According to the India Times, in May 1968, a British traveler named Andy Stewart was looking to make his way home to London from Sydney, Australia. So he bought a double-decker bus and converted it into a mobile home, nicknamed "Albert". That October, he set off with 13 others on Albert the Bus for a 16,000-kilometre journey from Sydney to London via India. The journey took 132 days to complete.
Businesses in Tokyo are continuing to look for ways to get foreign visitors to spend their time and cash on the capital’s wide-ranging nightlife options. Travel agencies are arranging special events for foreign tourists such as taiko (drum) performances, while some hotels are extending the business hours of their restaurants to allow guests to socialize into the early hours.
It is enough to wake the tired eyes of the groggiest commuter. A striking white and pink bullet train themed around the Japanese cartoon character and marketing phenomenon Hello Kitty. The bespoke train began a three-month run between the western cities of Osaka and Fukuoka on June 30.
All of Norway’s short-haul airliners should be entirely electric by 2040, the country’s airport operator said on Wednesday, cementing the Nordic nation’s role as a pioneer in the field of electric transport.
“We think that all flights lasting up to 1.5 hours can be flown by aircraft that are entirely electric,” chief executive Dag Falk-Petersen said, noting that would cover all domestic flights and those to neighbouring Scandinavian capitals.
Honda Motor Co. said Tuesday it will develop “connected cars” jointly with Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. to offer online services to drivers.
Together with the Chinese e-commerce giant, Japan’s third-largest automaker by volume will aim to launch online payments for fuel, parking and other services in China through the jointly developed vehicles.
Global automakers are focusing on connected cars with internet access to provide drivers with online payments, shared traffic information and other advanced services.
Japanese Transport Minister Keiichi Ishii said on Friday that unauthorized technicians had been found certifying vehicles at five Nissan plants that the ministry has been inspecting.
The unauthorized technicians included contract workers, Ishii told a news conference.
"It's extremely regrettable, causing anxiety for users and shaking the foundation of the certification system," he said.
In America, on a unanimous voice vote, a Senate committee approved legislation that authorizes self-driving car makers to sell as many as 80,000 vehicles a year within three years that would be exempt from current safety standards as manufacturers develop technology for autonomous vehicles.
In 2013, Volvo announced a potentially revolutionary approach to designing electric vehicles (EVs). It wanted to replace some of the steel body panels in its cars with carbon fiber composite materials that can store power like a battery.
The rechargeable panels would be composed of multiple layers of carbon fiber, which are insulated from each other by fiberglass inserts. The result is a structural component that can be charged like the battery.
A test of self-driving bus services organized by the transport ministry kicked off in Tochigi Prefecture on Saturday.
The ministry hopes to launch the autonomous bus services in fiscal 2020 to provide a means of transportation for elderly people living in hilly and mountainous areas with dwindling populations.
The ministry hopes automated public transport services will help elderly people who have trouble visiting hospitals or shopping because they can no longer drive or their bus services have been canceled.
Japanese automotive giant Toyota has made a strategic investment in South East Asia taxi-hailing service Grab.
Major Japanese agricultural machinery makers are developing self-driving tractors. The government plans to support the introduction of these tractors amid growing hopes that such machines will help farmers cope with labor shortages at a time when many are aging and face difficulties finding successors.
In June 2017, Kubota Corp. started selling the country’s first tractors with autonomous driving functions on a trial basis. Utilizing the Global Positioning System (GPS), the tractors can keep tabs on where they are operating.
Japan began introducing bilingual traffic signs on Saturday as the number of foreign visitors increases ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics.
By the time the games open, about 35,000 of the 140,000 stop signs in the capital will have been replaced with ones in both Japanese and English near the Olympic venues and in other areas, the Metropolitan Police Department said.
Along with the new stop signs, bilingual slow-down signs will also be introduced.
The so-called sharing economy has spread to a variety of fields such as cars and homes, and Japan has seen another rising trend in recent years—bicycles.
A growing number of municipalities and private firms are providing bikes to gauge whether such services will catch on.
According to NTT Docomo Inc., which has been teaming up with municipalities to offer a bike-sharing service on an experimental basis, its bicycles were used about 1.8 million times in fiscal 2016, which ended March 31, up from 20,000 in fiscal 2012.
