The power electronics business as applied to electric vehicles is becoming so huge that very divergent approaches become viable.

IDTechEx interviews in Japan have established that supercapacitors across lithium-ion batteries in cars can increase range by 10% by permitting deep discharge, provided suitable batteries are used that can tolerate such a regime.

This article shares some of the findings of the new IDTechEx Research report, Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles 2015-2030: Land, Water, Air and some of what will be discussed in the forthcoming IDTechEx webinar on 9th June.

IDTechEx's Electric Vehicles: Everything is Changing, conference was successfully held during the 28th and 29th of April 2015 in Berlin.

What ducks and batteries have in common? The answer is Tesla's new home energy storage system. I will explain why.

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.

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

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.

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).

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

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.

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.

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.

It is not much of an achievement to make a fuel cell powered vehicle any more. They have been made for over 25 years and they work well.

A revolution is slicing through the car industry.

In 2025 over $25 billion will be spent on formulations and intermediate materials for wearable technology, as forecast by analysts IDTechEx in the brand new report Wearable Technology Materials 2015-2025.

Thermoelectric harvesting will be on production hybrid electric on-road vehicles from 2018. It will be commonplace on hybrids in 2020 and almost entirely to charge the battery, or increasingly supercapacitor or supercabattery used for power.

Load bearing structures that are also electronic or electrical are called structural electronics. This two-for-the-price-of-one approach can be more reliable, attractive and long-lived and it always saves space.

The market for hybrid and pure electric cars homologated as such is set to be $188 billion in 2025 according to IDTechEx analysis.

First was the significant investment from the materials community but now the equipment industry has turned its attention to printed electronics as a growth opportunity.