Automotive Electronics

STMicroelectronics is aiming at electric vehicle drive-trains and domain-oriented systems with a group of microcontrollers announced today “The real-time ‘Stellar P6’ automotive microcontrollers integrate motion-control and energy-management domains with actuation capabilities” for software-defined drive-traction architectures,” said ST automotive v-p Luca Rodeschini. “As the automotive industry begins work on vehicle platforms for model-year 2024, ST is ready with the microcontrollers to ...

Cosworth and Ariel Motor Company, together with other key partners, have developed an ultra high-performance electric road car known as HIPERCAR (High Performance Carbon Reduction). Following the completion of the APC (Advanced Propulsion Centre) government-funded programme HIPERCAR 2, the companies will be debuting the prototype vehicle at the Cenex-LCV2022 event in UTAC Millbrook from 7th – 8th of September. Using ...

Renesas is aiming its next generation of IGBTs at electric vehicle inverters, and is making them on 300mm wafers. Behind them it its new ‘AE5’ process. “The silicon based process achieves a 10% reduction in power losses compared to the current-generation AE4 products,” said Renesas, “In addition, the new products are approximately 10% smaller while optimally balancing low power loss ...

Toshiba is claiming better improved on-resistance and gate charge for its third generation of industrial 650V enhancement-mode silicon carbide mosfets. The “third generation SiC process optimises the cell structures used in second-generation devices,” according to the company. “As a result, the product of Rds(on) and Qg, that represents both static and dynamic losses, has improved by about 80%”. In common ...

UK EV battery startup Britishvolt had announced the resignation of co-founder and CEO Orral Nadjari. A previous co-founder, Britishvolt chairman  Lars Carlstrom, resigned in 2020 after it was found he had a tax fraud conviction in Sweden. Deputy CEO Graham Hoare will become acting CEO. Britishvolt has just been granted £100 million by the governments Automotive Transformation Fund. The company ...

Several signs point to an easing of the shortages of semiconductors for automotive applications, says Semiconductor Intelligence. However, the production of light vehicles will likely remain below full potential through at least 2023. LMC Automotive’s July forecast of light vehicle production called for 81.7 million units in 2022, up 2% from 2021. LMC’s January forecast was for 13% unit growth ...

Power Integrations has announced a high-current member of its LinkSwitch-TN2Q automotive switcher IC family which provides up to 850 mA of output current without the need for metal heatsinking. The ICs support a wide input voltage of 30 to 550 VDC, enabling the devices to start up and operate below the required Safety Extra Low Voltage (SELV) threshold in functional safety EV ...

The European Space Agency (ESA) is looking to extend the use of space-related technology along European roads. It has has finalised a Memorandum of Intent with ERTICO, the organisation for the European Road Transport Telematics Implementation Coordination, a public-private partnership for the development of intelligent road systems. Specifically, the ESA’s Navigation Directorate finalised the agreement at ESTEC, the European Space ...

At this week’s HotChips 2022, UntetherAI has announced its second generation at-memory architecture to accelerate AI interference. SpeedAI (codenamed Boqueria) improves efficiency by up to 100x, compared to the company’s first generation architecture (runAI200) and has 80 times more throughput to accelerate neural networking. The second generation architecture also quadruples performance achieving 2Petaflops with a power budget of 30Tops per ...

Power module companies Semikron and Danfoss subsidiary Danfoss Silicon Power have completed their merger to form Semikron-Danfossmerge, majority owned by Danfoss. Of the two family-owned companies, Semikron is bringing in 3,000 staff from 24 subsidiaries worldwide, and there will be 500 from Danfoss Silicon Power. Where did Danfoss get resources to buy the significantly larger company? “We can’t go into ...