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The electric vehicle business will approach a massive $500 billion in 2025 with the traction motors segment capturing over $25 billion. Traction motors propelling land, water and air vehicles along can consist of one inboard motor or - an increasing trend - more than one near the wheels, in the wheels, in the transmission or ganged to get extra power. Complex trends in this industry are explained with this updated report, and future winning suppliers are identified alongside market forecasts. The information is especially important as hybrid vehicles may have the electric motor near the conventional engine or its exhaust, and this may mean they need to tolerate temperatures never before encountered in pure electric vehicles. Motors for highly price-sensitive markets such as electric bikes, scooters, e-rickshaws and micro EVs avoid the price hikes of neodymium and other rare earths in the magnets.

The electric vehicle industry - land, water and air - is rapidly rising to become a market of over $533 billion by 2025. Some run entirely on harvested energy as with solar lake boats. Others recycle energy as with regenerative braking of cars, buses and military vehicles harvesting kinetic energy. Others use different forms of harvesting either to charge the traction batteries, or to drive autonomous device. In some cases, harvesting is making completely new forms of electric vehicle possible such as "glider" Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) that can stay at sea for years, gaining electricity from both wave power and sunshine. Multiple forms of energy harvesting on one vehicle are becoming more common from cars to superyachts.

Half the electric vehicle market value lies in larger road vehicles, notably cars, and here the legal restrictions are weaker or non-existent, and range anxiety compels most people to buy hybrids if they go electric at all. Over eight million hybrid cars will be made in 2025, each with a range extender, the additional power source that distinguishes them from pure electric cars. Add to that significant money spent on the same devices in buses, military vehicles, boats and so on and a major new market emerges. Whereas today's range extenders usually consist of little more than off- the- shelf internal combustion engines, these are rapidly being replaced by second- generation range extenders consisting of piston engines designed from scratch for fairly constant load. However, a more radical departure is the third- generation micro turbines and fuel cells that work at constant load.