Publications Welcome to the New Gilded Age

This forecast appeared in the September 2019 issue of Diesel Progress magazine.

SUMMARY. The underlying weak conditions in the global economic picture could put pressure on the North American power generation industry for the remainder of 2019 and through most of 2020. We forecast little or no growth for the industry through 2020.

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Welcome to the New Gilded Age of Gen-Sets

This forecast appeared in the September 2019 issue of Diesel Progress magazine.

SUMMARY. The underlying weak conditions in the global economic picture could put pressure on the North American power generation industry for the remainder of 2019 and through most of 2020. We forecast little or no growth for the industry through 2020.

Even though the power generation production market was up slightly (0.9% in 2018-2019), we see it declining about 1% over the next year. 

Tyler Wiegert
Tyler Wiegert

For those of you a few years removed from your high school U.S. History courses, the original Gilded Age was a period covering the 1870s-1890s that was marked by astonishing economic growth. Driven by the expansion of industrialization in the North and West, facilitated by growing railroad networks, real wages grew an enviable 60%.

But Mark Twain dubbed this period the “Gilded Age” rather than the “Golden Age,” because it was also marked by extreme poverty, and he represented it with gilded, decaying apple. The shiny outward appearance of growth was masking a rotten core of massive inequality.

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SOUTHEAST ASIA: THAILAND, INDONESIA REPORT

Thailand May Become New Car Sales Leader in 2019

New car sales from January to June in six major countries in Southeast Asia were 1.7 million, unchanged from the same period of the previous year.

Thailand and Indonesia are the two major markets. Thailand, where consumption is strong, increased by 7% year-on-year, while Indonesia, which faces a decline in resource prices, decreased by 13%. Thailand could be ranked first this year for the first time in six years.

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Recession May Come Before CASE Is Realized

GUEST EDITORIAL


President and Founder, Japan Electrification Research Institute, Ltd.

SUMMARY. The global auto industry is bubbling with changes and dramatic new ideas, but the current declining financial performances of Japanese auto OEMs may force them to drop out of the race temporarily before they can take advantage of the growing demand for autonomous vehicles.

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Off-Highway Truck Production

2019 NA Production About The Same as 2018

1400 Units

This information originally appeared in the August 2019 issue of PowerTALK.

Carol Turner is Senior Analyst, Global Operations

DataPoint

Fourteen hundred units is the estimate, by Power Systems Research, of the number of Off-Highway Trucks that will be produced in the United States and Canada during 2019. Estimated 2019 production will be about the same as 2018.

In 2018, production was 1412 units, down 55 units or 4% from 2017.

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MotorIndia Magazine: India CV Market Facing Lower Demand in 2019

The India CV market is facing lower demand in 2019, reports MotorIndia magazine in its August 2019 Market Outlook issue.

CV Link is a comprehensive database updated quarterly that covers the CV market.

After a blockbuster growth in 2017 and 2018, writes Shah, growth that was largely driven by demand for tipper trucks due to the new infrastructure, mining projects and fleet replacement; the party ended in Q4 of 2018.

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US Combines

2019 US Production Forecast to Climb 2%

6800 Units

This information originally appeared in the July 2019 issue of PowerTALK.

By Carol Turner, Senior Analyst, Global Operations

This is the estimate by Power Systems Research of the number of Combines that will be produced in the United States during 2019. Estimated 2019 production will be up nearly 2% from 2018.

In 2018, production was 6846 units, down 485 units or 6.6% from 2017.

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How Student Teamwork Built a World Championship Car

Editor’s Note: Caroline Little teaches all levels of French and moderates an engineering co-curricular at St. Thomas Academy, an all-boys school in Mendota Heights, Minnesota. Here she provides a report on the program and the benefits it provides to participating students.

Power Systems Research has been a lead sponsor of the special Experimental Vehicle Team (EVT) at St. Thomas for many years. This year, the team won its class in the Shell Eco-Marathon international competition in London. This report from Ms. Little discusses the program and the benefits it provides for high school students interested in science, technology, engineering and match (STEM).

By Caroline Little

Every year for the past twenty the Saint Thomas Academy Experimental Vehicle Team (STA EVT) has built a new vehicle from the ground up to give our students the best engineering experience a high-schooler can get. The internationally recognized program started in 1997. My fellow moderator Mark Westlake and I believe in the importance of learning from mistakes. That the most important life lessons come from experience, that science is not always easy and that the answers are not always found in the back of the book.

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