The global electric vehicle population reached 3 million units at the end of 2017, which represents approximately 0.23% of the global vehicle population. Electric vehicle producers have responded to consumer's range anxiety by increasing the available range per charge in their vehicles to more than 200 miles. However ultimately the deployment of electric vehicles will depend on the deployment of ubiquitous chargers.

2018 is regarded as the beginning year for battery recycling as the first batch of batteries are gradually coming out of electric vehicles. Umicore has recently announced their investment plan in ramping up battery recycling capacity in preparation for the boom of spent EV batteries. By 2018, we will already have around 33,000 retired electric vehicle battery packs (including electric passenger cars and buses) which amounts to around 1GWh storage capacity.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China has recently announced the pilot program of recycling and second use of retired electric vehicle batteries in 17 major regions and cities. China Tower, the world's biggest operator of telecommunication towers, is included as the only company in the pilot program to develop key technologies, explore business models and help establish standards related to second-life batteries.

Hyundai Motor Group has recently announced a commercial partnership with energy company Wärtsilä to utilize second-life electric vehicle batteries for stationary energy storage at both commercial and utility scales. This is not the first piece of news that automotive companies are trying to give a second life to their retired EV batteries as major EV manufactures including Nissan, Renault, BMW, Daimler, BYD etc. have announced various battery second use projects around the world.

The end-of-life issue of electric vehicle batteries is a key topic in the sustainability of EVs. By 2029, there will be 3 million used battery packs coming out of EVs per year which amounts to around 108GWh available storage capacity (see the IDTechEx's latest report on Second-life Electric Vehicle Batteries). What will happen to this huge amount of retired car batteries?

The new report from IDTechEx Research, Drones 2018-2038: Components, Technologies, Roadmaps, Market Forecasts, provides a comprehensive analysis of the drone market, considering components, technologies, application roadmaps and markets.

It is a technological megatrend providing billion dollar business opportunities. The unique new IDTechEx Research report "Smart Materials as Structural Electronics and Electrics 2019-2029" explains how structural materials can be electronically, electrically, mechanically, magnetically and optically smart nowadays.

This article concerns TactoTek in Oulu Finland and how its technologies can scale up and create billion dollar businesses.

Key areas discussed and displayed at the LCV event include the battery, powertrain, lightweighting, autonomous driving and electric vehicle charging, from not only the technology but also business model and policy perspectives.

IDTechEx will be hosting a free webinar on Tuesday 2 October titled Fuel Cell Vehicles

After surfacing its Vespa Elettrica concept at EICMA last year, a large motorcycle trade show known for these sort of announcements from manufacturers, Piaggio finally announced that it will go to production this September, and that it will take preorders in October with the first deliveries later that month.

This is a technological megatrend. Dumb load-bearing metal structures move to plastic and composite and incorporate energy harvesting and storage material - massless energy. Indeed you could call some of it negative mass energy. Goodbye components-in-a-box.

IDTechEx will be hosting a free webinar on Tuesday 25 September titled Electric two-wheelers: the EV underdog?

In April 2018, IDTechEx gave a presentation at the world copper conference in Santiago Chile. This was part of work carried out for the International Copper Association to benchmark the commercial status of emerging conductive material. The presentation delivered can be seen below.

The founder of Flexegraph shares information on their nano enhanced fluids and how they function to benefit closed loop cooling systems.

IDTechEx Research has just published a new report 'Fuel Cell Vehicles 2019-2029'. Fuel cells are commercially successful in stationary applications but commercially unsuccessful in vehicles, beyond a few thousand purchased for material handling vehicles, notably forklifts.

AWE should be seen as part of a bigger picture. The next generation of zero emission electricity producing technologies has no huge steel and concrete infrastructure, so it can have much less cost and installation time and making it redeployable.

The drone market has boomed in recent years. This is essentially because easy-to-use, reliable and small-sized flying machines have become available at highly accessible prices- well in the range of consumer electronic products. This has created its own demand amongst customers and professional.

More and more companies are exploring how to extract value by repurposing a second-life for those retired but still capable car batteries in less-demanding applications such as stationary energy storage.

Consumer batteries such as those used in power tools, mobile phones and laptops are normally recycled/disposed after their service life - that's what we normally refer to as the 'end-of-life' of the batteries. However, retired car batteries that are no longer suitable for electric cars could still hold sufficient capacity for second life applications. The 'end-of-life' of an electric car battery needs to be redefined as they could be further used, for example, for another 10 years or even longer in various post-vehicle applications before they are finally recycled/disposed.