"Crises in the Middle East and Japan Implication for the US Economy and Technology Management"

David M. Steele, San Jose State University, United States

Since about 40 percent of the energy consumption in the U.S. is crude oil, and the U.S. is by far the largest consumer of oil, any crises in the Middle East and North Africa are unsettling. The history of the last 40 years shows that high oil prices and/or instability in the Middle East have led to U.S. economic crises. Moreover, the U.S. has the highest number of nuclear reactors producing electricity, accounting for roughly 10 percent of the energy consumption in the U.S. Yet the Fukushima reactor disaster in Japan has cast a pall over the nuclear power industry and questioned the future role of this clean energy source. So what are the implications for our economy and for other energy sources such as solar and natural gas in shale formations? And what are the implications for technology management, given that technology failed us in both the Gulf of Mexico oil platform and the Fukushima disasters? We will explore the role of various energy alternatives in the U.S. and the critical role that technology will play in 1) ensuring our economic stability; 2) exploiting other energy sources; and 3) addressing the issue of global warming.

"Trends of Smart Battery and Mobility Service Innovation in Future EVs"

Jay Lee, University of Cincinnati, United States

The current battery technology faces continuing issues including energy density and weight. Current EV batteries can provide limited power capacity that constrains long-distance driving. In addition, battery performance is highly impacted by traffic jams, driving behavior, and A/C usages, especially in the cases of cold and hot weather. This presentation will introduce the Smart Battery Health Management Systems, which not only predict the remaining battery capacity, but also monitor the battery status in real time. Through smart learning and analysis of the driving behavior pattern, the remaining useful life and the necessary service can be precisely estimated with the optimized driving and route plan for the battery charging and exchange services. In addition, smart battery and analytics provide the optimized routes with navigation by using the features extracted from real-time driving behavior and conditions and can also estimate the energy consumptions for different routes, slope, brakes, and traffic jams, which can greatly improve the precision of the mobility battery analysis. Finally, mobility service innovation using dominant innovation will be introduced.