China's lithium batteries aren't always "made in China." Companies like BYD and CATL are building factories on nearly every continent. THE symbolism was clear last June when Emmanuel Macron, surrounded by factory workers, held up a sleek lithium battery in his right hand and a mining lamp in his left. He was in Douai, a northern French city with a coal mining history dating back to the 1700s. The city is now also the site of a battery factory, which would allow France to produce all parts of electric vehicles domestically. This factory, Macron declared, represented an "economic and ecological revolution."

Elon Musk's Nueralink will not be testing its brain implant on humans anytime soon - the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has rejected the company's application. The agency outlined dozens of issues the company must address before human testing, a critical milestone for final product approval, Neuralink staffers told Reuters. The concerns include the device's lithium battery; the potential for the implant s tiny wires to migrate to other areas of the brain; and questions over whether and how the device can be removed without damaging brain tissue, the employees said. Musk applied in early 2022, but staffers said the company co-founder has yet to solve all the problems - even though the billionaire revealed human trials would start in six months back in November. Three staffers said they were skeptical the company could quickly resolve the issues.

How can artificial intelligence bring us closer to a more efficient, more easily recycled and better batteries? Recharge Industries has just announced it will build a $300 million lithium ion battery "gigafactory" in Geelong, Victoria, targeting 2 GWh of production a year in 2024 and 6 GWh by 2026. Lithium ion batteries are in growing demand worldwide with the expected skyrocketing introduction of electric vehicles. But beyond this news, Recharge Industries will also partner with Deakin University's Applied Artificial Intelligence Institute (A2I2) in Geelong to use artificial intelligence to build a better battery. The idea of using AI to improve batteries is not new, but A2I2 has created an operating system specifically designed for the lithium ion battery project, to speed up the design process.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is often presented in binary terms in both popular culture and political analysis. Either it represents the key to a futuristic utopia defined by the integration of human intelligence and technological prowess, or it is the first step toward a dystopian rise of machines. This same binary thinking is practiced by academics, entrepreneurs, and even activists in relation to the application of AI in combating climate change. The technology industry's singular focus on AI's role in creating a new technological utopia obscures the ways that AI can exacerbate environmental degradation, often in ways that directly harm marginalized populations. In order to utilize AI in fighting climate change in a way that both embraces its technological promise and acknowledges its heavy energy use, the technology companies leading the AI charge need to explore solutions to the environmental impacts of AI.

There are now some 120,000 warehouses globally, and another 50,000 are likely to be added before 2025. Over the next few years, more robots will be deployed into these warehouses--the logistics market--than in all other application categories combined, including farming, medicine, and home use. Just as the 1960s saw the mechanization of industry, with an accompanying boom in productivity and prosperity, the 2020s will be the dawn of the robotification of services. Industrial robots came into use in 1961 when General Motors (G.M.) installed a simple robotic arm on its New Jersey production line. The machine had been invented by Unimation, a company founded by the father of robotics, Joseph Engelberger--a self-professed Isaac Asimov enthusiast.

Over the weekend, we learned once again that when a Tesla crashes, it is like no other vehicle in an accident. The facts are still trickling in, but what is known is that two middle-aged men died. And according to reports, they somehow set their Model S into motion without a driver, crashing it into a tree at high speed and causing it to explode in flames that took up to four hours to extinguish. Much of the discussion around this strange incident focused on Tesla's Autopilot, a feature Tesla claims is intended only to assist the driver but that critics claim is an oxymoron in the automobile context. After all, the word autopilot connotes sustained fully automatic operation with the human operator out of the loop, an operating mode hitherto used only in aircraft and spacecraft.

Key point: Various enterprise-level scenarios require flexible power supply solutions.

The 16th China Air Cargo Summit, held from Nov 12-14 in Hangzhou, deliberated on the trade slowdown, its impact on air cargo and most significantly, the opportunities e-commerce is creating for the industry. "Coming after just a couple of days after 11-11 (Singles Day in China), the figures show a 23-25 percent increase over the previous years demonstrates that e-commerce is one of the significant opportunities for air cargo. Not just for the next 2-20 years, but I think it will be a long-term significant trend in the way consumerism operates," said Glyn Hughes, global head of cargo, IATA during his address. Calling the industry to respond to the strategies of the e-commerce companies with agile and flexible solutions, Hughes further added, "Regardless of the strategies employed by the e-commerce companies, data is actually critical to enable those efficiencies." "There are two main challenges – technological and regulatory. The technological challenge is, without getting into details, small drones tend to use electric power, which means they rely on lithium batteries. The other disadvantage of lithium batteries is that they are very, very heavy. This severely restricts the range of operations. With small drones, you end up with a machine that weighs 20 kilogrammes and can carry one kilogramme. The economics are not very [good]. You have some companies implementing them, especially here in China. The adoption [of drones] hasn't been big because of that. When new technologies for batteries emerge and change that equation, it would dramatically change the landscape. About the other problem is regulation, and luckily we are seeing more and more regulators around the world, including here in China. They are proactive and create drone corridors, first for testing and eventually for licensing and operations. To this day there are no consistent cargo operations drones in the world. I see that changing in the next few years though," elaborated Rangelov.

Liquid metal robots that can change their form and repair from damage just like the androids of the Terminator films could soon become a reality. Researchers in China have developed a palm-sized prototype inspired by T-1000 from the science fiction franchise, albeit a lot less sinister. The small, shape-shifting robot could be used to access environments that would be difficult for a human or fixed-shape bot to navigate, such as disaster zones. Liquid metal robots that can change their form and repair from damage just like the androids of the Terminator films could soon become a reality. The prototype, created by a team from the University of Science and Technology of China and the University of Wollongong in Australia is made up of a small plastic wheel, a lithium battery, and drops of gallium, a soft silvery metal, according to the South China Morning Post.

This post was done in partnership with Wirecutter. When readers choose to buy Wirecutter's independently chosen editorial picks, Wirecutter and Engadget may earn affiliate commission. Although flying a drone might sound like the biggest risk in operating one, dealing with the batteries is potentially more explosive. At the 100 hospital emergency rooms that report electronics-related injury cases to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission, more than 200 incidents (PDF) involving drone batteries, stemming from fire, smoke, and explosions, were recorded between 2012 and 2017. Not every drone-battery incident results in an injury, but each pilot and expert I interviewed had a story about an exploding or fiery lithium battery going off especially after it had repeatedly crashed to the ground inside a drone.