Automotive Electronics

If the consumer appeal of electric vehicles is to be maximised, keeping down the total cost of ownership is imperative, urges Till Wagner. One of the key areas where a real difference to increasing consumer appeal can be made is an electric vehicle’s (EV) energy storage reserves. The battery pack is an essential element of any EV design and one ...

The progress made in the electrification for passenger vehicles has led to an examination of batteries and charging technology for HGVs, observes Mark Patrick. Good progress has been made with passenger vehicles offering multiple electric models in a variety of categories, ranging from ‘ultra-compacts’ to sedans and pick-up trucks. Recently, the automotive industry began to electrify vans and similarly sized ...

Challenges faced by automotive chip designers include longer than average expected lifespans and rigorous functional safety standards, explains Paul Martin. The expected lifetime for the vast majority of chips is typically a few years, but chips for automotive use have an expected lifespan of 10 to 15 years, to match the lifespan of the average car, and a supply lifetime ...

Microchip Technology has announced a 32bit 200MHz version of its dsPIC33 series of DSP-heavy MCUs. dsPIC33A, as the family will be called, is aimed at fast closed-loop control of PSUs and motors. As with earlier dsPIC processors, the parts remain a combination of CPU and maths accelerator (‘DSP engine’), rather than a pure DSP architecture. In this fifth generation, the ...

Lumissil Microsystems has created a pair of LED drivers that include a 32MHz 8051 microcontroller. “These new controllers enable lighting engineers to create customised dynamic LED lighting animations tailored to their system requirements,” according to the company. “They feature integrated non-volatile memory to store animation sequences and LED parameters, essential for dynamic lighting effects such as colour transitions, pulsing, fading ...

The AH3712 is a latching Hall-effect magnetic sensor, protected for automotive electrical conditions, in a choice of SC59, SOT23 or SIP-3 packaging. The single output is switched ‘on’ with a magnetic pole above a certain flux density, and then switched ‘off’ when exposed to the opposite pole of the same flux density magnitude. There are three parts: AH3712: south pole ...

Taiwan Semiconductor has introduced ten AEC-Q101-qualified small-signal mosfets. There are seven n-channel parts (including two duals), and three p-channel parts (one dual) in the ‘TQM’ line – see the table below. Three packages are used: SOT-236, SOT-363 or SOT-323, and they are rated for >2kV ESD withstanding. “In addition to automotive applications, these small-footprint MOSFETs are ideal for high-reliability commercial designs ...

The third generation of general-purpose neural processing units (GPNPUs) by Quadric introduces pre-integrated clusters of two, four or eight cores to deliver up to 108 TOPS. This latest iteration has increased performance and optimisations for generative AI. the company has also introduced a safety enhanced version for automotive applications. The company described the Chimera QC series as NPUs with a ...

HighTec EDV-Systeme has announced a time-limited evaluation bundle for Autosar-based development using Infineon’s TC4x automotive processors, created with Infineon. In Autosar development, besides a run-time environment and an application layer, ‘basic software’ is needed – which consists of pre-defined modules that are summarised in layers. The layers are intended to make it easier to migrate software to different hardware. One of these ...

Infineon and Swoboda are developing current sensor modules for automotive traction inverters and battery management systems. The deal combines Infineon’s sensor ICs with Swoboda’s expertise in sensor modules, and the first product (photo right) is aimed specifically at Infineon’s ‘HybridPACK Drive G2’ three-phase traction motor drive modules. Later models will cover more general applications. The infineon-specific model is called the ...