Research Articles

IDTechEx will be hosting a free webinar on Tuesday 3 October 2017 titled RAIN RFID: Market Size, Opportunities and Outlook.

Cast your mind back a few years and you will find a conductive ink business that appeared very mature and slow moving. Then everything began to change...

New Zealand leads the world in zero emission renewable grid electricity now at 85%. With a nice balance between geothermal, hydroelectric, unusually continuous wind power and some solar, the country has less intermittency of green power than most.

As the world's first conference on Energy Independent Electric Vehicles approaches on September 27-28 in the Technical University of Delft Netherlands, key players, all of whom are speaking at the event, have been announcing some remarkable new developments.

No, not what you thought. Japan has very dirty power generation with renewables stuck at around 10% for two decades then rising last year to approach 15%. New Zealand has now powered up from 80 to 85% renewables feeding its grid - around the figures of Iceland and Norway.

Analyst IDTechEx has long appraised the auto industry as consisting of those leading the move to pure electric powertrains such as Tesla, Renault + Nissan, Yutong and BYD of China, those only recently giving it major emphasis such as Toyota, Jaguar Land Rover, Volkswagen (under duress) and Daimler and those almost in denial such as Fiat Chrysler, Mazda and Suzuki, their pure electric activity being more of a gesture than a serious activity.

While grid load from electric vehicles is expected to rise in the near future. Engineers are already looking for solutions to make electric vehicles function independently of the grid.

Robotic technology will transform the forklift industry, causing a colossal transfer of value from human-provided driving services, towards spending on autonomous industrial material handling machines, thus fuelling an industry revenue boom far exceeding recent growth trends.

The IDTechEx report, Energy Independent Electric Vehicles Land, Water, Air 2017-2037 covers markets, technology timelines, energy harvesting and extreme powertrain efficiency involved. Constantly updated, it now reveals backing of many large companies.

Once we had rows of ugly stalks along the roadside that took your coins for parking - or more often failed to take your coins for parking. Unloved, they have now largely gone and no one mourns their passing. Unfortunately, in

Battery elimination, indeed elimination of all energy storage, is moving to even higher power, from electronics to electrical engineering

Last mile delivery remains an expensive affair in the parcel delivery business, often representing more than half of the total cost. Its importance is also growing thanks to a change in the composition of total deliveries with B2C deliveries rapidly taking on a bigger share.

Cast you mind back a few years and you will find a conductive ink business that appeared very mature and slow moving. The boom years of the photovoltaic industry were ending, the dominant big suppliers seem well entrenched, and the technology was, at best, only incrementally improving, with new technologies such as nanoparticle inks failing to get traction. Then everything began to change.

With over two months to go until the IDTechEx Show! at the Santa Clara Convention Center on November 15 - 16, over 90% of the exhibit space is already sold. The event brings together the hottest emerging technologies including materials, components and systems with end users, who seek to use these technologies to differentiate their products through greater capability.

Charging station manufacturers would have you believe that they will swamp the world with their products although they typically have no payback. The argument is that they are essential for the deployment of the pure electric on-road vehicles considered vital in combatting both global warming and deaths in cities from noxious emissions.

Ceramic Metal Composites (CMC) and Metal Matrix Composites (MMC) are not new concepts, but they have never reached their potential.

Let us be more ambitious and look at elimination of all energy storage.

Robots are becoming uncaged, mobile, collaborative and increasingly intelligent and dexterous, moving beyond their traditional strongholds to bring automation to previously inaccessible tasks.

Nearly all the advocates of fibre reinforced polymers (FRP) shy away from talking about the many elephants in the room and there are enough of them that is beyond crowded.

This article covers the challenges companies involved in thermoelectric energy harvesting have faced and possible areas of development in the future.

IDTechEx is staging the world's first conference on Energy Independent Electric Vehicles 27-28 September at the Technical University of Delft, Netherlands, where the most advanced solar racing cars and boats are made and the necessary new forms of wind, solar and elastomer generator energy harvesting are developed.

DTechEx will be hosting a free webinar on Thursday 12th September titled Battery Elimination in Electronics & Electrical Engineering.

After several years of excitement, investment and growing interest in thermoelectrics and their potential in energy harvesting applications, it's now time to clearly look at what's hype and what's reality, and the technology developers in the field know that well.

Multifunctional probes are extremely useful for research purposes, as they allow the recording of neural activity simultaneously alongside stimulation via drug administration or light (as is the case with optogenetics).

Off-grid power has been in decline. Widely seeing it as the poor man's option, users have aspired to get beyond it to the more secure, "troublefree" world of on-grid - or so they believed.

Evovelo has just announced its prototype electric trike, which can reach speeds of 45 kph with a drivers' cab and solar panel on the roof.

Electric vehicles are the future and ones that make their own electricity are the end game for these.

This article works through the issues facing the development of thermoelectric harvesting, including high power, modular thermoelectric technology and turnkey thermoelectric generators.

European Commission's Horizon 2020 SME (small-medium sized enterprises) Instrument recently announced Sensars Neuroprosthetics as a Phase 1 recipient for funding of their SENSY technology. Phase 1 recipients receive €50000 in funding for 6 months to execute a feasibility study and draft a 10-page business proposal. This is intended to bring the technology from the idea to concept stage. There are currently 2813 participants, 2750 projects coordinated, and 1094,87M€ allocated to the Horizon 2020 SME Instrument.

The total RFID market is worth $11.2 billion in 2017, what are its future applications and opportunities? IDTechEx CEO Raghu Das joins Dr David Pugh to discuss this exciting industry.

All the publicity currently goes to the race to make regular and premium cars have longer range

IDTechEx will host a free Webinar on Tuesday 5 September titled Neuroprosthetics: re-engineering sound, sight, and touch.

There is more energy to harvest at sea. True, water craft have stronger resistance to overcome but on balance, it means that energy independent electric boats are more common than their equivalents on land or in the air and they have lessons for both.

Compiled after three years of dedicated and ongoing research by expert analysts, the IDTechEx Research report Wearable Technology 2017-2027: Markets, Players, Forecasts details IDTechEx's coverage of the wearable technology ecosystem.

IDTechEx's free, expert led webinars provide up-to-date insights on the latest emerging technology trends. You can now access these at a time that suits you, for up to one month.

Companies get vaporised when market segmentation widens. Classics are those making steam trains missing the move to electric and to other modes of travel and NortonVilliersTriumph thinking that dominance of the UK motorcycle market protected them when, of course, motorcycles are a world market appropriately addressed by others