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EVs could be cheaper to own than gas cars in Africa by 2040

Electric vehicles could be economically competitive in Africa sooner than expected. Just 1% of new cars sold across the continent in 2025 were electric, but a new analysis finds that with solar off-grid charging, EVs could be cheaper to own than gas vehicles by 2040. There are major barriers to higher EV uptake in many […]

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What’s next for EV batteries in 2026

MIT Technology Review’s What’s Next series looks across industries, trends, and technologies to give you a first look at the future. You can read the rest of them here. Demand for electric vehicles and the batteries that power them has never been hotter. In 2025, EVs made up over a quarter of new vehicle sales globally,

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The first human test of a rejuvenation method will begin “shortly” 

When Elon Musk was at Davos last week, an interviewer asked him if he thought aging could be reversed. Musk said he hasn’t put much time into the problem but suspects it is “very solvable” and that when scientists discover why we age, it’s going to be something “obvious.” Not long after, the Harvard professor

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Inside OpenAI’s big play for science 

In the three years since ChatGPT’s explosive debut, OpenAI’s technology has upended a remarkable range of everyday activities at home, at work, in schools—anywhere people have a browser open or a phone out, which is everywhere. Now OpenAI is making an explicit play for scientists. In October, the firm announced that it had launched a

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Data centers are amazing. Everyone hates them.

Behold, the hyperscale data center!  Massive structures, with thousands of specialized computer chips running in parallel to perform the complex calculations required by advanced AI models. A single facility can cover millions of square feet, built with millions of pounds of steel, aluminum, and concrete; feature hundreds of miles of wiring, connecting some hundreds of

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Four bright spots in climate news in 2025

Climate news hasn’t been great in 2025. Global greenhouse-gas emissions hit record highs (again). This year is set to be either the second or third warmest on record. Climate-fueled disasters like wildfires in California and flooding in Indonesia and Pakistan devastated communities and caused billions in damage. In addition to these worrying indicators of our

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AI might not be coming for lawyers’ jobs anytime soon

When the generative AI boom took off in 2022, Rudi Miller and her law school classmates were suddenly gripped with anxiety. “Before graduating, there was discussion about what the job market would look like for us if AI became adopted,” she recalls.  So when it came time to choose a speciality, Miller—now a junior associate

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How one controversial startup hopes to cool the planet

Stardust Solutions believes that it can solve climate change—for a price. The Israel-based geoengineering startup has said it expects  nations will soon pay it more than a billion dollars a year to launch specially equipped aircraft into the stratosphere. Once they’ve reached the necessary altitude, those planes will disperse particles engineered to reflect away enough

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Selling the sizzle of trait discrimination

One day this fall, I watched an electronic sign outside the Broadway-Lafayette subway station in Manhattan switch seamlessly between an ad for makeup and one promoting the website Pickyourbaby.com, which promises a way for potential parents to use genetic tests to influence their baby’s traits, including eye color, hair color, and IQ. Inside the station,

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How AI is uncovering hidden geothermal energy resources

Sometimes geothermal hot spots are obvious, marked by geysers and hot springs on the planet’s surface. But in other places, they’re obscured thousands of feet underground. Now AI could help uncover these hidden pockets of potential power. A startup company called Zanskar announced today that it’s used AI and other advanced computational methods to uncover

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