Electric vehicles are changing the gear industry. If your business is at all attached to the manufacture of automobiles, construction equipment, motorcycles, aircraft, I hope you’re paying attention.

The gears you used to make are going to be changing, if they haven’t already. E-mobility isn’t going away anytime soon.

In fact, it’s clear that the major players in all those industries now consider that e-mobility will need to be a significant core competency over the next several decades. Major automotive manufacturers are investing heavily to ensure their supply chains will be able to support their plans (see Senior Editor Matt Jaster’s article, “The Changing Face of Battery Manufacturing in North America,” on p. 42).

I’m not telling you anything you don’t know. The push for electrification has been steady and well-publicized over the last decade. While it may at first have seemed like automakers were announcing their participation in e-mobility as a publicity stunt, those days are long over. The shift is happening. Real investments have been taking place, and they’ll continue.

Are you worried about your gear manufacturing operation? Are your processes and technologies capable of producing the gears of tomorrow?

 If you want to learn more, I have some ideas for you.

Gear Technology will be hosting a session of our “Ask the Expert Live” at the Motion + Power Technology Expo in October (see our show preview article on p. 33). We’ll have a panel of experts discussing the technology required to manufacture EV gears. We’ll be talking about things like NVH and how to control gear whine both through the design process and via gear grinding. We’ll also talk about gear skiving and gear inspection.

In addition to the EV gear manufacturing session, we’ll also have a panel discussing “The Future of Gear Manufacturing.” In addition to electrification, you can expect our experts to talk about things like artificial intelligence, Industry 4.0, cybersecurity, additive manufacturing, and many other trends that will affect the way gears are manufactured over the coming decades.

The “Ask the Expert” sessions will be recorded and become part of our video library on geartechnology.com.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, AGMA will be hosting an EV Town Hall at MPT Expo. Amir Aboutaleb, AGMA’s VP, Technical Division, will lead the discussion, both explaining how AGMA’s current standards intersect with the EV space but also to get feedback from the community about whether we as an industry need to develop additional standards and information sheets to address the e-mobility space (for full details about the EV Town Hall, see Phillip Olson’s article about the EV Town Hall on p. 53).

So I hope you’ll join us in Detroit. MPT Expo takes place October 17–19. I guarantee it will be three days well spent.