Semiconductors, Data Centers & AI

Supercapacitors Turn the Corner - Supercapacitors and their variants have recently seen customer commitment to multibillion-dollar opportunities that were previously beyond their reach. Consider large peak-shaving ones for hybrid cars where the Geely orders will soon be followed by others.

The new IDTechEx report, "Sensors 2021-2041" uniquely analyses the whole subject in the light of such seismic changes as the COVID-19 virus. The sensor business is in turmoil. The industries that spend most on sensors are changing as are the sensors.

In the past two decades, the car market has declined twice: first due to the 2008 economic crisis, and then due to falling sales in China. Most recently, the lockdowns implemented to combat the coronavirus pandemic, causing auto-production plants to close globally and a loss of consumer spending will lead to an unprecedented 23% decline in 2020 (IDTechEx prediction).

It is often imagined that agriculture is alien to new technologies. This is far from reality. In fact, agriculture has always been a pioneer in the adoption of new technologies, embracing motor/power, modified seed, and agrochemical technologies over many decades to boost productivity.

Nearly every sector is proposing the use of artificial intelligence. Materials science R&D is relatively late to this trend, and there are many industry-specific hurdles, but the opportunities are beginning to be realized and the potential impact is significant.

Deep learning has revolutionized image recognition and analysis, making unprecedented performance leaps between 2010-2014. These rapid advancements enabled the development of automated, accurate, accessible, and cost-effective medical diagnostics.

When considering the prospects of an emerging technology, it is easy to make broad-brush claims. For example, stating that 'greater numbers of connected devices, commonly referred to as the Internet of Things (IoT), will increase demand for printed sensors' seems an uncontroversial statement.

Radar uptake in vehicles will continue its increase, driven both by an increase in the number of adopting cars and by the radar content per vehicle. Both trends are driven by the increasing adoption of ADAS and will be sustained and strengthened in the longer term by the emergence of highly automated or autonomous driving.

This webinar provides insight into the industry's evolution, and will cover: Drivers for the transition to electric buses, Challenges to bus electrification, The history and future of bus electrification in key regions, The outlook for battery electric buses, plug-in hybrid buses and fuel cell electric buses, and The background to IDTechEx's new granular forecasts for the electric city bus market.

Cars electrify, now farm vehicles. The new 215-page IDTechEx report, "Electric Vehicles and Robotics in Agriculture 2020-2030" explains. This is a drill-down from the popular report, "Electric Vehicles in Construction, Agriculture and Mining 2020-2030".