Electric vehicles

"Death by a Thousand Cuts" was the brutal appraisal of the power generation goliaths by Jeffrey Eckel of Hannon Armstrong, the leading energy investment house, at the Barclays Future Energy Conference December 2016 in London.

his useful half day conference revealed the views of motor company and academic experts and a user/ reviewer of electric cars.

Analysts at IDTechEx have issued a new report, Electric Boats and Ships 2017-2027 looking at this fragmented but often highly profitable and growing sector.

The excitement has been building up in Las Vegas over the past few days with media days and press conferences, expectations have been riding high and the opening day of CES did not disappoint. Dr Harry Zervos reports from Las Vegas, Nevada.

These past 12 months have seen numerous celebrity deaths, athlete drug scandals and the end of Brangelina however, it was also the year Tesla announced fully automated cars, Alexa became part of the family and Leicester City won the Premier League. As we plan ahead for 2017, IDTechEx analysts have taken a look back over the past 12 months and picked out the most impactful technology launches, acquisitions and products from 2016. Happy New Year from all at IDTechEx!

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.