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MotorIndia Sponsors Panel Discussion
MotorIndia is sponsoring a panel discussion of leading industry experts across the commercial vehicle value chain to share their insights on the short- to mid-term challenges in the truck industry.
Jinal Shah The event will be held Wednesday, June 3, at 5:00 pm IST.
The panel will be moderated by Jinal Shah, Regional Director, South Asia Operations, for Power Systems Research (PSR), a leading provider of global production data for engines and equipment.
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COVID-19 Webinar Scheduled With HDMA
Power Systems Research will work with the Heavy Duty Manufacturers Association (HDMA.org) to present a one-hour webinar examining the impact of COVID-19 on the industrial segments of Agricultural and Construction in North America.
The webinar will be presented Wednesday, June 17. Watch hdma.org and powersys.com for details. PSR
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A New Class of Hybrids
The word “hybrid” in the power generation universe has generally been understood to mean a fossil-fuel engine supplemented by another power source, usually a renewable.
Tyler Wiegert Then, the word grew to include vehicles and equipment that ran primarily on battery power but could be switched to a smaller engine that would recharge the battery while it ran.
Now, we are entering a time when “hybrid” includes drive systems that are primarily renewable-based and supplemented by an additional renewable system.
In this sphere, alternative power has primarily meant batteries and hydrogen fuel cells; one of the major impediments to wide adoption has always been range.
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Vertical Integration Is Key for Competitive Battery Vehicles
R&D World magazine recently examined the global market for lithium-ion batteries and concluded that there could very well be a shortage in the next decade. They projected that recent investments will ensure supply keeps ahead of demand for at least the next two years, but that the demand for lithium in 2030 will be 2.3x higher than the global output in 2019, and investments may not be happening at the pace needed to meet it.
Tyler Wiegert The main bottleneck is that it takes 5-10 years to bring a new lithium or cobalt mine online, but their low prices right now remove some of the incentive to make those investments.
In the absence or shortage of those investments, control of current resources will play a critical role in the production costs of lithium-powered equipment, including on-highway vehicles. In this area, as in many others, Tesla appears to be a leader. The electric car maker has made a number of moves recently to pursue vertical integration, including, most recently, signing a supply deal with Hanwha for battery production equipment. But they are also making moves to secure ownership of the raw materials needed for battery production.
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PSR’s Coronavirus Special Report
Power Systems Research has created a Coronavirus Special Report detailing the impact of COVID-19 on the global production of Off-Highway and Medium/Heavy Truck Engine and Equipment in 2020.
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Impact of COVID-19 in India on Engine-driven Applications
As of today, India is relatively less impacted by COVID than other nations. Because of the very bold and unprecedented move of a complete lockdown for about 40 days, India has managed to restrict the number of positive cases to 17,000.
Ritvik Kulkarni Considering that India is a country with a population of over 1 billion persons living in challenging on-ground conditions, it is a phenomenal effort of proactive and timely response from the government as well as restraint observed by citizens.
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STA Uses 3D Printers To Produce Face Shields for Health Care Workers
MENDOTA HEIGHTS, MN–Students at St. Thomas Academy High School in suburban Minneapolis, Minnesota, are using 3D printers in their Innovation Center to produce face shields for first responders and medical personnel who are battling the coronavirus.
The school has garnered some national exposure for the manufacturing work it has done with its 3D printers, including time on an ABC News broadcast and a nice article in the St. Paul (Minnesota) Pioneer Press newspaper.
Power Systems Research is a co-founder of the Innovation Center that’s part of the company’s effort to support STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) programs at local high schools.
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Coronavirus Has Major Impact on Global Production of Off-Highway Equipment and Medium & Heavy-Duty Vehicles
Download Your PDF Copy of the Presentation
ST. PAUL, MN–A team of international analysts from Power Systems Research (PSR) analyzed the impact of COVID-19 on the global production of Off-Highway Equipment and MH-Duty Vehicles in several regions today.
The team examined the impact of the coronavirus in North America, Europe, Asia, India, and South America for the remainder of 2020 and into Q1 2021. Download your copy of the presentation here.
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Is COVID-19 a Natural Disaster?
In late March, about halfway through the United States’ first round of social distancing, Generac CEO Aaron Jagdfeld spoke with Yahoo Finance’s Seana Smith about whether Generac was seeing a spike in demand from COVID-19.
Tyler Wiegert Smith noted that the power generation segment tends to do better during and after a natural disaster, and wanted to know the answer to a question that has also been on our minds at Power Systems Research: “Is COVID-19 a Natural Disaster?”
Like many of the other questions surrounding COVID-19, like “Is the United States heading into a recession?” or “How do we distribute scarce medical resources?” the answer isn’t clear cut.
Additionally, hotels and other buildings are being converted into temporary hospitals as states prepare for their regular ICUs to reach capacity. He states that those buildings might not have typically had back-up power, but now need to be quickly outfitted to meet regulations for critical care centers.
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Batteries Are Coming. We Saw Lots of Them at CONEXPO and GIE+Expo
Recently I was at a dinner with visiting members of my family discussing the noble transition that many manufacturers are making from producing their typical goods to producing essential goods and equipment for the coronavirus fight.
Tyler Wiegert One that came up was Tesla’s transition to making ventilators, and one member of my family began to say that they wouldn’t want a Tesla ventilator if they were hospitalized, because it would probably catch fire and explode.
My fiance is in medicine rather than in our industry, so she took that to be a serious comment about the risk of ventilators sparking in an oxygen-rich environment. But it quickly became clear that this critic just has a deep and abiding skepticism of battery technology, because they repeatedly brought the conversation back to battery fires and cars exploding, despite there having been only 14 reported cases of Tesla vehicles catching fire between 2013 and 2019, with most of those happening after accidents.
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