Electric Motors

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.

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.

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.

Buses are very important. Injuries and deaths from two wheelers have not reduced very much in decades whereas vehicles with four wheels or more have seen huge improvements.

48V mild hybrids will start series production at many automotive manufacturers in 2017 with many others following shortly after.

Just ahead of the Paris Auto Show, Daimler officially presented its pure electric Smart ED models.

As detailed in the IDTechEx report, Mild Hybrid 48V Vehicles 2016-2031, this option will become a huge business from 2017 as Ford, Hyundai, Bentley, Volkswagen, Audi, Geely and many others adopt them as the most cost-effective way of meeting 2025 and 2030 carbon dioxide emissions regulations while sharply improving economy - even improving performance in some respects.

Pure electric short range trucks are rapidly becoming viable as they face much tougher local and global emissions regulations.