Today Porsche had its annual press conference, remotely of course. Among all the big claims is the one that 2019 was one of the most successful year with sales increase by 10 percent at 280,000 cars globally. The company is planning to pour 15 billion euros into futureproofing its products over the next a couple of years.
Investments will be split between electrifying and digitalising its cars, while a third of it is going into venture capitalism, including its 15 per cent stake in Rimac. Does this mean investment has stopped in good old internal combustion powered cars? Nope. We can hear your sigh of relief from our self-isolation booth.
“We’ll continue with petrol engines in the 911 and improve them step by step,” Porsche CEO Oliver Blume told TopGear.com. “We keep on investing in combustion engines. It’s core to Porsche – especially the 911. We underlined the investment in future technology but we have future investment in internal combustion also.
“We made a very deep analysis of what would be the best opportunity to reduce CO2 in these engines and we’re looking at synthetic fuels.”
These are a carbon-neutral way of powering petrol engines, one which Blume’s team are trialling now.
“We are running tests already with historic cars like the 993, with very good results. The costs are too high at the moment and we haven’t got the ability to produce the fuels in a very sustainable way, so with the help of partners we are looking to produce them with wind or solar. It would be very attractive for cars already in the market.”
Motorsport could be the way to develop them further, where end cost for customers is less of an issue. And it should help justify racing programmes in a company whose entire message is heading towards cutting CO2 at every stage of car production and development.
“Hydrogen – for us – is not useful for sports cars,” added Blume. “You need a lot of space to introduce it and the whole supply chain is complicated. It’s very costly.”
Blume also stressed that the company can reach its goal of 50 per cent electric car sales in 2025 without the help of plug-in 911 and 718 sports cars.
“The 911 isn’t the concept to be fully electrified and our strategy is more to engineer and develop purpose cars which are either 100 per cent electric, or internal combustion combined with hybrid. The 911 is more a concept we can combine with hybrid in future, like we have already done in motorsport with the 919 in the World Endurance Championship.
“This technology can carry over to a 911 with a very powerful hybrid version. With the 718, we haven’t decided which direction we will go in. We are very happy with our current six-cylinder offer in the GTS and GT4. We are working on several concepts. We are very creative and you will see something this year of where we will go with this model range.”
The Boxster and Cayman have a future, though, despite being Porsche’s lowest selling models. “What’s important is that we don’t think about volume – that comes as a consequence of a good product strategy. It’s more important to have tailor-made cars that are special to our customers.”
The fully electric Taycan, meanwhile, is bringing completely new people to Porsche. “We have very traditional customers on one side, who already have a Porsche. But on the other side, around 50 per cent are new customers. They are ‘first movers’ and very interested in sustainability, innovation and digitalisation. And with an average age younger than our traditional customers.”
Original source: Top Gear 2020.
The Global Data Centre market is expecting a steady growth in the upcoming years 2020 -2027, to account for US$ 89.9 Bn in 2027.
The reason for that is a growing demand for green/energy-efficient data center, which is designed to achieve maximum energy efficiency and decreasing the environmental impact.
Ericsson, Deutsche Telekom, Telia Sonera, Telenor, and Tele2 TDC Group along with government agencies are investing a high capital in improving internet connectivity in Western Europe and the Nordic region.
Europe is one of the leading active data center markets, which is expected to grow at a CAGR of 16% during the forecast period. According to the Global Interconnection Index by Equinix Frankfurt, about 70% of the data traffic is concentrated in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and the UK. London is expected to be the largest interconnection market. Hyperscaleservice providers are actively investing in the Europe data center construction market.
The Europe data center construction market is expected to grow due to increased investments from colocation, cloud, internet, and telecommunication service providers. Further, growth in data, general data protection regulation (GDPR), the popularity of social media, high adoption of smart wearable devices, and the rise of connected reality will be significant growth drivers for Europe data center construction market.
For instance, Amazon is planning to build a US$ 1.08 Bn (Euro 1 Bn) data center in Dublin; IBM plans to open three data centers in UK; also, after two data centers in Ireland and Denmark, Facebook is announced to construct its third data center in Denmark. Furthermore, Interxion has plans to invest US$ 87.8 Mn (Euros 83 Mn) to construct new data center facilities in London, Frankfurt, and Stockholm.
Western Europe (Netherlands, UK, Germany, France), Central and Eastern Europe (Russia and the Czech Republic, Poland and Austria, and other countries, and the Nordic region (Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Iceland, and Norway) are the major contributors to the Europe data center construction market. The UK and the Netherlands are expanding significantly, and the market in the UK is expected to grow at a CAGR of 2% during 2018–2024. Several global cloud service players such as AWS, Microsoft, and Google and many colocation service providers such as Equinix, Digital Realty, CyrusOne, and Colt DCS are expanding their presence in the UK, which is likely to increase the market growth. The implementation of cloud-based and big data services will be a strong growth enabler for the UK data center market, thereby fueling additional investments during the forecast period.
Key Vendor Analysis
Multiple initiatives by hyperscale service providers to reduce the cost of efficient infrastructure services are expected to aid the growth of the Europe data center construction market. Infrastructure resellers and distributors are expected to compete with each other in the region. The demand for cloud data service and high-density operations is expected to grow during the forecast period. Partnerships with local and modular data center service providers will increase revenues for global vendors operating in the market.The need for installation, commissioning, and maintenance services will generate local job opportunities in the market.
Prominent Construction Contractors
• AECOM
• Arup Group
• Bruce Shaw
• Cap Ingelec
• DPR Construction
• Etix Everywhere
• Flex Enclosure
• Future-tech
• Jones Engineering
• KMCS
• LUPP Group
• Mace group
• Mercury engineering
• NCC
• Red Engineering
• Skanska
• SISK Group
• Structure Tone
Prominent Infrastructure Providers
• ABB
• Bosch Security
• Caterpillar
• Cummins
• Eaton
• EURO-DIESEL
• Hitec Power Protection
• KOHLER
• Legrand Group
• MTU OnSite Energy
• Nlyte Software
• Piller Power Systems
• Riello UPS
• Rittal
• Schneider Electric
• Socomec Group
• STULZ
• Vertiv
Prominent Data Center Investors
• Adgar
• Advania Data Center
• Apple
• Aruba
• AWS
• Colt Data Centre Services (Colt DCS)
• CyrusOne
• Digital Realty
• Equinix
• Facebook
• Google
• Global Switch
• Iliad Data Center
• Interxion
• IXcellerate
• Microsoft
• NTT Communications
• OVH
• STT GDC
• T-Systems
• T5 Data Centers
