Research Articles

"Eventually 3D printing will print people," according to Will.i.am, the music producer, rapper and entrepreneur. "I'm not saying I agree with it, I'm just saying what's fact based on plausible growth in technology." How true is this? And how close are we? At IDTechEx, we take pride in cutting through the hype, to reveal what is actually possible and where the real opportunities lie.

Newcastle University in the UK was chosen by Boeing to develop an ultra-lightweight electric motor for an upper atmosphere electric aircraft. These spidery fixed-wing aircraft can have the wingspan of a jumbo jet but the weight of a small car.

DTechEx analysts asked a few questions to some of the presenters at the IDTechEx conferences on Energy Harvesting and IoT coming up on 28-29 April in Berlin, Germany.

Energy harvesting is the creation of electricity from ambient energy. IDTechEx Show! covers it all in one place.

Back in 2013, we witnessed the launch by Samsung and LG of the first AMOLED displays deposited on plastic substrates, and the first efforts to encapsulate plastic and flexible displays that IDTechEx is forecasting will become more than a $16bn dollar market in the next 5 years.

Here at IDTechEx, since first announcing the agenda for our Berlin event on 28-29 April, we have been busy organising even more speakers for two packed days of high quality talks, and even more exhibitors in the tradeshow, to display the latest and greatest innovations.

The new IDTechEx report, "Electric Motorcycles and Three Wheel Electric Vehicles 2015-2025" reveals gaps in the market as e-motorcycles and their three wheel derivatives become a multi-billion dollar market. One gap is the crossover between bikes and motorcycles created as a premium-priced product.

IDTechEx are hosting a free webinar on Wednesday 8 April 2015 discussing the 2015 photovoltaic industry outlook from a supply and demand perspective.

At the major event IDTechEx Show! in Berlin April 28-29 there is a conference, Electric Vehicles: Everything is Changing. It will reveal radical new advances such as structural electronics replacing components-in-a box, 3D printing of electric cars by Local Motors of the USA and 3D printing of small jet engines as range extenders for electric vehicles, land, water and air, by Microturbo Safran of France. IDTechEx has the world's largest selection of reports on electric vehicles and their components and systems.

The event SMMT Connected covered the connected and ultimately autonomous car with some nod in the direction of other autonomous vehicles doing "dull, dirty, dangerous" rather than freeing up time and reducing accidents, which is what autonomous cars target.

After years of slow progress from small companies, flexible batteries now have the attention of big brands such as Apple, Samsung, LG Chemical, Nokia and STMicroelectronics, who are set to drive the flexible battery market from US$ 6.9 million in 2015 to over US$ 400 million in 2025 according to IDTechEx Research.

Miss Paula Mints, chief market research analyst with SPV Research, summarized some of the most important points relating to the market for solar PV in a Q&A session with IDTechEx principal analyst Dr Harry Zervos.

The IDTechEx conference Electric Vehicles: Everything is Changing tears up the rule book on the electric vehicles market, which will be worth $500 million by 2025 (IDTechEx Research figures 2015).

Autonomous vehicles are already successful but you are unlikely to meet one because the successes are in the upper atmosphere, open cast mines, nuclear power stations, underwater and in other relatively inaccessible places.

DTechEx are hosting a free webinar on Thursday 26 March 2015 on the technologies, markets and players of thin, flexible and printed batteries.

This video covers some of the highlights from new research conducted by IDTechEx covering the equipment market for printed electronics.

There will be over 3 billion sensors in wearable technology devices by 2025, with more than 30% being emerging sensor types.

Hybrid vehicles are already big business from hybrid cars, buses and trucks to outdoor forklifts, even hybrid tugboats.

IDTechEx are hosting a free webinar on Tuesday 17 March 2015 on autonomous vehicles.

Recent IDTechEx conference presentations and webinars on the research carried out for the new IDTechEx report, Electric Buses 2015-2025 attracted many questions.

IDTechEx is excited to announce the agenda for 3D Printing Europe 2015. After months of planning, we are ready to launch our fantastic speaker programme.

About $160 million has been invested in graphene companies, excluding government and IPO financing. Companies continue to move up the value chain, from selling graphene to selling graphene based intermediary products such as inks - a welcome development from end users as it lifts their burden of fine tuning and experimentation.

Since the first consumer-level 3D printers came on the scene six years ago their sales have grown substantially

Electric vehicle events concentrate too much on three Cs - commercials, cars, copying each other. Cars will be only 34% of the electric vehicle value market in 2025. We must understand the totally different future, including for cars.

According to the IDTechEx report Range Extenders for Electric Vehicles Land, Water & Air 2015-2025 over eight million hybrid cars will be made in 2025, with a range extender, the additional power source that distinguishes them from pure-electric.

To benchmark new technology for electric vehicles it is vital to look at all of the off-road, on-road, water and airborne e-vehicles.

Most drones are and will remain electric as detailed in the new IDTechEx report, "Electric Drones: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) 2015-2025."

Europe's biggest wearable technology event exploring the upcoming technologies and their market drivers.

At the start, there was no generic name. The simple glass of the car windshield started to incorporate printed antennas and heaters. It was what we now know as "structural electronics" - one structure performing mechanical, electrical and other functions.

It started with the bicycle dynamo and now no self-respecting vehicle designer ignores the possibility of many forms of energy harvesting in his design of a land vehicle.

At the IDTechEx Printed Electronics Europe event, some of the key end-users presenting include United Technologies Research, Jaguar Land Rover, JC Decaux, Ericsson, Qualcomm, Crown Packaging and many more.

From Hamburg to Paris, city authorities are forcing bus operators to go pollution-free at point of use by a set date and that will almost always mean pure-electric battery buses.

Launches of fuel cell cars are reportedly planned by up to six carmakers from 2015 including Tata Motors of India, owners of Jaguar Land Rover.

The most popular word for them is now drones, giving a military connotation to Unmanned Aerial Vehicles UAVs.

PV industry shipments grew by 15% in 2014 over 2013 to 39.3-GWp from 34.0-GWp the previous year, according to the SPV Market Research/IDTechEx annual supply report "Photovoltaic Manufacturer Shipments: Capacity, Production, Prices and Revenues to 2019" .

The printed electronics industry shows a huge interest in sensors as it seeks to forget the failures from the past.