More and more giant corporations are buying into printed electrics by acquiring companies partly or wholly in the field. The world's second largest chemical company Dow bought Rohm & Haas (materials), 3M bought into Printechnologics (printed patterns read by mobile phones) and DuPont bought Innovalight (nanosilicon layers to increase photovoltaic efficiency). Now there is interest in traction batteries for electric vehicles, where the third gener...

The European Investment Bank (EIB) recently granted a EUR 180 million loan to the Renault Group to contribute to R&D for a new generation of batteries and motors for electric vehicles. This is a large-scale project in technological and environmental terms, to which the Bank adds value through its technical and financial expertise. EIB Vice-President Philippe de Fontaine Vive and Dominique Thormann, Financial Director of the Renault Group, today s...

PowerGenix, a developer and manufacturer of Nickel-Zinc (NiZn) batteries is entering a joint venture with China City Construction Corporation (CCCC), one of the largest infrastructure investment and development companies in China. In the near term, the JV will develop, manufacture and sell advanced batteries for the automotive market and other markets, including markets supporting grid-scale applications.

With the launch of the WattStation, GE continues a century of innovation in the design and manufacturing of electrical distribution systems. GE's WattStation enables fast Level 2 charging at home and on the road. The modular design by renowned industrial designer Yves Behar is upgradable as more communication options become available. This allows customers to stay current with the latest technology in a rapidly changing space, while providing the...

2011 turned out to be a very interesting year for energy harvesting, full of scientific advances, technology breakthroughs and new product developments. IDTechEx predicts that the trend is set to continue, with further developments expected in 2012, along with expansion of commercialization efforts which will push energy harvesting adoption forward. By Dr. Harry Zervos, Technology Analyst

They have a saying in India that the British Empire is coming back - only the headquarters will be in New Delhi this time. Tata Group of India bought Corus - formerly British Steel. Tata Steel Europe is now developing a revolutionary technology to use solar electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen for fuel cells. Subsidiary Tata Motors, the largest motor company in India, bought Jaguar Land Rover for a mere one billion dollars from For...

The U.S. Department of Energy have granted more than $7 million to fund four projects in California, Washington and Oregon to advance hydrogen storage technologies to be used in fuel cell electric vehicles.

Charging electric cars without an electric cable - how does that work? Daimler AG is about to test inductive charging for the first time on a vehicle in everyday use in the form of a technically modified Mercedes-Benz A-Class E-CELL. With the inductive charging principle, an electric car fitted with a special charging coil merely has to be positioned over a charging coil in the ground to start the charging process fully automatically, with no ne...

At end of November, IDTechEx held the world's largest printed electronics and photovoltaics conference and tradeshow in Silicon Valley at the Santa Clara Convention Center. This show brought together more than 1300 attendees from 28 countries. Players active across the entire value chain were present; covering the full range from research organisations to end-users, and from small start-ups to multi-billion internationals.

IDTechEx's Printed Electronics/Photovoltaics Europe 2012 event will be the largest gathering of end users discussing their needs and experiences with the technology. The show will feature end user applications broken down into different verticals to provide vital end user pull-through. Confirmed speakers include: Americhip (American Greetings), Applied Materials, Braun, Mars, Metro Stores, NREL, Panasonic, Schneider Electric, ST Microelectronics,...

There are many reasons for creating an electric vehicle charging station based on a large battery.

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. In and on these vehicles, the energy snatched from heat, light, movement and other sources may be milliwatts or less to drive wireless sensors and actuators, watts for self sufficient lighting clusters (still in development) or - the main focus - up to ...

Elaphe is a startup in Slovenia that has just demonstrated axial flux, permanent magnet synchronous traction motors of unusually high power-to-weight and torque-to-weight ratio.

Fuel cell manufacturer Plug Power plans to join forces with Axane, an Air Liquide subsidiary, to create a joint venture to meet growing demand for GenDrive fuel cell products across the European material handling market.

Electric vehicles larger than cars include many boats, trucks, buses and other industrial and commercial vehicles, manned and unmanned aircraft and military vehicles for the field of combat and supply lines, even tugs for aircraft. Some electric vehicles are the size of a car but pack a much bigger punch. For example, forklifts and earthmovers can have much more powerful motors with many times the kW and Nm torque of car motors. Autonomous Underw...

Lola Group and Drayson Racing Technologies (DRT) recently announced, further detail on the groundbreaking Lola-Drayson B12/69EV all-electric prototype.

In understanding EV markets and trends it is absolutely vital to realise that their adoption is not usually for the popularly understood reasons such as saving the planet or getting a government subsidy. Most were successful without any government support and before saving the planet was an issue.

This world-first report allows detailed access, in an easily digestible format, into the pattern of patenting activities in the advanced energy storage sector. The report delivers trends for patents registered by country, company, assignee and inventor over a seven year period; invaluable when planning a long-term business strategy for any organisation. Order Report Now

IDTechEx's Printed Electronics and Photovoltaics USA conference and tradeshow in Santa Clara this November 30 - December 1 will feature focused sessions on electronics paper technologies, with main technology developers giving updates on their advances and future work. Electronic paper technology has found its main application in the development of e-book readers, a market that has bloomed in recent years with successful devices such as the Amazo...

Most of the well-known objectives of printed electronics remain elusive because they are glamorous, Olympian dreams based on some very exciting demonstrations in laboratories. For example, we plan stretchable, invisible solar cells to go over the whole of a car or building and tightly rollable colour screens and keyboards that unfurl from inside a tiny mobile telephone. That does not mean that there is no progress with printed electronics but mos...