EPN Automotive Electronics Blog

Ethernet drive

Happy new year, dear readers - welcome to the future! One vision of the future is the ‘connected car’, and many drivers seem to want that. As consumer demand for in-vehicle connectivity continues to grow, automotive manufacturers are under pressure to deliver competitive, innovative features while minimizing cost. A major stumbling block is cabling - it’s heavy, difficult to design and expensive.

Outback racers

Australia - deadly animals, marsupials, convicts, desert and sun. The perfect place for a solar car race, and this year an American student car with European electronics took part rather successfully.

When cars communicate

It seems to be a sure deal that vehicle-to-vehicle communication is the next big thing. It may not be a mature technology and there are many unclear issues concerning the communication protocol and, most important, security. Apart from those practical things, it isn't even totally clear what V2V will be good for. However, researchers and semiconductor companies are busy preparing for this future of automotive technology.

Safer ECUs

The ISO 26262 functional safety standard for road vehicles poses various problems for component manufacturers as well as for system integrators. Luckily, not all control units in a car are that safety critical, but the ones that need to comply require extensive checking and testing during all stages of product development.

European Eco-SoC

In times of growing euro-scepticism the engineering community demonstrates the benefits of cooperation in the union. The recently completed EU FP7 project »ATHENIS« (Automotive Tested High Voltage Embedded Non Volatile Memory Integrated System On Chip) is a successful example of collaborative European Research contributing to the EU 2020 CO₂ reduction objectives with IC products manufactured in Europe.

Signal conditioning

Among the most used electronic components in modern cars are sensors. Since they are omnipresent, they came into focus for space saving. Most (analogue) sensing components can’t shrink much but the ‘back end’ like signal conditioning can.

Sensors against collisions

A big deal for Jenoptik, manufacturer of optical components: The East-Germany-based company just signed a long-term delivery contract with automotive supplier Magna and expands its production of sensors for the automotive industry.

Japan: News from Distributors

European and international distributors offer online information about the delivery and supply situation regarding their Japanese linecards.

Desperate days

After the horrifying earthquake followed by the disastrous tsunami, Japan now faces its most serious crisis since World War II. The country is confronted with a cascade of accumulating problems that suggest that radioactive releases of steam from the crippled nuclear power plants could go on for weeks or even months. At least, Tokyo’s stock exchange Nikkei plunged over 6% with start on Monday and ended below 10,000 after the quake: Major carmakers fell across the board on Monday as they were forced to suspend operations at their plants, largely due to shortages of supplies, while construction-linked shares surged on investors' expectations of an increase in demand for rebuilding.

Where to go? What to see first?

What a week! Last week, technics aficionados had the choice between three tremendous trade shows – each one of CeBIT (1 to 5 March), embedded world (1 to 3 March) and 81. International Motorshow Geneva (3 to 13 March) is said to have “performed extremely well” and of course to have been “highly successful”. All of the events had their own key trends, hot topics and even a few highlights.