Automotive Electronics

Infineon has put 650V mosfet die from its CFD7A portfolio into a surface-mount package with “improved electrical performance over the well-known TO247 through-hole devices, thus enabling efficient energy utilisation in onboard chargers and dc-dc converters”, it said. ‘QDPAK TSC’ is a top-side-cooled package (see images) announced earlier this year and now registered with JEDEC – at the same time it ...

Ford has cut back on the size of an EV battery plant it plans to build in Marshall, Michigan because of weaker demand for EVs than expected. A Ford spokesman stated that EV sales are “not growing at the pace that I think ourselves or the industry had expected.” The original plan had been to build a plant capable of ...

Loctite has created a silicone form-in-place gasket material for automotive electronic enclosures. SI 5972FC is a one-part RTV (room temperature vulcanising) liquid-then-elastomer “with adhesion to a range of metal and plastic surfaces, specifically designed to pass OEM leak or blow-out pressure tests immediately after assembly”, according to the company. “By avoiding the need for curing ovens, Loctite SI 5972FC also ...

The rise in popularity of electric bikes and two-wheelers has brought to focus the need for increased safety requirements. By Vashist Bist and Shashank Wekhande. The choice of battery greatly affects the design of an electric two-wheeler (E2W). Lithium-iron-phosphate (LiFePO4) batteries provide a stable chemical and thermal chemistry, better safety (no thermal runaway) and lower manufacturing cost compared to Li-ion ...

Vox Power has announced a set of conduction-cooled 300W dc-dc converters, for railway and other rugged environment use. Measuring 188.6 x 116 x 25.4, the 33.6 to 160V input range is intended to cover 48, 72, 96 and 110 V railway batteries. Dips to 28.8V can be ridden through covered for 100ms, complete drop-outs for 10ms, and 168V peaks for 1s. ...

Renesas will be using chiplets in its next generation of automotive SoCs, and will add software and tool-compatible automotive microcontrollers. The company revealed this when announcing its 5th generation ‘R-Car’ product range, the first of which will be sampling late next year for cars shipping in 2027. Chiplets are simply die to be used inside multi-die packages. They increase product ...

The  market for Li-ion battery packs for BEV and PHEV will grow to about $180 billion in 2028, with a 16.9% CAGR 22-28, says Yole Developpement. The battery cell supply chain is primarily led by Asian players: China accounting for 57%, with South Korea at 25% and Japan at 7% following. In the coming years, there will be a growing ...

Electrocube has created a series of metallised polypropylene film capacitors for high power inverters in military and commercial, land and sea, applications. Voltage ratings of 400, 600 and 1,000V are available, and capacitances from 100nF to 10μF, plus 15 and 20μ in the 400V range “Able to handle high surge currents without degrading, Electrocube’s 985B is a rugged, non-inductively wound ...

NXP has invested in a high-resolution distributed aperture radar software start-up, and will use its software in ICs for vehicle radar. “Distributed aperture radar offers a path to enhance the resolution of radar systems while eliminating the need for thousands of antenna channels,” according to NXP. “It coherently fuses information from multiple radar sensors on a vehicle to create a ...

Diodes has is aiming at automotive LED strings with a boost and SEPIC (single-ended primary-inductance converter) controller, that can also be wired as a voltage regulator. Called AL8853AQ, it is qualified to AEC-Q100 and implements current-mode and fixed-frequency (400khz) PWM control. Slope-compensation is included to prevent sub-harmonic oscillation at duty cycles >50%. The IC requires an external n-channel power switching ...