Research Articles

Beaming the internet to the 4.5 billion people that do not have it should be massively profitable.

For light duty there are small wheel loaders and even small excavators that are pure electric. Now many manufacturers are developing or offering wheel loaders or excavators that are hybrid electric including Komatsu, Volvo and Caterpillar. Care is needed however, because this industry sometimes uses the word hybrid to mean a non-electric hybrid of hydraulic and diesel drive.

It started with Julius Caesar banning vehicles from rattling along the cobbles after 8pm so people could get to sleep. Things went backwards in the ensuing two thousand years but now it is coming center stage again.

The Textron division in the UK Ransome Jacobsen in the UK makes industrial lawnmowers based on diesel engines and lead acid batteries that are sometimes primitive hybrids in having a separate lead acid battery pack for the powertrain.

What do golf cars and heavy electric trucks have in common? There is still no agreement on the best type of electric motor to use in either of them. On IDTechEx analysis, the booming, confusing traction motor business will rise to around $400b in 2027.

The industrial and commercial sector is the largest part of the electric vehicle value market and that will continue to be the case according to analysis in the unique IDTechEx report, Industrial and Commercial Electric Vehicles 2017-2027.

IDTechEx research analysis has shown that this industry, which is almost a century in the making, is finally coming of age. Major players are finding more nascent applications and new entries are progressing out of semi-commercial prototypes and into full market launches.

IDTechEx expects EVs to create significant electricity demand in about ten years and be key to huge improvements in local noise and air pollution and in global warming reduction.

Last week Paris experienced its worst spike in pollution since records began. Cars were banned from the streets and public transport made free in the city and surrounding areas. Such vehicle bans have only been introduced four times in the last two decades, and never before on consecutive days.

Jaguar Land Rover wants half its cars to be available in an electric version by the end of the decade, after showcasing its first electric car at the Los Angeles Auto Show earlier this month.

Dick Wallis, CEO of Positioning Systems in the UK has sent IDTechEx a visionary proposal for a new combined airport, smart city and green electricity supply in Wales in the UK.

While in Santa Clara for the IDTechEx Show, technology analyst Dr David Pugh met with staff at Levi's Stadium, home of the San Francisco 49ers. The 68,500 capacity stadium was opened in 2014 and is one of the most technologically enabled entertainment venues in the world.