Tag: battery industry

The BMW i3 represents that Bavarian’s brands first attempt to move into the “affordable” EV market, and they’ve done so with a car built from the ground-up to be electric. It’s little wonder then that BMW i3 sales have been solid enough to help push the brand past 1 million units sold in the first half of 2014. BMW sold

Read more

Deutsche Bank is planning to lend nearly one billion dollars for three to six Japanese solar projects during the next 12 or 18 months. Of course, it’s Japan’s feed-in tariff (FiT) that is helping generate interest, but a Deutsche Bank director named Hans Van Der Sande said that because the rate has dropped, the real players are staying after the

Read more

Whether you’re making coffee, ramen or a gourmet Italian dinner, the odds are that you boil at least a pot of water every day. That adds up to a lot of energy use – but UK kitchenware manufacturer, Lakeland recently teamed up with a rocket scientist from Oxford to create a pot that heats food 40% faster than conventional models.

Read more

A pressure sensor which can detect height differences of as little as 50cm uses MEMS technology developed by Omron. The sensor module can measure altitude, atmospheric pressure or water depth in wearable electronics, activity monitors, industrial and marine instruments and mobile phones and cameras. The 2SMPB-01-01 absolute pressure sensor will provide readings relative to a perfect vacuum to ± 6Pa.

Read more

Linear Technology announces the LTC3637, a 76 V input-capable high efficiency buck converter that delivers up to 1 A of continuous output current. It operates from an input voltage range of 4 V to 76 V, making it ideal for telecom, industrial, avionic and automotive applications. The LTC3637 utilizes a programmable peak current-mode design to optimize efficiency over a broad

Read more

The solar PV market is growing fast, and especially so in the leading solar PV countries. The top 5 solar countries will account for nearly 80% of the global solar PV market in the second half of 2014. However, if you look a bit closer, the details indicate sharp differences within the top 5. Chinese market share and Japanese market

Read more

The result is greater than a 10 fold improvement in LED efficiency compared the first p-GaN demonstration data published by the company in December 2012, when the same measuring methodology is applied.  The performance upgrade was achieved by making improvements in addressing the ‘interface challenge’, a key technical hurdle that has been limiting the p-GaN performance demonstration in the past.

Read more

In an effort to foster the adoption of more electric vehicles, China has announced that all electric, hybrid and fuel cell vehicles will be exempt from the purchase tax until 2017. Currently China’s car buyers have been slow to adopt electric and hybrid vehicles because of the higher prices and charging infrastructure, but the Chinese government hopes that the new

Read more

Texas Instruments has introduced the MSP430 ULP (ultra low power) FRAM LaunchPad development platform which incorporates embedded FRAM (Ferroelectric Random Access Memory). The MSP-EXP430FR5969 evaluation module for the MSP4305969 microcontroller incorporates embedded FRAM, a non-volatile memory with high speed write access, for applications such as metering, wearable electronics and energy harvesting devices. Embedded FRAM opens up MCU design Available from

Read more

Microchip’s new RN4020 Bluetooth 4.1 Low Energy (BTLE) module, carrying both worldwide regulatory certifications and Bluetooth SIG certification, is pre-loaded with a Low-energy Data Profile (MLDP), enabling streaming any type of data across the BTLE link.  The stack-on-board module can connect to any microcontroller with a UART interface, or it can operate standalone for basic data collection and communication, such

Read more