Skip to main content

Biggest change in cars for 100 years now starting, says IDTechEx Research

According to a new report from IDTechEx Research, Electric Car Technology and Forecasts 2017-2027, the biggest change in cars for one hundred years is now starting. It is driven by totally new requirements and capabilities. They will cause huge new businesses to appear, but some giants will spectacularly go bankrupt. Cities will ban private cars but encourage them as autonomous taxis and rentals. Already 65 per cent of cars in China are bought by businesses. The Japanese want the car to be part of the hy
December 5, 2016 Read time: 2 mins
According to a new report from 6582 IDTechEx Research, Electric Car Technology and Forecasts 2017-2027, the biggest change in cars for one hundred years is now starting. It is driven by totally new requirements and capabilities. They will cause huge new businesses to appear, but some giants will spectacularly go bankrupt. Cities will ban private cars but encourage them as autonomous taxis and rentals. Already 65 per cent of cars in China are bought by businesses.

The Japanese want the car to be part of the hydrogen economy and a source of back-up power. Emerging countries want car-like vehicles, mainly as taxis, that are one-tenth of the cost and never refuel. There is even work on getting electricity from tyres.

The mechanical world of cogs, axles, pistons and brakes is becoming one of power electronics, complex electric machine systems, batteries and their successors. Integration is the name of the game with structural electronics, where components-in-a-box are becoming smart wheels, smart bodywork, smart seating and single-piece composite dashboards with integrated instruments.

Electric Car Technology and Forecasts 2017-2027 has the latest insight and balanced analysis on advances of electric cars and their global markets. It details developments in key enabling technologies, structural electronics and progress towards electric independent vehicles, carefully assessing where and when these will appear and who the winners and losers will be.

The report provides ten year forecasts for nine categories of cars and car-like vehicles. It finds a huge market emerging for the cheapest and easiest way of converting the existing production of cars to keep them legal as new climate change laws bite - the 48V mild hybrid. Uniquely, there is also a complete chapter on cars in China - the country that buys the most, has some of the lowest costs and leapfrogging innovation but completely different market drivers and strong government control.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • The Dutch revolution in smart EV charging
    October 18, 2016
    By turning itself into one huge Living Lab for Smart Charging of electric vehicles, the Netherlands aims to become the international frontrunner for smart charging EVs, using them to store peak solar and wind power production. Already 325 municipalities, including Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht and The Hague, have joined the Dutch Living Lab Smart Charging project, representing 80 per cent of all public charging stations. It is also supported by the Dutch government and has been joined by some The New Motion
  • Heavy weather: how ITS can mitigate climate change effects
    August 22, 2023
    Countries, regions and cities all over the world are seeing unprecedented extreme weather events causing destruction in different ways: from heat and wildfires to snow and floods and much else in between. Jon Tarleton of Baron Weather explains how the ITS industry can help the transportation network to remain efficient as the climate changes
  • Smartphone - the next technology for charging and tolling?
    January 25, 2012
    With all the debates over the most suitable future technology or technologies for charging and tolling, is it not time for the industry to look at what the rest of ITS is doing and bring a rank outsider - the smart phone - closer into the fold? By Jack Opiola, D'Artagnan Consulting LLC
  • Europe’s road safety gains have stagnated EU
    March 17, 2017
    Europe will fail to meet its road death targets as enforcement budgets are slashed and drivers face an epidemic of distractions. The European Union will not achieve its aim of halving the number of people killed on its roads each year by 2020, delegates to Tispol’s (the organisation of European traffic police) annual conference in Manchester were told. “The target will be missed because there was only a 17% decrease in road fatalities across Europe between 2010 and 2015 when [the rate of reduction] should h