Graphene promises to offer excellent material properties in almost all applications. Its extraordinary performance has led many to call it the 'superlative' or 'wonder' material. However, the reality is different.

For the first time in this year's event in Washington DC on the 7th and 8th of November, a third event, focusing on supercapacitor technologies will be co-located, highlighting the advances, applications and adoption trends in this closely related field.

A new IDTechEx report requested by several of the world's largest chemical companies looks at the families of element and compound that will be most widely used in the new electronics and electrics.

Graphene is one of the most exciting new materials currently being developed. It brings superlative performance to supercapacitors, batteries, touch screens, logic, sensors, displays, composites and much more thanks to its electrical, thermal and mechanical properties.

Wound (rolled) rechargeable batteries and supercapacitors (Electrochemical Double Layer Capacitors) are similar in construction.

Lithium-ion is the winning type of rechargeable battery for the decade - there is almost a consensus. You can count about 150 manufacturers of these and IDTechEx has profiled nearly all of them.

EVS26 in Los Angeles this month reminded one of the children's chant, "When she was good she was very, very good but when she was bad she was awful". The networking opportunities were superb, the welcoming reception and the Gala Dinner being truly memorable.

Electrochemical Double Layer Capacitors EDLCs are known by many other names but EDLC is the most popular on search engines.

This article shares some of the research carried out for the new IDTechEx report, Electrochemical Double Layer Capacitors 2013-2023.

IDTechEx is currently in Silicon Valley having spent over a week in Tokyo at EV clients and events. Both are a bellwether of what is really happening on the ground with EVs because they have a relatively large number of early adopters.

Old electric vehicle reports are useless: the subject is moving too fast. IDTechEx is the only analyst with 18 current reports forecasting sales of electric vehicles and their key components and they are kept up to date. Information is fed into these documents continuously as the PhD level IDTechEx analysts tour the world's companies, research institutes and conferences to spot the many changes in technology and business success and interpret them.

We have entered 2012 with an electric vehicle scene that is very different from that which was envisaged not long ago. There are now six key enabling technologies not three and vehicle makers increasingly make some of them, so suppliers increasingly have to compete with their largest potential customers. Precious metals in EV components are being removed remarkably rapidly.

OLED versus LED lighting, the energy storage gold rush, replacing ITO and more.

Energy harvesting comes to the fore with electric vehicles because the price they pay for being environmental and exhibiting many performance advantages is that they have limited energy available.

Those designing electric vehicles have much in common, whether they are hybrid or pure electric, on-road, off-road, on-water, underwater or in the sky.

Contrary to popular understanding, people have been making money out of electric vehicles for over 110 years. Unfortunately there have also been bankruptcies in the electric vehicle business in most of those years. The primary difference lies in market positioning not brilliant inventions, working long hours, automation of production, matching the size of your operation to the amount of business you can realistically gain - avoiding over and under-investment - and other aspects that come to mind. Those are sometimes important but always secondary. In market positioning, the two key factors are avoiding excessive competition, including rigged markets, and making what will be wanted in the years to come.

Fuel cells were originally considered to be replacements for internal combustion engines used in traditional vehicles and replacements for traction batteries used in pure electric vehicles.

Yet it is only a first step to small devices communicating without human involvement and without those radio masts and their expensive and vulnerable cabling. Remember that...

Electronics and electrics are becoming ubiquitous, the devices appearing on and in higher and higher volume products including e-labels and e-packaging. This calls for different forms of battery, capacitor and other energy storage because priorities such as environmental credentials, thinness and compatibility with energy harvesting (eg. solar cells) come to the fore alongside life and cost.

This week the IDTechEx events Energy Harvesting & Storage and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) & RTLS took place in Denver, CO, USA. The event was attended by more than 290 attendees, with a brilliantly diverse spread of those through the value chain - from component suppliers to solution providers to many end users from different industries.