Grüeneisl says machine-learning algorithms can simulate robots performing complex maneuvers to find the most efficient process.

And despite its size, the auto industry is actually a bit of a minnow when it comes to buying chips, accounting for roughly a tenth of global semiconductor fab output.

General Motors dropped a pretty penny to debut its new electric Hummer during the World Series on Tuesday, with a two minute, 15 second ad that took up an entire commercial break.

Timbuk2 Portola Pannier Bag for $70 ($29 off): Carrying everything on your back while biking can leave you a sweaty mess in hot weather.Bontrager Circuit Cycling Gloves for $32 ($8 off): People who bike a lot tend to develop blisters, and padded, ergonomically-shaped handlebars can only go so far.

Even before coronavirus surfaced, more than 50 US companies planned to move some production out of China, according to reports last year.

Covid-19 is bad news for the automotive industry, and even worse news for the electric vehicle proponents .The Navy will deploy two hospital ships to help with the coronavirus response, but a surgeon who served on one of them doesn’t think it’s a great place to treat infectious disease patients.

Like many people, Alastair Philip Wiper grew up thinking factories were ugly.Its white paper reels, roller ink, and metal cylinders provided enough photographic fuel to launch a career so prolific that Wiper himself has come to seem like a machine.

Across the street a retro McDonnell Douglas sign perches above the aerospace giant’s former factory, and just around the corner Virgin Orbit is developing air-launched rockets .It’s a fitting headquarters for SpinLaunch, a company breathing new life into the decades-old idea of using giant mechanical slings to hurl rockets into orbit.

Earlier this month, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk appeared on stage in Shanghai to celebrate the opening of Tesla’s new 9.3 million-square-foot factory there, and the start of production for the Model 3 , the company's affordable sedan, in Asia.

Like most people writing hot takes and think pieces about productivity, I’m focusing on knowledge workers here—those of us who work at desks, mostly in front of computers, in offices or from home.

Though the Crewe factory employs just one robot —a rather disappointing rig that applies adhesive to windshields—it has automated sleds shuffling assemblies down the line, high-tech analytical gear for developing new materials, and several computerized leather cutters that map out all the bits and pieces for seats, steering wheels, and door panels that they can extract from a single hide, leaving just wispy remnants to go into the recycling.

Over the past few years, Zhang has continued to tinker with the olfactory receptors he and Mershin use in their Nano-Nose. Mershin says these streams of data will help them select which receptors they need to put into the Nano-Nose.

WIRED also this week got a look inside Audi’s E-tron factory in Belgium , the world’s first carbon-neutral electric-vehicle plant. Also this week, we wondered about the road ahead for congestion pricing in New York City and got up close with the blood-toting drones flying over North Carolina.

Which is why Audi is touting advances in its new E-Tron electric SUV facility in Brussels, Belgium: the first factory churning out premium, high-volume electric vehicles to be certified as carbon-neutral by the European Commission.

“You can’t use a factory to view our Wisconsin investment.” That’s a problem for the village of Mount Pleasant and Racine County, which agreed to give Foxconn $764 million in incentives and more than 3,000 acres of land in exchange for the promise of factory jobs.

“I wanted to update the old-fashioned image of a cow in a green meadow that we know from ads and milk packages,” Teryoshin says, “to show the dystopian side of the milk production.” Germany’s $14 billion dairy farming industry rests squarely on the backs of 4.2 million cows—the majority Holsteins, a sturdy piebald favored around the world for its high milk yield.

The camera data is used to calculate the moment when a robot should stop moving, depending on what it’s doing and its distance to a human, says Patrick Sobalvarro, CEO and co-founder of Veo.

Then Tesla would start ramping up to 5,000 cars a week, the benchmark Musk had said the company needed to achieve.SIGN UP TODAYSign up for the Daily newsletter and never miss the best of WIRED.In the summer of 2016, however—soon after customers began reserving Model 3s—Musk called a meeting that changed everything, according to multiple people who attended or were briefed on the gathering.

It is filled with complex creations, from a 50-foot tree to a collection of multicolored dinosaurs, all of them built with a product that has barely changed in more than 50 years.A short walk away in its research lab, though, Lego is trying to refashion the product it is best known for: It wants to eliminate its dependence on petroleum-based plastics, and build its toys entirely from plant-based or recycled materials by 2030.The Lego house, in Billund, Denmark, is a shrine to the town’s most famous product.The challenge is designing blocks that click together yet separate easily, retain bright colors, and survive the rigors of being put through a laundry load, or the weight of an unknowing parent’s foot.