The new IDTechEx report, "Electric Vehicles in Construction, Agriculture and Mining 2020-2030" uniquely addresses a huge opportunity. Vehicles for construction, agriculture and mining have become one industry served by giants such as Caterpillar, CNH Industrial, John Deere and Komatsu but also small businesses making the new requirements such as drones and weeding and mine survey robots.
Raghu Das, CEO of IDTechEx advises, "The giants in CAM are cautiously going electric but they should learn from the start ups and the Tier One suppliers rushing into the world of precision farming, drones, swarming robots and moveable zero emission microgrids to charge them. Parts and systems suppliers Cummins and Dana Corporation are making a string of shrewd acquisitions and shutting or divesting past technologies.
Coping with tougher locations, tougher pollution regulation and lack of staff are part of the new reality but it is faced by plenty of investment, radically new technology and strongly increasing product demand for both new vehicles and moveable zero-emission microgrids to charge them, both addressed in the report. This is the opposite of the perfect storm faced by the car industry. This is an "idea whose time has come".
The 40 page Executive Summary and Conclusions is sufficient in itself for those in a hurry. Mainly infograms such as the construction site, farm and mine of the future timelines and forecasts, it also gives 22 primary conclusions split into Industry, Regional and Technology related. Primary areas of development are revealed by application and technology and heroic advances from deep mining to vertical farming each without people. Solar driven agribots will replace poisons. The forecasts 2020-2030 are for no less than 19 vehicle categories each by number, price and market value. Price parity with diesel is predicted by type and year. See the patent trends and market outlook for key categories and for autonomy with all of them, with adoption timeline 2020-2030.
The Introduction looks at industry and technology commonalities, the pollution issues, the many drivers of electrification, powertrain types and trends, including how hybrids are sometimes needed as an interim stage. Many examples bring it alive, and challenges such as crop yields no longer increasing are introduced together with many solutions from precision farming to swarming robots and how deep mines become unmanned.
The next three chapters look in detail at where we are today and where we are going in Construction, Agriculture and Mining vehicles that are pure electric or hybrid, respectively. Each starts with an overview of needs and actions, then case studies are grouped by type, with the agriculture section even including the new forestry and turf care EVs. Drones are covered but, as befits the market potential, nearly all the text concerns land vehicles. That involves 52 company/product analyses.
Chapter 6 gives a thorough treatment of what are now the key enabling technologies of CAM EVs - electric motors/ motor-generators, traction battery systems, supercapacitors, power electronics, solar bodywork and zero emission transportable microgrids for charging. Add to that autonomy, a subject now so important that Chapter 7 covers autonomy in action with CAM vehicles and Chapter 8 covers the robotic technology in detail. It all adds up to over 350 pages of distilled information all of which is about the present and future and based on ongoing global travel, event attendance and interviewing by multi-lingual PhD level analysts from IDTechEx. We even have drill down reports on most aspects for those wanting to delve deeper - from LIDAR to supercapacitor construction, lightweighting, thermal materials, zero emission microgrids. Before that, the new report, "Electric Vehicles in Construction, Agriculture and Mining 2020-2030" is the big eye-opener.
Electric VUS$ 5,995