Mercedes-Benz Gives Ericsson an Early Win, but It's a Long Road Ahead

Following an announcement in June 2019, Mercedes-Benz will be one of the first European manufacturers to move off of the industrial 5G starting line. The German automaker’s Factory 56 is a greenfield manufacturing site in Sindelfingen in southern Germany, where a private industrial 5G network will be built using Ericsson’s network infrastructure and Telefonica’s leased 5G spectrum and network services.

While 5G has already gone live in the consumer market, this announcement is early in the context of the industrial sphere, where the consensus suggests full commercialization of enterprise 5G deployments will occur from 2021 onward. Furthermore, Ericsson’s private cellular network technology for industry, marketed under the name Ericsson Industry Connect, was only announced in late March of this year. When Ericsson outlined this packaged solution of network equipment and services, it suggested its private networks would initially be deployed using LTE cellular connectivity before eventually transitioning to 5G. The announcement from Sindelfingen is therefore major news in the context of industrial 5G.

Next Gen Batteries Will Power Up the Electric Vehicle Installed Base to 100 Million by 2028

“Range anxiety” continues to be the biggest barrier to the largescale adoption of Electric Vehicles (EVs). However, ongoing and significant improvements in battery technology will pave the way for an installed EV base of 100 million by 2028, according to ABI Research.

To alleviate “range anxiety”, the Electric Vehicle Battery (EVB) will need to be safer, cheaper, faster charging, and have a high-energy density for greater range. Continued advancements in cell technology will ease anxiety and allow EVs to gain traction substantially.

Lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries are the current standard for EVs, yet they have short life cycles and have a history of overheating. “Recent research around lithium-based chemistries has revolved around using different lithium-based batteries to provide better fire resistance, quicker charges, and longer life spans,” says James Hodgson, Principal Analyst. Read more. 

The Collaborative Robot Market Will Exceed US$11 Billion by 2030, Representing 29% of the Total Industrial Robot Market

Buoyed by early innovators and adopters, the Collaborative Robotics market will become increasingly mainstream over the next 10 years. New analysis from ABI Research finds that the yearly revenue for cobot arms will reach US$11.8 billion by 2030, an enormous increase from US$711 million in 2019. More than that, the total value of the collaborative market is considerably more, when accounting for software-related revenues and end-of-arm tooling (EOAT) accessories. Under this broader definition of the market, the cobot ecosystem is worth just over US$1 billion in 2019 and will be worth US$24 billion by 2030, with a CAGR of 28.6 %.

“The prospects for the collaborative robotics market remain strong, despite some very visible inhibitors,” says Rian Whitton, Senior Analyst. “The hardware innovation is still trailing behind, and most of the value related to cobots does not come from collaboration. It comes through ease-of-use, re-programmability, lower total cost compared to industrial systems, and re-deployability. In essence, the value is one of lowering barriers rather than building entirely new use-cases for robots. What is more, cobots still trail industrial systems in speed, performance, and payload, which will have to change if adoption is to continue at this feverish rate.” Read more.