cleaner cities everywhere. Not only have electric and hydrogen-powered vehicles replaced gas-guzzling cars, but many people have forsaken car-ownership altogether, in favor of much more economic and widely available solutions like e-bikes, robo-taxis and public transit.

Scan provided by Dr Quentin Meyer. Researchers from UNSW Sydney have developed an algorithm which produces high-resolution modelled images from lower-resolution micro X-ray computerised tomography (CT). The new process, detailed in a paper published in Nature Communications, has been tested on individual hydrogen fuel cells to accurately model the interior in precise detail and potentially improve the efficiency of them. But the researchers say it could also be used in future on human X-rays to give medical professionals a better understanding of tiny cellular structures inside the body, which could allow for better and faster diagnosis of a wide range of diseases. The team, featuring Professor Ryan Armstrong, Professor Peyman Mostaghimi, Dr Ying Da Wang, and Kunning Tang from the School of Mineral and Energy Resources Engineering and Prof Chuan Zhao and Dr Quentin Meyer from the School of Chemistry, developed the algorithm to improve the understanding of what is happening inside a Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC).

The US Navy is developing a pilotless solar-powered plane that can fly for 90 days at a time to help keep a watchful eye on naval ships below or act as a communications relay platform. The plane, dubbed'Skydweller' and developed by Skydweller Aero, builds on the manned Solar Impulse 2 aircraft that flew around the world in 2015 and 2016, but had to stop every five days. The upgraded version will eliminate the cockpit, allowing space for hardware that allows for autonomous abilities. Skydweller Aero CEO Robert Miller told New Scientist: 'When we remove the cockpit, we are enabling true persistence and providing the opportunity to install up to about 400 kilograms of payload capacity.' The pilotless craft will feature 236-foot long wings that are blanked in solar cells, but its makers may add hydrogen fuel cells for an additional boost.

Plans to beam 5G signals to the public via drones that stay airborne for nine days at a time have been announced by two UK firms. They want to use antenna-equipped aircraft powered by hydrogen to deliver high-speed connectivity to wide areas. Stratospheric Platforms and Cambridge Consultants say they could cover the whole of the UK with about 60 drones. But telecoms analysts question whether the economic case for this scheme is quite as simple as it sounds. The Cambridge-based companies say they would run the service in partnership with existing mobile operators. They are already backed by Deutsche Telekom, which hopes to trial the technology in rural southern Germany in 2024.

Since 2006, improvised explosive devices have killed more than 1,000 U.S. troops in Iraq as small groups of U.S. soldiers routinely travel in convoys on bomb-ridden roads, according to Congressional Research Service data. But General Motors is developing commercial vehicle technology that could dramatically lower the casualty count from IEDs. In fact, GM is gambling that it has a lot of technology that the military will want to buy. For example, "GM has demonstrated leader-follower capability," GM Defense President David Albritton told the Free Press. Leader-follower means a manned vehicle leads a dozen unmanned vehicles using GM's self-driving vehicle technology.

A link has been posted to your Facebook feed. GM Cruise, the automaker's self-driving subsidiary, is developing an electric self-driving taxi based on the Chevrolet Bolt EV. It expects to launch its service at scale in 2019. DETROIT -- General Motors is partnering with Honda to speed up the deployment of self-driving cars to major cities in 2019. Honda will contribute about $2 billion over 12 years to the partnership and will finance a $750 million equity investment in Cruise, GM's self-driving car company.

The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) will use Alta Devices' "highly efficient, flexible, and light-weight" solar technology to help power the "breakthrough" Hybrid Tiger UAV. The Hybrid Tiger is a project designed to create a Group-2 UAV that will stay aloft for at least three and a half days, and Alta Devices says that technologies developed for the project will be applicable to other unmanned vehicles. "Widespread use of small UAVs in both the military and industry has been limited to-date by endurance. The Hybrid Tiger will demonstrate that very long endurance flights, with sophisticated telemetry and capabilities, can be achieved with the inclusion of solar arrays," says Jian Ding, Alta Devices CEO. "This project will open the door for many new solar powered UAV applications, and we look forward to achieving next generation breakthroughs via this cooperative effort."

If you're the guy in charge of leading Daimler--you know, the world's largest luxury carmaker, one of Europe's most important tech companies, and the inventor of the automobile--into a threatening future, it can't hurt to have a name that sounds made for a superhero. Good thing it's a guy named Wilko Stark helming CASE (that's connectivity, autonomous, shared and services, and electric mobility), which Daimler launched in 2016 to address the most promising and troubling trends under one roof. Between electrification, autonomy, car sharing, and ride hailing, the car industry is undergoing a monumental, unprecedented shift. So we sat down with Stark to hear about his plans for bringing Daimler into this future--no cape necessary. This interview has been lightly edited and condensed.

The aim is for a SMET robot to be able to carry 1,000 pounds across more than 60 miles in 72 hours. Whether you're interested in trucks, tanks, motorcycles, armored vehicles or ATVs, 2017 was a great year, with lots of incredible machines. And it was a year in which lots of out-of-the-box advances – some might even say shocking – were revealed. Where do we find these insider machines? I also meet with military and private sector innovators to closely evaluate the vehicles and put them through their paces. In the eye-popping category, it will be hard to surpass the military's announcement that they've figured out how to use urine as fuel for vehicles in war zones.