Charging Infrastructure

It seems obvious; energy harvesting is intermittent, so combine different types to make it continuous and therefore much more useful.

There is divided opinion on future of traction fuel cells in electric vehicles, though few argue any more that they will power the majority of electric vehicles.

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

The event Hybrid and Electric Vehicle Forum consisted a conference with about 70 delegates and a small display area for a few organisations. Here we give some details of the presentations that particularly caught our attention.

The supercapacitor industry closed last year (2013) with a continued double-digit growth. According to Maxwell Technologies' executives, China has been the main source of growth. New announcements confirm what IDTechEx has stated in recent years: the supercapacitor and the battery industry are the same.

A Tesla Model S was filmed burning in the road recently, allegedly having struck a metal object.

IDTechEx projects that 119,000 electric taxis will be sold giving a $1.8 billion global market. Most of the commercial electric vehicles, including the taxis, are and will be pure electric. That will even be true of large commercial vehicles, notably e-buses, set to exceed a $20 billion market as early as 2018 and dominated by demand in China.

How is it that some analysts put pure-electric car sales at hundreds of thousands in 2012 whereas others report a mere 60-65,000? At analysts IDTechEx, we feel that a lack of rigor is largely to blame because there are cars homologated as such and car-like vehicles that are not homologated as cars.

Most electric vehicle sectors are profitable and growing. Toyota has nearly half of the $63 billion global market for electric vehicles land, water and air, according to an IDTechEx analysis in the new report, Hybrid and Pure Electric Vehicles for Land, Water and Air 2013-2023: Forecasts, Technologies, Players.

In this article, we look at other aspects of what will and will not happen with electric vehicles land, water and air in 2013, whether they are hybrid or pure electric.