EPN Automotive Electronics Blog

Building a standard

It's a good thing when an official industry standard is constantly being developed and thus filled with life. However, when the standard evolves fast, there's always the problem that some implementers remain at an older version. This can lead to fragmentation, and the »standard« isn't a standard anymore.

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.

Model truck

Inefficient driving techniques can increase carbon emissions and raise fuel consumption by as much as 10%. For a company with 20 trucks, each driven 120,000 kilometres a year, this translates to 200 tons

Extensible prototyping

While automotive electronics makes driving much more comfortable, »electronified« modern cars also have shorter lifetime and design time than »oldtimers«. So, the new car with the heatable cigarette lighter won’t last for 20+ years like but we won’t have to wait 10 years for the successor. Development tools need to develop even faster…

Prototyping Lambda Probe

As cars become increasingly environmentally friendly, engine and exhaust control electronics get more and more complex. One consequence is that today it’s more or less impossible even to change a spark plug on one’s own, another is the pure intricacy of the design and development process.

Student racer

While Students owning racehorses is a cliché reserved for Oxford and Cambridge (maybe slightly outdated, P.G. Wodehouse has been dead for some time), students with their own car racing team are not quite as common.

Joint diagnostics

Independent garages or car repair shops have been complaining about the multitude of electronic devices in modern vehicles since the first microcontroller entered a crucial car system. It took a bit longer for FPGAs, communication buses and similar technology to gain a foothold in commercial vehicles, but now electronics is there as well. Whoever thought car diagnostics has become difficult has never looked inside a modern truck repair station.

Easy standards

TÜV Süd has recently certified the tools Real-Time Workshop Embedded Coder, PolySpace Client for C/C++, and PolySpace Server for C/C++ from The Mathworks. The German certification authority certifies that the tools are suitable for developing safety-related software that conforms to IEC 61508, ISO 26262, or derivative standards.

Software on wheels

Today's cars are computers on wheels, each one containing up to 80 embedded computer systems and control units as well as around a gigabyte of software to control the car's components and technical extras, from brake assist systems and CD players to satellite navigation systems. Safety-critical software everywhere and Fraunhofer ISST has developed solutions to help getting a grip on it.

Tootsie carbon footprint

When driving a car, do you still use a steering wheel? Or maybe a cruise control? Sorry, but you are quite a back number. Le dernier cri is a map-enhanced driver assistance system, at least according to dSpace and Navteq. Those two companies created a development platform for this type of system. Such futuristic tools are not only supposed to aid the driver but could also reduce CO2-emissions.