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The lifestyle and behavior of generations change dominantly depending on the evolution of technology and engineering. Technology is radically shifting traditional business partnerships into the building blocks for digital ecosystems. Engineering and tech trends have changed a lot throughout the last two decades. Well, they evolve every year now at a rapid pace.

In the year 2019, huge developments were seen from the engineering industry, with advances in Artificial Intelligence, cybersecurity breaches, and changes in customer attitudes linked to the climate crisis among the issues influencing advances.

For 2020, experts have presented new trends in engineering that will greatly affect the industry. Here are the top trends.

• Sustainability

The US Energy Information Administration (IEA) forecasts that utility-scale renewable fuels including solar, wind, and hydropower will collectively produce 19 percent of US electricity by 2020. Moreover in the UK, the share of electricity generated by renewable energy increased to 33 percent in 2018.

With the consumer’s goal to shift in the wake of the climate crisis, industries are looking to be greener in their approach to energy. Here are some of what the industries have created and said to achieve this goal:

• Sustainable Aviation, “a long-term strategy which sets out the collective approach of UK aviation to tackling the challenge of ensuring a cleaner, quieter, smarter future for the aviation industry”
• Encourage consumers to install battery energy storage systems as it is increasing at a rapid pace and the growth of smart grid technology has increased significantly in the past few years
• Promotion of sustainable architecture to hold the key to an environmentally positive future. We must live more economically with our resources so that we can hope to protect our environment. To do this, we must reduce waste and minimize energy loss as well

Using less energy to keep us comfortable means that we become environmentally responsible and more resource-efficient, which are both important to reducing the effects of climate change.

• Edge Computing

Edge computing is mainly concerned with moving processing from the cloud closer to the end-user or end-device. It brings data storage and computation near to the place where it is needed the most, which is said to be more useful than cloud computing. 

According to IoT (Internet of Things) World Today, this has been driven by several key factors to date, such as:

• Latency for time-sensitive applications, such as those within IoT which need real-time responses
• Network and bandwidth. Edge computing can minimize the cost of moving large amounts of data, plus reducing reliance on the network
• Data privacy and security. Edge computing approaches can help organizations comply with data sovereignty laws and make sure intellectual property remains on-premises

These factors will continue to push the industry forward. The market size prediction of edge computing is expected to rise to nine billion USD in the near future. In addition, according to several surveys, the edge cloud services will be expected to grow by 50% and there will be fifty billion connected devices by the end of 2030.

• Innovations on Electric Vehicles 

There has been a rapid growth of hybrid vehicles in the past few years. Just in 2019, Tesla has made the Cybertruck in 2019 which is a commercial electric vehicle (EV) with battery backup. Volkswagen also launched their long-range EV in the same year and Sony unveiled an electric saloon car prototype at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2020 show. 

According to a study by the International Energy Agency (IEA), the number of EVs will be increased to almost 23 million worldwide by the end of 2020 as compared to only 5 million in 2018. The increase is due to a number of factors including government incentives, increasing fuel prices, changes in the attitude of consumers, and stricter regulations regarding vehicle emissions. 

However, for industries to continually improve and sell these electric vehicles, they should focus on the new trends for efficiency, such as:

• Improved battery-charging and better batteries
• Autonomous driving
• Energy management or solar-powered EVs
• Better software for the vehicles

Some new exciting models are coming to the market for the next years with many other manufacturers investing hard on this tech. The next decade should also see a massive increase in the number of EVs on the road.

Conclusion

With the new innovations made every year, the next years are interesting times for engineering and tech industries. The possibilities for the advancement of technology over the next ten years are even wide!