Alex Palou extended his IndyCar title lead with a Detroit Grand Prix win amid ongoing debates over officiating and the turbo-hybrid rules, as IndyCar rethinks pit-stop windows, pace-car use, and safety after recent incidents.
IndyCar is developing a second-generation hybrid system for its 2028 series, focusing on increasing energy storage capacity, duration, and power output, with plans for vendor prototypes by late spring 2024 to integrate into new chassis testing.
The 2026 Porsche 911 Turbo S debuts with a new T-Hybrid system producing 701 HP, making it the most powerful 911 ever, and is 14 seconds faster around the Nürburgring than its predecessor, with a starting price of over $272,000.
Researchers have developed a hybrid system called Brainoware, which combines human brain cell networks (organoids) with a computer chip, demonstrating capabilities in processing, learning, and memory. The system achieved basic speech recognition skills by decoding audio clips of Japanese vowels, improving its accuracy to about 78% with training. While the system is less accurate than artificial neural networks, this research opens new possibilities in biocomputing and showcases the potential of brain organoids in complex computational tasks.
Alpine has unveiled its LMDh car, the A424_B, which will be powered by a Mecachrome V6 engine and feature a spec LMDh hybrid system. The car has been developed in partnership with ORECA and will be run by Alpine's long-time sports car racing partner Signatech in the FIA World Endurance Championship next year. The manufacturer is also open to customer teams buying the car to compete in other championships. The first fire-up of the complete car is scheduled for June 28, with the first rollout set to take place in late July.
Toyota has confirmed that the upcoming 2024 Tacoma will continue to offer a manual transmission option, making it one of the few midsize pickup trucks to do so. The market for manual trucks has been shrinking, but Toyota is keeping the three-pedal dream alive. The new Tacoma will also feature a version of the i-Force Max hybrid system and a new Trailhunter trim. It is unclear how the rest of the powertrain slate will look for the upcoming model.
Sony is hiring for cloud gaming tech with a specific aim at PlayStation, indicating a renewed interest in cloud gaming. The job listings imply that Sony’s cloud gaming could run on a hybrid system using Kubernetes and Amazon’s AWS. Sony appears to be hiring for more roles in this cloud-focused Future Technology Group than any other roles in PlayStation. This news comes as Sony is also rumored to be launching its own handheld PlayStation device, which was previously reported not to include cloud gaming.