Future Trends in Electric Vehicles Enabled by Internet Connectivity, Solar, and Battery Technology

The personal car has been one of the most defining inventions of the past century. Ranging from satisfying the human need for mobility to the design of cities, cars are ubiquitous and dominant in our daily lives. It is therefore very much of interest to analyze the trends of the automotive industry to predict how personal mobility might change in the future. However, we look not only at trends that occur within the automotive industry but also at other global technology trends that are related to the domain of automotive technology, such as generation and distribution of renewable energy and the rise of the “Internet of Things” (IoT). The focus of this chapter will be on the relationships between these various trends and how they might interact.We will elaborate that the main changes in the future automotive ecosystem are enabled by strong digitization resulting in three dominant trends that are mutually benefitting each other, possibly resulting in disruptive change in mobility: firstly, the electrification of the vehicle drivetrain, strongly influenced by the take-up of sustainable energy production by solar and wind farms; secondly, the uptake of sharing economy stimulating the change from car ownership to car usage by all kinds of mobility services; thirdly, the general known trend (and not discussed in this chapter) of the automation of vehicle driving itself.This disruptive change of the whole road mobility system toward a mobility service-oriented system will be fueled by further penetration of digitization at all aspects of mobility systems and components.