Japan

89 Articles

Electric Cars

Toyota Enters the Extended-Range Electric Vehicle Race with Chinese Production Starting in 2027

Toyota plans to produce its first extended-range electric vehicle in China starting in spring 2027, with a plan to produce 200,000 units during the same year and approximately 400,000 units in 2028. The company is betting on this type to avoid the price war in China’s electric vehicle market and benefit from local components and software.

2026-09-21

Electric Cars

Factorial Builds an Industrial Alliance to Develop Solid-State Batteries for Electric Vehicles

Factorial Energy is bringing together companies specializing in materials and battery manufacturing to accelerate the rollout of solid-state batteries, rather than developing all their components internally. The company is working with Mitsui Kinzoku and other partners, while its batteries are still awaiting entry into production vehicles.

2026-09-18

Artificial intelligence

NEC Launches AI Agent Platform for Supply Chain Management

NEC has unveiled the NEC SCM AI Agent solution for managing supply chain tasks through an orchestrating agent that relies on seven sub-agents, while keeping final decisions in the hands of employees. The annual price starts at 18 million yen, and the company aims to sell the solution to 100 companies within five years.

2026-09-18

Chips and Semiconductors

日本ガイシ Presents Ceramic Solutions for Dissipating Heat from AI Chips and Improving CPO Signals

日本ガイシ presented ceramic technologies targeting cooling and signal-loss challenges in semiconductor packages used with AI workloads, including an aluminum nitride substrate for 300 mm sizes and a packaging architecture for co-packaged optics (CPO) applications.

2026-09-18

Cloud Computing and Data Centers

Panasonic Energy Expands Data Center Battery Business to Keep Pace with AI Load Demand

Panasonic Energy aims to raise revenue from its energy storage systems business for data centers to 1 trillion yen in fiscal 2028, three times the 2025 level, with investments of 350 billion yen between 2026 and 2028. Growth is focused on lithium-ion battery-based BBU units, which provide backup power and reduce peak loads in AI data centers.

2026-09-17

Artificial intelligence

Where Should Companies Run Their AI? 日本HP Explains How to Balance the Cloud and On-Premises Environments

日本HP believes that the decision to run AI in the cloud or on-premises should begin with data sensitivity and the nature of the processing, not with a fixed technical preference. The company’s experience shows that the number of users, service continuity, operating costs, and how results are approved are no less important than the choice of model or device.

2026-09-16

Robotics and Automation

AI-Powered Vision Solutions Expand the Use of Robots in Flexible Manufacturing

Industrial companies at Factory Innovation Week 2026 showcased solutions combining 3D vision and artificial intelligence to enable robots to pick up a variety of parts, including irregularly shaped and shape-changing objects. The demonstrations included machine vision systems, smart sensors, and solutions that can be integrated with robots and industrial controllers.

2026-09-16

Artificial intelligence

Sharp Begins Accepting Orders for AI Servers and Targets Sales of 250 Billion Yen by 2030

Sharp has announced that it will begin accepting orders for AI servers designed for companies, government agencies, and data centers, using NVIDIA technologies, with a sales target of 250 billion yen in fiscal 2030. The plan includes servers based on the NVIDIA RTX Pro Server, as well as the NVIDIA HGX platform for large-scale training and inference.

2026-09-16

Electric Cars

Scania Introduces Long-Haul Electric Truck with a Range of Nearly 720 Kilometers

Scania has unveiled a heavy-duty electric truck designed for long-distance transport, with a range of up to approximately 720 kilometers through additional battery packs and a new front-end design. In parallel, a group of companies in Germany announced a plan to expand the use of hydrogen fuel-cell trucks, reflecting the continuing competition between battery-electric and hydrogen pathways in heavy-duty transport.

2026-09-15

Artificial intelligence

Why Is Panasonic Industry Turning to AI After a Decade of Digitizing Factory Data?

Panasonic Industry reviews more than a decade of experience collecting production data and standardizing operational knowledge before expanding its use of artificial intelligence and AI agents inside factories. The company explains that the practical value of AI depends first on the availability of structured, usable operational data.

2026-09-15

Robotics and Automation

FANUC Develops an AI Agent That Reads Drawings and Programs Welding Robots

FANUC announced the development of an artificial intelligence agent based on Google Cloud that reads product drawings and automatically generates welding settings and robot movements. The company plans to showcase the technology at the 2026 International Welding Show and begin rolling it out in December 2026.

2026-09-15

Startups

Startup Led by a Former Spotify Executive Raises $5.5 Million to Develop Interactive Music Apps

A Vinyl Bar in Shibuya has raised $5.5 million in seed funding to develop small apps and experiences that allow users to modify sounds and musical clips and participate in creating them. The company is taking an approach that does not make AI music generation the focus of its products, instead emphasizing human interaction and participation.

2026-09-14

Cybersecurity

VPN Vulnerability May Have Exposed Data From 246,000 Records of Government Employees in Japan

Japan’s Digital Agency said that an attacker exploited a medium-severity vulnerability in a VPN device connected to the Government Solution Service, which may have enabled access to approximately 246,000 rows of records belonging to employees and associated organizations. The data did not include My Number numbers, bank accounts, or pension numbers, and no confirmed cases of misuse have been identified so far.

2026-09-14

Robotics and Automation

Inside a Japanese Data Factory Training Humanoid Robots for Real-World Tasks

A facility in Narashino, Japan, has begun collecting training data for physical AI using 35 humanoid robots as part of a consortium comprising five companies. The facility relies on remote control, motion recording, and labeling successful and failed states, with the goal of building models that can be used in factories and various industries.

2026-09-11

Robotics and Automation

Japan’s GENIAC Program Expands Funding for Robotics AI Models

Japan’s GENIAC program, supported by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and NEDO, announced results and funding for projects to develop foundation models for robots and build a data ecosystem for embodied AI. The initiatives include 13 organizations in the robotics-model field and nine organizations in the data-ecosystem project.

2026-09-10

Robotics and Automation

Cerence Emergency Vehicle Detection Technology Enters Autonomous Bus Trial in Japan

Cerence AI announced the use of Cerence Emergency Vehicle Detection technology in an autonomous bus platform during an on-road public-road trial in Japan. The technology is intended to detect the sirens of ambulances, fire engines, and police vehicles, supporting autonomous-driving system decisions in situations where visual detection may be difficult.

2026-09-09

Artificial intelligence

Materials Engineering Moves from Optimizing Results to Designing Questions with Artificial Intelligence

The article explains how artificial intelligence, particularly large language models and agents, is changing the materials development cycle, from selecting experiments to designing the questions that guide research. It argues that human oversight and the design of verification loops remain an essential part of any reliable system.

2026-09-09

Robotics and Automation

Panasonic Launches an AI-Powered Visual Inspection System Based on a Hyperspectral Camera

Panasonic has announced the AG-HSV10M hyperspectral camera and the AG-HSS10 AI image inspection software, which enables the creation of an inspection model from a single image and distinguishes between defect-free and defective products. The system is scheduled to launch in Japan on October 10, 2026.

2026-09-08