Energy Storage

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.