Automotive Electronics

Arron Bickerton, of TTI Europe, observes two trends in the sensor marketplace. The first is supplier consolidation and the second is the rise of digitisation. Over the past five years, many suppliers have acquired disparate types of sensor companies and are now consolidating technologies and narrowing their portfolios. As a result, certain parts are now being made obsolete or are ...

Collaboration is a continuing industry trend, and open source communities are broadening access. Caroline Hayes reports on an automotive initiative for software defined vehicles. At this year’s Embedded World Europe, the OpenHW Group and the Eclipse Foundation confirmed their joint intention to develop a robust ecosystem for development tools, using Eclipse integrated development environments (IDE). OpenHW’s Rick O’Conor and Eclipse’s ...

EPC is aiming at eMobility, forklifts and high-power drones with a 150Arms brushless motor driver design using its GaN power transistors. Documents for EPC9186, as it will be known, are not available yet, but the company promises operation from 14V to 80V for “applications such as electric scooters, small electric vehicles and agricultural machinery” in addition to the items above. ...

Texas Instruments is aiming at electric vehicle traction inverters with a functional safety-compliant isolated gate driver for silicon carbide mosfets and IGBTs. Called UCC5880-Q1, it is in pre-production and the full data sheet has not yet been made public. One novel feature that has been revealed is that the device has two parallel high-side drivers and two parallel low-side drivers ...

Melexis is encouraging innovation and drawing on the rich pool of local technology graduates at its newly-opened Innovation Lab. Positioned in the Swiss canton of Neuchâtel, the Melexis Innovation Lab is the latest addition to the Belgian company’s site in Bevaix, near Geneva. The lab was opened in December 2022 and is a centre for pre-development of sensor technology products ...

Infineon  is in volume production of its  OptiMOS 7 40V MOSFET family for automotive applications and they can be ordered in August. They combine 300 mm thin-wafer technology with innovative packaging and are  suitable for standard and future automotive 40V MOSFET applications, such as electric power steering, braking systems, disconnect switches new zone architectures. OptiMOS 7 is also aiming at ...

Premo has released a four-phase toroidal common-mode choke for EMC noise suppression in electric vehicle on-board chargers up to 22kW. 4CMCN065R0-32H measures 59mm in diameter, 41.5mm (plus pins) high and ~200g, and is nominally rated at 32A. All the windings have the same number of turns (8), but the one intended for the neutral of a three-phase mains circuit is ...

STMicroelectronics has introduced automotive-qualified MEMS six-axis inertial-sensing module. ASM330LHB, as it will be known, contains a 3-axis accelerometer and 3-axis gyroscope, and is AEC-Q100 qualified. Used in pairs for fail-safe redundancy, with dedicated companion software, it can be used in functional-safety applications up to ASIL B. “Developed in accordance with the automotive functional-safety standard ISO 26262, the software library has ...

The connected car market is set for strong growth, spurred by government regulations and increased use of in-vehicle safety features (see below). Figure 1 – Technavio has announced its latest market research report titled Global Connected Car Market 2023-2027 As more vehicles become more connected and thus vulnerable to malicious cyber attacks, the importance of managing cyber risk grows. Cyber ...

Infineon has introduced automotive high-side power switches for safety-critical circuits. ‘Load Guard 12V’ dual and single-channel are available with nominal current carrying of 2 or 3A, making four devices in total. Without the host MCU getting involved, a pad is provided (OCT in diagram right) for an RC network that can modify the level and timing of current limitation above ...