Energy Storage

Hyundai Motor Group has recently announced a commercial partnership with energy company Wärtsilä to utilize second-life electric vehicle batteries for stationary energy storage at both commercial and utility scales. This is not the first piece of news that automotive companies are trying to give a second life to their retired EV batteries as major EV manufactures including Nissan, Renault, BMW, Daimler, BYD etc. have announced various battery second use projects around the world.

The end-of-life issue of electric vehicle batteries is a key topic in the sustainability of EVs. By 2029, there will be 3 million used battery packs coming out of EVs per year which amounts to around 108GWh available storage capacity (see the IDTechEx's latest report on Second-life Electric Vehicle Batteries). What will happen to this huge amount of retired car batteries?

Key areas discussed and displayed at the LCV event include the battery, powertrain, lightweighting, autonomous driving and electric vehicle charging, from not only the technology but also business model and policy perspectives.

The key next iteration for fiber reinforced polymer products will be the concept of multifunctionality. This is the idea of making a structural part carry out additional role(s) beyond their current primary mechanical task - the market for smart composite material is forecast to exceed 5 kilotons by 2029.

After surfacing its Vespa Elettrica concept at EICMA last year, a large motorcycle trade show known for these sort of announcements from manufacturers, Piaggio finally announced that it will go to production this September, and that it will take preorders in October with the first deliveries later that month.

This is a technological megatrend. Dumb load-bearing metal structures move to plastic and composite and incorporate energy harvesting and storage material - massless energy. Indeed you could call some of it negative mass energy. Goodbye components-in-a-box.

IDTechEx will be hosting a free webinar on Tuesday 25 September titled Electric two-wheelers: the EV underdog?

IDTechEx Research has just published a new report 'Fuel Cell Vehicles 2019-2029'. Fuel cells are commercially successful in stationary applications but commercially unsuccessful in vehicles, beyond a few thousand purchased for material handling vehicles, notably forklifts.

AWE should be seen as part of a bigger picture. The next generation of zero emission electricity producing technologies has no huge steel and concrete infrastructure, so it can have much less cost and installation time and making it redeployable.

With most of the big players posting healthy figures in Q2, diesel genset revenues are showing continued growth throughout 2018. Are these results a sign of things to come or are they merely delaying an inevitable future decline?