Toyota provided flights from Columbus, Ohio to Santa Barbara, California and accommodation so Ars could drive the Woodland bZ. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

When you think about what makes a perfect single-car garage—occupied solely by a vehicle that can do it all—you probably think of some crossover or SUV like the Toyota RAV4 or BMW X5. Something that can handle the snow and weekend camping trips with a decent-sized cargo capacity. If you're European, you might gravitate towards a wagon like any of the Volvo Cross Country models or an Allroad from Audi . For the longest time, Subaru offered a near-perfect solution in the Outback, but the new one is much more SUV than wagon.

That left an opening for Toyota to swoop in, and the bZ Woodland is not only the best take on the Subaru Outback I've driven, but the nearly perfect single-car solution for the electric age.

What makes it a Woodland?

The bZ Woodland is a lifted wagon electric vehicle that is 6 inches longer than the non-Woodland bZ and has 33.8 cubic feet (957 L) of rear cargo space. That, on paper, is 6.1 more cubes (173 L) of storage with the second row in place but in practice feels even more spacious. The Woodland also has 8.3 inches (211 mm) of ground clearance, which is up one-tenth (2.5 mm) over the normal bZ. But like the cargo space, how the bZ Woodland uses those extra numbers is what makes it feel so different.

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Up to a third of people worldwide have shoulder pain; it's one of the most common musculoskeletal complaints. But medical imaging might not reveal the problem—in fact, it could even cloud it.

In a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine this week, 99 percent of adults over 40 were found to have at least one abnormality in a rotator cuff on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The rotator cuff is the group of muscles and tendons in a shoulder joint that keeps the upper arm bone securely in the shoulder socket—and is often blamed for pain and other symptoms. The trouble is, the vast majority of the people in the study had no problems with their shoulders.

The finding calls into question the growing use of MRIs to try to diagnose shoulder pain—and, in turn, the growing problem of overtreatment of rotator cuff (RC) abnormalities, which includes partial- and full-thickness tears as well as signs of tendinopathy (tendon swelling and thickening).

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It may be more tempting to take that aging Mac you've been coddling and put it out to pasture soon. Apple has announced an event for March 4, which in usual Apple fashion, it has branded a "Special Apple Experience." Also in usual Apple fashion, it has not come out and said what it's going to be announcing. We have a pretty good idea, though.

The event will kick off at 9AM ET on March 4—Ars will be on the ground in New York City to cover Apple's latest unveiling, whatever form it may take. Apple doesn't release most products on a set schedule, but some recent speculation about likely hardware updates can point us in the right direction.

As we reported recently, the iPhone 17e may be making an appearance in Apple's lineup soon. This updated version of the budget-oriented iPhone will have an A19 chip inside, similar to the one powering the base model iPhone 17. It may also add MagSafe charging. Don't expect to see a multi-camera array like you'd get on the more expensive Apple phones, though. Pricing will be the most important thing to watch for should Apple announce this phone. Right now, the non-Pro iPhone 16 and 17 (including the 16e) are all clustered in the $600-800 range. Another $599 budget iPhone won't make waves.

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A Best Buy employee in Florida was charged with fraud after allegedly using his manager's code to heavily discount nearly 150 items that he and his accomplices purchased and pawned.

It seems that the manager first started growing suspicious about "strange sales numbers" in December 2024, an ABC News affiliate in West Palm Beach reported . Private investigators traced the weird sales back to a 36-year-old employee, Matthew Lettera, who allegedly conducted 97 discounted purchases for himself and 52 additional transactions for others. Some MacBooks were discounted as much as 99 percent, a local CW affiliate reported . In total, Best Buy lost more than $118,000 from the scheme.

According to a LinkedIn profile that matches Lettera's information, he started working at Best Buy in January 2020 after pivoting from career training as a chef.

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ByteDance says that it's rushing to add safeguards to block Seedance 2.0 from generating iconic characters and deepfaking celebrities, after substantial Hollywood backlash after launching the latest version of its AI video tool.

The changes come after Disney and Paramount Skydance sent cease-and-desist letters to ByteDance urging the Chinese company to promptly end the allegedly vast and blatant infringement.

Studios claimed the infringement was widescale and immediate, with Seedance 2.0 users across social media sharing AI videos featuring copyrighted characters like Spider-Man, Darth Vader, and SpongeBob Square Pants. In its letter, Disney fumed that Seedance was "hijacking" its characters, accusing ByteDance of treating Disney characters like they were "free public domain clip art," Axios reported .

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Heating accounts for nearly half of the global energy demand, and two-thirds of that is met by burning fossil fuels like natural gas, oil, and coal. Solar energy is a possible alternative, but while we have become reasonably good at storing solar electricity in lithium-ion batteries, we’re not nearly as good at storing heat.

To store heat for days, weeks, or months, you need to trap the energy in the bonds of a molecule that can later release heat on demand. The approach to this particular chemistry problem is called molecular solar thermal (MOST) energy storage. While it has been the next big thing for decades, it never really took off.

In a recent Science paper, a team of researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and UCLA demonstrate a breakthrough that might finally make MOST energy storage effective.

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Michigan is taking on major oil and gas companies in court, joining nearly a dozen other states that have brought climate-related lawsuits against ExxonMobil and its industry peers. But Michigan’s approach is different: accusing Big Oil not of deceiving consumers or misrepresenting climate change risks, but of driving up energy costs by colluding to suppress competition from cleaner and cheaper technologies like solar power and electric vehicles.

The strategy is risky and might run into challenges, but it could potentially be a game changer if the state can overcome initial dismissal attempts by the industry defendants, legal experts say.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel filed the lawsuit last month in federal District Court against BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell and the American Petroleum Institute. The suit , brought under federal and state antitrust laws, alleges a conspiracy to delay the transition to renewable energy and EVs and maintain market dominance of fossil fuels.

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McLaren provided flights from Washington, DC, to Ivalo, Finland, and accommodation so Ars could drive its car on a frozen lake. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

SAARISELKÄ, FINLAND—If you're expecting it, the feeling in the pit of your stomach when the rear of your car breaks traction and begins to slide is rather pleasant. It's the same exhilaration we get from roller coasters, but when you're in the driver's seat, you're in charge of the ride.

When you're not expecting it, though, there's anxiety instead of excitement and, should the slide end with a crunch, a lot more negative emotions, too.

Thankfully, fewer and fewer drivers will have to experience that kind of scare thanks to the proliferation and sophistication of modern electronic stability and traction control systems. For more than 30 years, these electronic safety nets have grown in capability and became mandatory in the early 2010s, saving countless crashes in the process.

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A Crew Dragon spacecraft docked with the International Space Station on Valentine's Day, and astronauts popped open the hatches at 5:14 pm ET (22:14 UTC) on Saturday evening.

The arrival of four new astronauts as part of the Crew 12 mission—Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway of NASA, Sophie Adenot of the European Space Agency, and Andrey Fedyaev of Roscosmos—brought the total number of crew on board the space station to seven, giving the US space agency a full complement in orbit.

The number of astronauts living on board the station fluctuates over time, depending on crew rotations and private astronauts making shorter stays, but since Crew Dragon began flying regularly at the end of 2020 NASA has sought to keep at least four "USOS" astronauts on board at all time. This stands for "US Orbital Segment," and means astronauts from the United States, Canada, Europe, and Japan who are trained to operate the areas of the station maintained by NASA and its partner astronauts.

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