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.

Electric and hybrid vehicles for construction, agriculture and mining will be a $30 billion market in 2025.

Structural electronics (SE) is one of the most important emerging technologies in this century.

Form factor is becoming a major driver shaping innovation and transforming the energy storage industry globally.

Electronics embedded within the structure of bridges, walkways, EVs, aircraft and more, have the potential to be a $60 billion market by 2025.

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 Reed Exhibitions event last week consisting of PV Expo, Battery Osaka and Smart Grid Expo successfully extended an event that started with photovoltaics last year.

Graphene electrodes are one of the best prospects for enabling supercapacitors and superbatteries to take up to half of the lithium-ion battery market in 15 years - amounting to tens of billions of dollars yearly.

Graphene could radically improve batteries and supercapacitors as explained in the new IDTechEx report Functional Materials for Supercapacitors/Ultracapacitors/EDLC 2015-2025.

The replacement of batteries means grabbing a chunk of the lithium-ion battery market in particular but also inroads into lead-acid and nickel metal hydride territory.

It is now commonplace for supercapacitors to be placed across lithium-ion batteries. Indeed, in some applications, the battery is now omitted and the supercapacitor does the job on its own as with some hybrid and pure electric bus traction systems and power tools.

New research by IDTechEx in the report Graphene Markets, Technologies and Opportunities 2014-2024 External Link shows that graphene markets will grow from around $20 million in 2014 to more than $390 million in 2024, at the material level.

The heart of the e-textile business as it emerges is electric and electronic functionality from sensing to light emission, achieved entirely by use of e-fibers.

In the recently updated report Electrochemical Double Layer Capacitors: Supercapacitors 2014-2024 IDTechEx confirms its outlook for a 30% CAGR in the next 10 years, based on 2013 industry results.

Overall, 2014 is expected to be a great year for the supercapacitor industry. Based on 2013 industry results, IDTechEx confirms its outlook for a 30% CAGR External Link in the next 10 years. The supercapacitor market will reach a value of $6 billion in 2024.