electric bicycles are the world’s best-selling electric vehicles. Rapidly accelerating urbanization, the increasing need for low-cost transportation in developing markets, and expanding opportunities for new market entrants are all helping to drive e-bicycle sales says Pike Research. Despite significant business challenges outside the Asia Pacific region, the market for electric bicycles is expected to grow strongly over the next several years. According to a new report from Pike Research, the worldwide market for e-bicycles will increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.5% between 2012 and 2018, resulting in global sales of more than 47 million vehicles in 2018. China is anticipated to account for 42 million of these e-bicycles that year, giving it 89% of the total world market. The e-bicycle market is anticipated to generate $6.9 billion in worldwide revenue in 2012, growing to $11.9 billion in 2018. Under a more aggressive forecast scenario, worldwide e-bicycle sales could reach 51 million units and $13.2 billion revenue in 2018, the clean tech market intelligence firm forecasts. “E-bicycle manufacturers and importers in North America and Latin America continue to struggle with a weak distribution network and modest demand,” says senior analyst Dave Hurst. “As a result, the e-bicycle market is experiencing an accelerated rate of acquisitions and business failures. Nevertheless, sales are expected to grow rapidly, with a CAGR of nearly 22% in North America from 2012 to 2018.” The vast majority of the e-bicycles sold in China, the world’s largest market, utilize sealed lead acid (SLA) batteries. While this has resulted in extremely low-cost e-bicycles in China, it has also led to a number of challenges including e-bicycle traffic congestion, lead contamination, and manufacturers effectively ignoring laws relating to e-bicycles speed and weight limits. Pike Research anticipates that the global penetration of lithium ion (Li-ion) batteries will grow from 6% in 2012 to 12% in 2018. Cost pressures from Asia Pacific will keep manufacturers interested in SLA batteries through this decade, but once manufacturing efficiencies have driven down the costs of Li-ion, we will start to see the decline of SLA as the battery of choice in e-bicycles. Pike Research’s report, “Electric Bicycles”, provides a comprehensive analysis of the worldwide e-bicycle and e-bicycle battery industry including an examination of market forces, technology issues, government policy influences, the competitive landscape, and key drivers of growth. The study includes global forecasts for e-bicycle units and e-bicycle batteries through 2017, segmented by world region and key countries. An Executive Summary of the report is available for free download on the firm’s website.Source: Renewable Energy Magazine
Global e_bike sales to exceed 47 million by 2018
electric bicycles are the world’s best-selling electric vehicles. Rapidly accelerating urbanization, the increasing need for low-cost transportation in developing markets, and expanding opportunities for new market entrants are all helping to drive e-bicycle sales says Pike Research. Despite significant business challenges outside the Asia Pacific region, the market for electric bicycles is expected to grow strongly over the next several years. According to a new report from Pike Research, the worldwide market for e-bicycles will increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.5% between 2012 and 2018, resulting in global sales of more than 47 million vehicles in 2018. China is anticipated to account for 42 million of these e-bicycles that year, giving it 89% of the total world market. The e-bicycle market is anticipated to generate $6.9 billion in worldwide revenue in 2012, growing to $11.9 billion in 2018. Under a more aggressive forecast scenario, worldwide e-bicycle sales could reach 51 million units and $13.2 billion revenue in 2018, the clean tech market intelligence firm forecasts. “E-bicycle manufacturers and importers in North America and Latin America continue to struggle with a weak distribution network and modest demand,” says senior analyst Dave Hurst. “As a result, the e-bicycle market is experiencing an accelerated rate of acquisitions and business failures. Nevertheless, sales are expected to grow rapidly, with a CAGR of nearly 22% in North America from 2012 to 2018.” The vast majority of the e-bicycles sold in China, the world’s largest market, utilize sealed lead acid (SLA) batteries. While this has resulted in extremely low-cost e-bicycles in China, it has also led to a number of challenges including e-bicycle traffic congestion, lead contamination, and manufacturers effectively ignoring laws relating to e-bicycles speed and weight limits. Pike Research anticipates that the global penetration of lithium ion (Li-ion) batteries will grow from 6% in 2012 to 12% in 2018. Cost pressures from Asia Pacific will keep manufacturers interested in SLA batteries through this decade, but once manufacturing efficiencies have driven down the costs of Li-ion, we will start to see the decline of SLA as the battery of choice in e-bicycles. Pike Research’s report, “Electric Bicycles”, provides a comprehensive analysis of the worldwide e-bicycle and e-bicycle battery industry including an examination of market forces, technology issues, government policy influences, the competitive landscape, and key drivers of growth. The study includes global forecasts for e-bicycle units and e-bicycle batteries through 2017, segmented by world region and key countries. An Executive Summary of the report is available for free download on the firm’s website.Source: Renewable Energy Magazine
Robopocalypse, or killing robots: where humans are the target
Run for cover! Robots may become self-governing devices with built-in firearms in massive numbers worldwide. Yet, robots’ picking who to destroy on the battlefield is a recipe for disaster. Killer robots, flying robots… Three specialists warn the Voice of Russia of what robots with self-determining weaponry would mean. The End of the World is nearing? Autopilot is a built-in feature on many machines, but not with ones which are capable of firing off weapons. “Here’s an example of a killer robot, a flying robot. Go to GPS coordinates X and Y, if you detect a heat signature there, release your weapon. These are really stupid robots and that’s what’s scary about it because one thing is, they use artificial intelligence but there’s no way for them to discriminate against a military combatant or an insurgent and a civilian,” explained Noel Sharkey, Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics at the University of Sheffield. The trust of our nation would be in the hands of machines who only may know if A then do B type commands. Nevertheless, if they are so primitive in their actions, why are militaries lured into learning how to build them with precision? One clear reason is to decrease the amount of troops they’d have to send into a combat zone, evidently decreasing the death rate. “They’ve developed a plane called the Falcon HTV-2 that’s undergoing testing at the moment, it’s a totally unmanned combat plane and they tested it at 13 thousand miles per hour. So that’s not supersonic, that’s hypersonic. You can’t have a pilot in that plane at that speed. It would rip them to pieces with the g-forces. At that kind of speed, it would be very difficult for humans to be watching and seeing what’s going on and having any kind of say or control,” said Sharkey to the Voice of Russia, who’s also the chairman of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control (ICRAC). The US Department of Defense (DoD) recently released a report titledAutonomy in Weapon Systems and touched on the important details of both autonomous and semi-autonomous weapons. And yet, the missteps which could incur are listed at the very end of the report. Failures include but are not limited to hacking into the system, jamming, decoys, and spoofing. So even though the technology we have today could indefinitely lead to the autonomous armed robots of tomorrow, they come with their own set of unpredictable flaws. “Software today is extremely complicated and it behaves in ways people don’t expect. This is another aspect of the problem because even if we think we understand how a system behaves while it’s by itself, it then interacts with the other system. And we don’t know what the other system‘s going to do, therefore we don’t know what our system will do when it sees the other system behaving in a way that it didn’t expect,” told Mark Avrum Gubrud PhD, a physicist who’s been hired to research and write about this issue by Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security. Bearing in mind what the implications of autonomous weaponry can do, it’s disturbing that the final decision is left in the hands of militaries and wealthy corporations. Fortunately, Human Rights Watch joined with the Harvard Law School International Human Rights Clinic, and released a 50 page report called Losing Humanity: The Case Against Killer Robots. Human Rights Watch and the International Human Rights Clinic are asking for an international treaty against the use, production, and development of fully autonomous weapons. In addition, they’d like for nations to put policies and laws in effect which would prevent uncontrollable, armed robots from becoming operable. “We don’t think machines, however high tech they get, will be able to follow international law designed to protect civilians in war, we think they would undermine non-legal checks for example they don’t have compassion, which is a significant check on killing of civilians. And it’s also very difficult to hold fully autonomous weapons, killer robots, accountable for their actions—so it creates an accountability gap which can undermine deterrence,” stressed Bonnie Docherty Senior Researcher in the Arms Division for Human Rights Watch, to the Voice of Russia. As a society, we have the technology available and a bunch of bright minds to do the work, in the field of autonomy. But researchers strongly urge engineering teams, to steer away from arming bots with ammo, and have them do more useful tasks, for human kind. “We ought to use robots to do all the boring and difficult laborious jobs and you put people to work taking care of other people, said Gubrud to the Voice of Russia and then went on, “Using robots for replacing people where people are expensive, well people are expensive but you know, that’s us, we should be in the business of taking care of ourselves and taking care of each other.” Gubrud pointed out that robots could be used in fields such as agriculture and Sharkey mentioned that we’re already using them for surgical procedures. “And it’s also very difficult to hold fully autonomous weapons, killer robots accountable for their actions—so it creates an accountability gap which can undermine deterrence,” stated Docherty who said experts say that it could appear in 20 to 30 years and some say cruder versions could appear in the next few years. Thus, the next step for us as Homo sapiens is to be proactive by creating a ban against the use of unrestrainable devices. We can drive toward a different path which can help society in fulfilling more important roles. As for the battlefield, some duties need that special hintof human touch—something robots can only mimic and not understand –at least in the here and now. Source: Voice of Russia
Clean Energy Ministerial highlights major impact of EVs in India
Robin Whitlock: Clean Energy Ministerial, the high-level global forum focused on promoting global clean energy, has released a report highlighting the significant positive potential impact of EV deployment in India. The report by Clean Energy Ministerial’s Electric Vehicles Initiative (EVI) reveals that the benefits of widespread EV deployment in India are greater than expected when real world driving conditions are taken into account. The analysis was conducted by the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and supported by EVI. It is helping to inform the Government of India’s National Mission on Electric Mobility which has set deployment targets of 5 to 7 million hybrid and electric vehicles in the country by 2020. The report demonstrated that real-world driving conditions amplify the benefits of EVs in India due to the superior ability of electric powertrains to maintain high efficiency in highly transient operation. The country could potentially save 4.8 million barrels of oil and 270 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 if the passenger car EV adoption rates necessitated by the government targets continue into the decade beyond 2020. “Electric vehicles are one of the most promising technology pathways to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and oil consumption around the world” said lead researcher Anand Gopal of LBNL. “As vehicle ownership in India is set to rise substantially, this new study underscores the important opportunity that exists to diversify India’s transportation fuel mix and reduce CO2 emissions.” The research also found that EVs could be manufactured for the Indian market at lower costs due to the much lower range requirements for urban car users. For example, an EV with a 100-kilometer range is sufficient for more than 99 percent of journeys made in the country. When factoring in fuel cost savings from switching to electricity, 100 km EVs could become cheaper than conventional vehicles on a life cycle cost basis prior to 2030. For additional information: Clean Energy Ministerial. Source: Article, Image: http://upload.wikimedia.org
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
