hope

Renfe trusted in Justice to prevent Iryo from using its workshops. Your last hope just faded away

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Renfe will have to open its workshops to Iryo. At least for now. This is what the National Court has decided, rejecting the very precautionary measures requested by Renfe with which it intended to close the Italian company’s access to its space. Of course, the judicial procedure continues, so it is not at all clear what will end up happening in the medium term. No. This is what the National Court has determined. It does not accept the very precautionary measures requested by Renfe to prevent Iryo from using its facilities to carry out its own heavy maintenance activities at its facilities, they point out in The Economist. The National Court sides with the CNMC, at least for now, in the battle that Renfe maintains against Iryo and the regulators. However, the procedure continues and Justice will have to confirm whether, in the future, Renfe must keep its facilities open to rivals. The CNMC. This first decision of the court reaffirms the position of the CNMC, which claims to be allowing all the protagonists of this film to operate under equal conditions. Cani Fernández, president of the CNMC, defended the position of the regulators, arguing that “the CNMC has to guarantee access to the market under equal conditions,” in words reported by He Northern Castile. Since the conflict beganthe CNMC has sided with Iryo and demands that Renfe open its workshops so that the Italian company can carry out maintenance work on its trains. They point out that if Iryo has to send its trains to Italy, it would lose them for weeks and put it at a disadvantage in the market. The other alternative, that scheduled maintenance is not carried out, is not logically viable either. What Renfe says. For its part, Renfe believes that give access to Iryo to carry out the activities that have already been advanced to them has no place within the competitive framework that the Spanish company and the rest of its rivals had given themselves. Renfe does not avoid its obligation to have to lend its facilities to Iryo and Ouigo but remember that this is only the case for light maintenance tasks. However, they allege, Iryo has requested to be able to carry out its own heavy maintenance activities. This, according to Renfe, would have direct consequences on its offer because its facilities are already working at full capacity. The company assures that if it gives entry to the Italian company will suffer the following consequences: Remove 1.2 million seats from its offer due to not being able to maintain its own trains Of those seats, one million would correspond to the offer offered as a public service Loss of 60 million euros in income What Iryo says. In its allegations, Renfe points out that Iryo’s activities would occupy 10% of the La Sagra facilities, where its Comprehensive Maintenance Base is located. Iryo reduces this figure to 7% and points out that it would not be too much of a problem since they are activities that can be scheduled based on the mileage of the trains. They emphasize that if Renfe does not give them access to their workshops they will have to take them to Rome and that this implies leaving them out of circulation for up to two months, a situation that they consider unfair. The company has not made any comment on the possibility of setting up its own workshops in Spain, just as promised upon arrival. They complain. The latter does not convince Renfe that she feels aggrieved in this fight. Back in the day, he discovered that Ouigo was carrying out heavy unscheduled maintenance work in his workshops. Now they believe that giving Iryo access to act in the same way is not fair because it is not specified or by the Directive 2012/34/EU (RECAST) on the single railway space nor the standard EN 15380-4:2021 Spanish. Faced with the first decision of the CNMC, Renfe responded by closing the door and putting forward its reasons but the organization stood firmand. The next thing was to appeal the decision to the National Court requesting very precautionary measures but these, as we say, have been rejected. At the moment, Justice forces the workshops to open but the procedure continues to decide whether, in the medium term, Renfe, Iryo and Ouigo must maintain this same balancing act or if the Spanish company can close the door on them. Photo | Renfe and Iryo In Xataka | There is a fight between the railway operators to get the best drivers and Renfe is winning it

Volkswagen has hope to make electric cars cheaper: sodium batteries

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Sodium-ion technology It has been promising for years without ever taking off. Gotion High-Tech, a Chinese company in which Volkswagen is its largest individual shareholder, has just taken the most serious step to date: for its own brand of sodium batteries to have a product ready to be manufactured at scale. An evolution is urgently needed. Lithium-ion batteries They have been dominating for decades the energy storage and mobility sector but they have an underlying problem that more and more companies want to tackle: lithium is a geographically concentrated resource, with fragile supply chains and dependent on a few countries. Sodium, on the other hand, is one of the most abundant elements on the planet. If sodium-ion technology reaches competitive energy densities and can be manufactured on a large scale, the game changes. And that is precisely what Gotion has in mind. Production-ready batteries. At its 15th Global Technology Conference, the company introduced the Gnascent brandwhich groups three versions of sodium-ion battery designed for specific applications, not a single multipurpose cell. The brand already has production lines ready in Tangshan and Hefei, China, and they are on the order of gigawatt-hours. Three versions. Each Gnascent variant targets a different niche: High energy: reaches 261 Wh/kg, 60% more than conventional sodium batteries. It is designed for light electric vehicles and drones for commercial use, where weight is a critical factor. Power: with 162 Wh/kg, it supports discharge at temperatures down to -50 °C. Its target market is commercial vehicles and equipment in extreme cold regions, where the performance of lithium batteries drops dramatically. Energy storage: with 180 Ah per cell and more than 20,000 useful life cycles, it maintains 88% of its capacity at -40 °C. The company claims to have passed penetration tests with 8 mm nails and heating to 400 °C without ignition. It can become a serious option for network installations and industrial use. What your technology is about. Just like account The company, Gnascent is backed by more than 90 patents covering cathode materials (sheet oxides, polyanions and sodium-manganese-iron pyrophosphate), hard carbon anodes and electrolyte additives. On the other hand, its anode-less design reduces material costs while increasing energy density. Who is behind. Gotion High-Tech, founded in 2006 and headquartered in Hefei, has Volkswagen Group as its largest shareholder. At the end of 2025, the company had a cumulative production capacity of 400 GWh and 20 manufacturing bases spread around the world. Just like share According to CarNewsChina, in the Chinese market it is the third supplier of batteries for electric vehicles, only behind CATL and BYD, with a share of 6.6%. Who climbs it first and best?. Gotion is not the only one on this path. CATL and BYD too are accelerating their own sodium ion programswhich points to a broader strategy in which this chemistry is the protagonist and ends up becoming a real alternative to lithium. And now what. For the moment, Gotion wants to enter the large-scale energy storage segment through Gnascent. That is electrical networks, industrial facilities or residential use, complementing with smaller markets such as two-wheeled vehicles. It only remains to be seen if the strategy ends up being given the green light and if more companies choose to consider this option in the near future. Cover image | Gotion High-Tech and Volkswagen In Xataka | Putting pistachio in everything has a limit. Or not: Córdoba already makes batteries with its shells

The most important question to understand someone is not what they believe in or what they hope for. The question is what does he love?

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“To know if someone is good, we do not ask what they believe or hope for, but rather what they love.”. One reads this phrase and it is almost inevitable to think that it is the typical self-help junk merchandise that fills feeds, mugs and WhatsApp statuses. But nothing could be further from the truth. And not only because It was written more than 1,500 years ago by one of the most influential thinkers in history, but because (in addition) it has become one of the philosophical concepts of recent months. So maybe the question is not what an old priest can teach us in this time full of haste, but also; The question is why that old priest has returned to the center of public debate exactly now. What exactly did Saint Augustine mean? The phrase is very interesting because, beneath an apparent meaningless string (what do you believe? What do you expect?), it hides a very clear idea of ​​what is important in life. In Christian thought, the three great traditional virtues are precisely faith, hope and love. What the philosopher from Hippo defended is that faith is important, of course; Hope is fundamental, of course it is: but at the center of everything is love. In fact, Augustine himself has another famous phase (“Love and do what you will”) that goes much further in his master-centrism. Nobody can be very surprised, really. Saint Augustine has great hits like: “Lord, grant me chastity and continence, but not now.” That “Do whatever you want” sounds suspicious, but (actually) it’s not so suspicious. We’ll see. Why has all this become popular right now? For politics, of course. On January 29, 2025, US Vice President Vance defended in an interview that canceling most US foreign aid and mass deportations with that argument. That “there is a Christian concept old-school “where you love your family, then your neighbor, then your community, then your fellow citizens, and after that, you can prioritize the rest of the world.” Later, at X.com, he spent the afternoon sending people to google “ordo amoris”. That is to say, Vance endorsed that idea of ​​”love and do what you want” in the most direct way possible. But does it make sense? Translated into a more current language, the Augustinian idea simply tells us that the subject is defined by the direction of his desire, not by the correctness of his beliefs or his expectations. But, without getting into political questions, that doesn’t exactly mean that there is a clear order of obligations that tells us who we should love first and who we should love second. It is not a ranking. Augustine’s idea is more complex because, deep down, he was convinced that love has a transformative power over people: it orders them from within. That is the order he claimed. What we can learn from Saint Augustine without entering into politicking. That what is important are the things that really matter to us; not our ideas about the world, nor what we hope will happen. But, above all, because what we love will end up turning us into the type of person we want to be. In someone, as the Father of the Church would say, good. Image | In Xataka | “If I am wrong, I exist”: 1,500 years ago, Saint Augustine had already given the best argument against the productivity gurus

Ten years ago, Bnext was the great hope of fintech. They ended up crashing

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Founded in 2016 by Guillermo Vicandi, Bnext It was born as a fintech alternative to traditional banking. In fact, their visible heads assured that it was not a bank, despite offering an account and card. The growth was as fast as the fall. After the collapse of its cryptocurrency, The app announced its closure on April 13. What was Bnext. It was not a bank, that’s what its creators constantly said. It was an electronic money entity (EDE) alternative to traditional banking. In practice, it offered what a bank offers: account, card, loans, insurance, currency purchases, investment plans. The difference was the model: Bnext always acted as an intermediary, connecting the user with the best products on the market through a single app. No offices, no paper, no queues. The golden age. In 2019, Bnext was one of the most visible projects on the Spanish fintech scene. became the fintech that grew the most in Spainwith more than 156,000 registered users and more than 100,000 active clients holding a Bnext VISA. Your second round of financing It closed with 22 million eurosthe highest figure seen in Spain (in 2019) since the Valencian Hawkers raised 55 million euros. That same year, they partnered with giants like MyInvestor to offer financial products. The stumble. Bnext’s first setback comes a year later, in 2021, after its landing in Latin America. Its partner, Cacao Paycard, did not obtain authorization to operate from the National Banking and Securities Commission (CNBV), which translated into a fine of 2.6 million Mexican pesos (about 150,000 euros at the current exchange rate) to Bnext for misleading communication. There was no plan B. Bnext had to cease operations in Mexico, close all its accounts and lose more than 230,000 clients who had trusted the company prior to the sanctions. Meanwhile. In Spain, alternatives like Revolut were growing like wildfire, and Bnext was beginning to run out of oxygen. In 2021, they decided to ally with Algorand, a blockchain firm that became one of the company’s main shareholders. After the alliance they announced their own token: B3X. The play didn’t go well. On March 1, 2022, it was launched to the public with a starting price of two euro cents. Today it cannot even operate from the app, since the service has been dismantled. Its price before the debacle: 0.00006 US cents. What happens to Bnext users. Bnext accounts and cards have already been canceled and the product is no longer marketed. No payments, transfers or receipts can be uploaded. Payroll cannot be received The balance of the account may be requested during a repayment period of 20 years Cryptocurrency management is referred to Onyze… via email User data will be deleted in accordance with the GDPR You will no longer have access to the marketplace services Bnext was once the great hope of Spanish fintech. Now rest in peace. What will become of the company. The company gives the finishing touch to its app, but does not completely cease its operations. “The fintech business and market has changed considerably, and with this, we have had to pivot our value proposition. After several years offering products to the end consumer and in an increasingly competitive environment and with more complex regulation, we have decided to take a step towards the future, focusing on helping companies launch their own payment products.” Guillermo Vicandi, CEO of Bnext. Bnext closes as a neobank, but pivots towards financial infrastructure services. In Xataka | Europe had been asking for a big hit on the table for some time. Revolut just gave it a huge valuation

James Webb has bad news for the largest natural laboratory for rocky planets, but there is still some hope

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The star TRAPPIST-1 and the seven known planets that surround it are a natural laboratory in which the evolution of rocky planets can be studied. This has led many scientists to focus their attention on them, in search of a possible habitable planet. However, observations made by an international team of astronomers with the help of the James Webb Space Telescope They are not very encouraging. Planets without atmosphere. The James Webb Space Telescope has a very powerful infrared radiation analysis instrument, with which it can analyze the temperature of the planets it observes. These emit infrared radiation whose intensity is proportional to their temperature, so a thermal map can be made. That’s what these astronomers have done. They have initially focused on two of the planets that orbit TRAPPIST-1: TRAPPIST-1a and TRAPPIST-1b. The resulting heat map shows that neither planet has an atmosphere. They may have had it one day, but possibly TRAPPIST-1 itself destroyed it. It is a very uninspiring result for the search for habitable planets in this system. Lights and shadows of TRAPPIST-1. So far seven exoplanets have been discovered orbiting TRAPPIST-1. They are all very close together. In fact, its seven orbits are concentrated in the distance between Mercury and the Sun. What happens is that this red dwarf is less energetic than our Sun, so the temperature would not be as suffocating. All of these planets are rocky, like Earth, and in fact, some are very similar in size. There could be an exoplanet with conditions similar to ours. The problem is that red dwarfs They emit a lot of radiation and energetic flows of particles that could destroy their atmosphere.. And of course, without atmosphere, there is no life. Tidal lock. All planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system are tidally locked. This means that its rotation and translation period around the red dwarf they are synchronized. As a result, there is one side continuously exposed to the star and another on the opposite side. On one side it is always day and on the other it is always night. NASA/JPL-Caltech Extreme temperatures. When a planet is tidally locked, there can be two situations, depending on whether it has an atmosphere or not. When there is an atmosphere, heat flows from the light side to the dark side, so that the entire planet has a stable average temperature. On the other hand, if there is no atmosphere, the dark side can be frozen and the illuminated side can be scorched. In the two exoplanets analyzed by James Webb, it has been seen that temperatures are around 100ºC-200ºC on the illuminated side and -200ºC on the dark side. Therefore, it is confirmed that there is no atmosphere. And now what? Despite this hard blow, there is still hope. The two exoplanets that have been analyzed are not in the star’s habitable zone. This is the distance from it at which the temperature is adequate for the water, if any, to remain in a liquid state. At that exact point there are only TRAPPIST-1e, TRAPPIST-1f and TRAPPIST-1g. Furthermore, the former has a density and size very similar to those of Earth. James Webb has all his attention on this exoplanet right now, to repeat the process. If there were an atmosphere on it, it could still remain on the list of possible habitable planets. It’s still interesting. Despite the first blow, TRAPPIST-1 remains a very interesting system for understand the evolution of rocky planets. The Earth was lucky not to lose its atmosphere; but, beyond those, the evolutions can be similar. Furthermore, we have not yet ruled out that TRAPPIST-1e has an atmosphere. Let’s go step by step. Image | NASA, ESA, CSA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI) In Xataka | There is only one chance in 11,000 years to reach the planet Sedna. Some Italians want to use this nuclear engine

The world needs to get oil out of the Middle East by any means possible. Their only hope is 30 giant ships queuing in Yanbu

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The landscape off the coast of Yanbu on the Red Sea has completely changed in a matter of days. The area is now taken over by VLCCs (Very Large Crude Carriers), colossal supertankers capable of swallowing two million barrels of crude oil. They are not there just passing through; Its massive concentration responds to a single objective: to carry out the largest and most urgent evacuation of oil in recent times. A fleet to the rescue of the market. To understand the magnitude of this rescue operation, just look at the figures that provides Financial Times: What is happening is a real “flotilla of supertankers” sailing against the clock. About 30 of these giants head to Yanbu, when the usual thing is that only two arrive a month. The reason is that traffic in the Persian Gulf has come to a “stalemate” following the Iranian attacks. The maritime tracking data it handles Bloomberg give an idea of ​​the urgency: In just 48 hours, at least 25 of these giants have headed to the Saudi port. We are talking about a fleet with room to load some 50 million barrels that, otherwise, would have no outlet. It is an essential escape valve right now. The blockade has already caused world production to fall by 6% and the plug is so big that neighbors like Iraq and Kuwait they have had to start closing wells because, simply, they have run out of room in their tanks to store the oil. The “sea bridge” to avoid Iran. How do these ships load oil if they do not enter the Gulf? The answer is in the desert, but the result is seen in the port. Saudi Arabia is using your pipeline East-West like a turnstile. The crude oil travels overland 1,200 kilometers to Yanbu, where the “army” of ships awaits it to distribute it to the world, especially China and India. According to Wall Street Journal, This infrastructure has become “one of the most critical pieces of the world economy” overnight. The CEO of Saudi Aramco, Amin Nasser, confirmed in this medium that they are reaching their maximum capacity: 7 million barrels per day flowing westward. Of them, 5 million are destined directly to be loaded on these supertankers for global markets. The risk does not disappear, it just changes coordinates. But sailing to Yanbu is not a safe ride. As he warns Financial Times, The ships must now “challenge the notorious hotspot of Houthi attacks.” To leave for Asia, these supertankers have to cross the Bab al-Mandab Strait. Although the Yemeni group had signaled a pause in its attacks, experts from EOS Risk They assure that the tankers continue to assume an “enormous risk”, since the area is within reach of Iranian missiles. Even the port of Fujairah in the Emirates, which is also trying to act as an escape route, is already has suffered damage from drone attacks last week. The message is clear: the alternative is less dangerous than Hormuz, but it is not immune to war. The limits of the plan. The big question for markets is whether this armada of ships and desert pipelines can prevent economic collapse. The closure of Hormuz has taken 20 million barrels per day off the board and physical reality imposes its limits on the alternative route. On the one hand, there is a critical funnel in the port itself. According to data from the Argus Media agencyalthough the Saudi pipeline manages to transport up to 7 million barrels, the Yanbu terminals only have real capacity to load between 4 and 4.5 million a day on ships. Inevitably, supertankers will have to queue. On the other hand, the distillate crisis looms. As experts cited by Middle East Eyethe East-West pipeline transports crude oil, not refined products. No matter how many ships fill up in Yanbu, markets like Europe are left without their vital supply of diesel and aviation fuel, which is usually processed in the unreachable refineries of the Middle East. According to Sparta Commodities in statements for WSJwith this route only half of the problem has been “solved.” There are another 10 million barrels that are still trapped with no possible way out. Therefore, it is no longer “crazy” for a barrel to reach $200. The demand for oil is “inelastic”; the economy cannot stop consuming it from one day to the next, which generates brutal upward pressure. The geopolitics of “the worse the better” While ships maneuver in the Red Sea, in Washington the focus is purely strategic. Donald Trump has made it clear that stopping Iran is the priority, even above the price of gasoline. “We make a lot of money when prices rise,” the president even published on his social networks, emphasizing that the US, as a large producer, can afford a resistance that other countries do not have. For its part, the historic opening of the IEA’s strategic reserves (400 million barrels) attempts to “buy time,” but as analyst Javier Blas says, nothing replaces to the actual opening of the Strait of Hormuz. Image | Photo by Khristina Sergeychik on Unsplash Xataka | China has just found a hole in the US’s quietest weapon: an algorithm has hacked its B-2s in Iran

NVIDIA has lost hope in China, which is why it has started manufacturing its own next-generation GPUs for AI

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NVIDIA faces this 2026 a crucial year. They have become one of the largest strategic investors in the AI ​​ecosystem with dozens of billion-dollar investments in other companies, models, infrastructure and robotics. But, in the end, they are a company that supplies chips and, so far, the H200 They set the tone. According to a report by Financial Timesthat’s over. NVIDIA just ordered TSMC to start mass manufacturing Vera Rubinits next-generation hardware for AI. The reason? They have lost all faith in China. In short. With the entire AI industry looking to the future, and NVIDIA that has its Vera Rubin on the starting grid, it was strange that the company continued to invest so much in keeping TSMC working on a chip as old as the H200. Although it has been around for a while, it has positioned itself as unbeatable in the industry due to its price/power ratio, so these are the chips on which it has been built. the AI ​​empire. However, time passes and NVIDIA needs to move. Data centers need more power, new models are more demanding and the spearhead of the software sector – such as OpenAI either Google– have demanded new solutions. According to two sources consulted by the financial media, and close to NVIDIA’s plans, the company has grown tired of “waiting in limbo” and has begun to accelerate the delivery and deployment of Vera Rubin. Yoncomparable. As it could not be otherwise, TSMC is going to be in charge. The Taiwanese foundry would have already been asked to begin diversifying the production line to begin manufacturing the new chips. And if you’re wondering why it’s not enough for Google or OpenAI to simply buy more H200, the answer is because the chips have nothing to do with it. H200 is a more classic GPU for a data center. It is the configuration that AI and computing companies on these servers have been working with for years. Vera Rubin, however, is a paradigm shift made up of new CPUs, new GPUs and designed so that everything works as a single rack-scale accelerator. It has not only more power, but also the latest software and hardware additions from NVIDIA and something very important: incredible bandwidth. The higher the bandwidth on such a system, the more simultaneous data it can handle. This implies greater efficiency when training, but also a lower cost in inference. It is not an update, it is a platform change designed for models with trillions of parameters. Qgoose faith in China. To put it more simply, if the H200 is like a “super powerful graphics card”, Vera Rubin is like a mini data center in itself. And if you’re wondering why they didn’t start production sooner, the reason is… China. Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, has been ‘fighting’ with Washington for months to open their arms in the trade and technology war maintained by the US and China. Trump ended up agreeing and Huang commented earlier this year that they had returned to “turn on” all production lines to supply the very high Chinese demand. The problem is that that demand did not arrive. At least, It was not as high as Huang expected. In the presentation of results, NVIDIA’s financial director commented a few days ago that “although small quantities of H200 for Chinese customers were approved by the US government, we have not yet generated any income. And we do not know if imports to China will be allowed.” We already told the problem: The US was leaving for NVIDIA to sell its graphics, butThe Chinese government did not seem so convinced. Your main Big Tech They were demanding NVIDIA solutionsarguing that they need them to keep up with what their American rivals are doing, but the ball was in the court of the Government and Customs. China is promoting AI that is different from that of the US, more focused on low costs and rapid acceptance by the client, and at the same time want to build your own hardware network with companies like SMIC or a Huawei that you already have your supercomputer for AI. complicated swerve. From the Financial Times they point out that the president of China, Xi Jinping, and the president of the United States will meet at the end of March to discuss export controls. The problem is that, according to their sources, even if the barrier is lifted completely and not just for certain companies and China can buy H200s en masse, turning TSMC’s ship around so that it starts producing H200s again would be complicated. It is not as simple as pressing a button and going from producing one thing to another. If this situation occurs, “NVIDIA would take up to three months to reallocate or add capacity to the supply chain to produce H200.” One of Vera Rubin’s PCBs Rebound winner. What is clear here is that NVIDIA is not going to lose from the operation. Huang already argued that the United States could not miss the opportunity to take a slice of a multi-billion dollar market (because the US let the cards be sold… with a 25% tariff), but whether it is the Chinese or the Western industry, it is from NVIDIA that they continue to buy the H200 and, ‘shortly’, the Vera Rubin. And the rebound winner in this operation is Samsung. Of the three companies that manufacture memory (and that have catapulted the RAM and SSD crisis we are in), Samsung is the one that has completed its new generation HBM4 memory. It is the one that has passed the high standards of NVIDIA and the one that is already being mass manufactured to be able to integrate into Vera Rubin systems. Everyone attentive. As we said, NVIDIA has to the entire industry at his feet. Google, xAI and Meta are working on their own chips, but together with Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, OpenAI, Mistral and Anthropic they are some of the companies that they … Read more

Stellantis has lost 22 billion euros with the electric car. Their hope to solve it is called Zaragoza

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Stellantis embarked on a path of rapid and aggressive transition to the electric car. Along the way, it merged models on the same platform, wanted to convert brands to zero emissions and lost the identity of some of them. The result is 20 billion euros of real and expected losses. Now, part of his future is at stake in Zaragoza with a Chinese car. Saragossa. The news was almost a not news because Stellantis, through the mouth of its CEO Automotive Newshad already confirmed that it would manufacture Leapmotor’s Chinese cars in Spain. By then, with a CATL factory in the middle of construction and already manufacturing Stellantis small electric cars, Zaragoza seemed the best placed city, ahead of Madrid and Vigo. Last week, Filosa himself reconfirmed what was already known but expanded the information with some nuances as stated in The Aragon Newspaper. The car will be manufactured in Zaragoza and will not be alone. And the company has awarded Spain the production of up to four completely electric Chinese models. It will, therefore, be the reconversion of Figueruelas. The Stellantis situation. Although the investments were already confirmed, the last presentation of results could have raised some doubts. Then Stellantis confirmed that the electric car would have a negative impact of 22,000 million euros in your accounts. This does not mean, exactly, that it loses that money, but it is the readjustment that amounts to the cancellation of two new factories, the compensatory payment to suppliers, the money invested in new developments and the money that will no longer enter the company’s coffers. All of this is a consequence of a project led by Carlos Tavares, former CEO of the company, which has failed. The Portuguese wanted to accompany the conversion to all-electric too quickly and with a very aggressive cost adjustment. The result has been too much product at dealerships that very few have bought and models little differentiated from each other with a total loss of identity between companies. Good news (1). Firstly, because the arrival of Leapmotor in Zaragoza represents support for the electric transition in Figueruelas. The factory will be in charge of producing one of the first purely Chinese electric cars to arrive in Europe, a key step to be able to sell them without tariffs. But this also guarantees two things. The first is the opening of a new assembly line because they cannot use exactly the same one as for the Opel Corsa, Peugeot 208 and Lancia Ypsilon electric that Figueruelas produces at the moment. The second is that it increases pressure on the production of batteries that CATL will set up nearby, giving greater support to the project. It remains to be seen if the other three Stellantis models will also roll out of their doors.. Good news (2). The second part of the announcement is interesting in that the Leapmotor B10, the first car to be assembled in Zaragoza, is different from the three mentioned above and that in itself is a reason for joy for Zaragoza. And it is that the Stellantis urban electric cars have not been working well in the market. Everything indicates that, in the future, these electric vehicles will have to receive the embrace of the European customer but at the moment it is not being like thatwhich raised questions about long-term production with a plant that could operate at half gas. The Lepmotor B10 is a car that Stellantis has hopes for because it is different. It has much more striking interiors, adjusted to the huge screens that the industry has demanded in recent years. And it has purely Chinese software and development, so Stellantis can play with the price because its investments have been minimal. The company has the power to distribute the car outside of China but the development, investments and sales within China have been left to Leapmotor itself. Strengths and weaknesses. Stellantis’ decision to produce in Spain reminds us the strength that our country has gained in Europe as a productive alternative to advance electric cars. Either because labor is cheaper than in countries like Germany or France, or because energy is also cheaper, Chery or Stellantis, with Leapmotor, have decided that they will manufacture on our soil. Spain has the advantage of a well-established industry that needs reconversion. The problem is that, for the moment, it has focused on the assembly of small cars (as also happens in Martorell) which are the ones that are having the most problems to sell them or, if necessary, for the brand to make a profit from them. It would be interesting for our country to expand its presence in the development of vehicles and not only focus its industry on their production. Therefore, it is good news that Chery also bets on our country for its new R&D&i space. Photo | In Xataka | Volkswagen’s cheap electric car is manufactured in Spain: this is the new megaconstruction that makes it possible

Japan was the king of semiconductors in the 80s. Rapidus is its only hope to compete in this market again

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In the 1980s, Japan did not compete in semiconductors and technology. It was devastating. In 1988, Japanese companies controlled more than half of the world semiconductor market, and NEC, Toshiba, Hitachi and Fujitsu were above giants of the time in the US such as Motorola, Texas Instruments or Intel. That golden era ended with the hyperspecialization that emerged both in South Korea and China and (especially) in Taiwan, but now Japan wants to make a splash again. what has happened. A year ago the technology industry was surprised by the birth of Rapidus Corporationa company born from the alliance of several Japanese giants (Sony, Toyota, SoftBank) with the aim of returning to Japan part of its relevance in the field of semiconductors. The initial plan was very ambitious: they wanted to jump directly to 2 nm by 2027. As we will see later, they have had to delay that forecast, but what has also changed (a lot) is the structure of the company. Japan like main investor. The Japanese government has decided to make Rapidus a centerpiece of national security, and is taking unprecedented control of the company. He will become the largest shareholder, although initially he will only exercise 10% of the voting rights to leave management in private hands. Of course: the State reserves the right to raise that participation above 50% if the company is experiencing difficulties. Total capital has skyrocketed to 420 billion yen ($2.7 billion), when in 2022 the investment did not exceed 50 million. The golden action. The Japanese executive has made use of a legal mechanism by acquiring the so-called “golden shares” with which he can exercise his veto in critical decisions such as changes in management or mergers. The objective is to shield Rapidus against foreign capital acquisitions and guarantee the sovereignty of the project. Which is exactly the same thing we are seeing around the world, of course: each country wants to have its own apples in its basket. Investors who are also clients. Financial support comes from the Japanese government, but also from some large Japanese business groups such as the aforementioned Sony and Toyota or Denso. In total, 32 companies have invested 167.6 billion yen (1.075 billion dollars) and will contribute to this commitment by also being customers of the silicon that Rapidus can produce. They remain just as ambitious… or more. Rapidus CEO Atsuyoshi Koike has adjusted the development plans for his chips, and has delayed the arrival of mass production to March 2028. That’s bad news, but not so much when we discover that the company has plans to go beyond 2nm and is preparing to be able to make 1.4nm chips and even 1 nm. Fast as gunpowder. One of the factors that want to differentiate Rapidus is its promise of rapid delivery of semiconductors. The project aims to automate both the manufacturing, packaging and testing of the chips. These last two are processes with great manual intervention, but at Rapidus they believe they have the key to making them much more autonomous. If they succeed, they could reduce the cycle time of semiconductors by 66% and thus beat even giants like TSMC by the way. Japan turns to chips. Japan’s aspiration is striking, and its Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi, seems to be clear that the commitment to this segment must be notable. In fact, Japan is investing a proportion of its GDP (0.71%) in semiconductors much higher than that of the US (0.21%) or Germany (0.41%). Challenges. The strategy, of course, has its critics. Takero Doi, professor at Keio University, point “There are many cases in which public-private investment has led to systems that lacked accountability. It is important to clarify who will lead the project, the private sector or the government.” Plan B. Although the plan with Rapidus is ambitious, the country is actually playing both sides. While boosting its own business, the government has made commitments with TSMC to upgrade its manufacturing plants in Japan. This makes it have a hybrid ecosystem: it attracts the experience and knowledge of the semiconductor giant while on the other hand trying to create a national alternative. Image | Xataka with Freepik In Xataka | Panasonic was the bastion of 100% Japanese TVs after Sony’s step back. Now it has surrendered to China

We have found the Achilles heel of the most feared fungus in hospitals, and that already gives us hope

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In the hospital environment there is a fungus that undoubtedly It is a real nightmare for modern healthcare systemssince it can put an entire hospital floor in check. We talk about the fungus Candida auris, which was first identified in 2009 and is undoubtedly a “superfungus” resistant to most common drugs and that it can spread quickly and be a silent epidemic that kills more and more human beings. Your weak point. Due to its aggressiveness, science has a clear objective: find your weak point to be able to develop a drug that allows us to destroy it. Now a group of researchers has published research in Communications Biology that changes the rules of the game: They have identified the exact genetic process that the fungus uses to survive inside the human body. And knowing its insides gives us options to destroy it. The iron problem. Like almost any living organism, this fungus needs iron to grow, replicate and cause damage. In the human body, iron is not “free” precisely as a defense system to prevent pathogens from using it against ourselves. Now science has seen that the fungus Candida auris It has a strategy to avoid this defense barrier that our body has. And the secret is in your genetics, specifically in some specific genes called XTCthat They literally act as ‘suction pumps’ which allows the fungus to capture iron even in the most hostile conditions. And this is the key. If iron is what feeds them, and we already know how they get the mineral from our own body… we already have the key to preventing them from consuming our own reserves. An unexpected ally. One of the biggest challenges in studying this fungus is that it has the ability to reproduce at high temperatures such as 37ºC. This makes it difficult to use traditional models to carry out studies, which until now were zebrafish, which want cold waters. To overcome this drawback, the research team used a rather innovative model: the killifish. A small fish that is capable of living in desert environments and tolerate temperatures of up to 37 °C, making it a perfect “living laboratory” to observe how the fungus behaves in real time within a vertebrate organism. Its importance. We must keep in mind that we are dealing with a pathogen that the WHO classifies as “critical priority”and that is why this research gives rise to creating drugs that attack the ‘suction’ system of fungi in order to defeat them. Plus, we already have something in our drug repository that we could use: iron chelators. An option that can ‘starve’ mushrooms, but has yet to be tried. In addition to this, the pathogens will be able to be identified much better, since there are strains of fungi that are much more aggressive because they capture a much greater amount of iron inside. The future. Although we have the focus about superbugs that can doom humanity, research must also focus on fungi that are developing resistance to specific treatments. In this way, finding a route that the fungus “cannot avoid” gives us, for the first time, a strategic advantage that we should not hesitate to use. Images | masakazu sasaki In Xataka | A viral video has “shown” all the bacteria in a drinks can. It’s more complex than it seems

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