EPN Automotive Electronics Blog

Threewise triple MCU

In modern automotive systems, various bus systems, rigid safety demands and the need for high performance at low power have to be balanced. While there are many specialized automotive chips like microcontrollers and SoCs around, this  is an area where the general trend towards higher integration finally makes sense.

Control over F1 cars

When there are 50 people working at high speed on a strange looking, logo-adorned vehicle and one guy sitting low and dry who doesn't do much more than tapping a pedal with his big toe, this guy is the public hero and the whole thing is called Formula 1 racing. These days, even the big toe tapping isn't much of a challenge anymore, since there are so many sensors and actors at work.

BMW and PSA: Joint Venture for Hybrid Engines

The ongoing love affair between BMW Group and PSA Peugeot Citroën has just become more intense: Both car giants agreed to deepen their close relationship by signing a Joint Venture agreement at 50 %. The agreement known as BMW Peugeot Citroën Electrification focuses on developing and producing hybrid components.

European IESF 2010 Conference: be there or be square

According to Mentor Graphics, its upcoming European IESF 2010 Conference which will be held on December 2nd, 2010 in Frankfurt, is one of the the world’s leading events for design engineers, engineering management and executives in the Automotive and Commercial Vehicles industry. As it is a free event, seats are limited…

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…

Isolators for hybrid cars

The simple I2C bus connects controllers and peripheral devices. In automotive and especially hybrid electric vehicle applications, controllers or peripherals are isolated from the bus to avoid interference or harmful voltage levels. Usually, optocouplers are being used, but this increases the cost and complexity disproportionally. Digital isolators have the potential to simplify I2C design in electric and hybrid-electric vehicles.

TriCore on the road

We’ve all heard about the 60, 80 or 100 microcontrollers in todays or tomorrows cars, controlling ignition timing, displaying virtualized tachometers or illuminating the front-seat passenger’s ashtray. Since the assigned functions are so varied, those automobiles usually are a very diverse ecosystem for many different MCU families from a large number of different manufacturers.

More Power for more Horsepower

While automotive ECUs in general neither require nor use extremely powerful processors, the tools to develop them in a network infrastructure need to be as powerful as they come.

A tiny controller in a big car

More electronics, increasingly complex software: Modern cars are embedded systems on wheels. While communication between ECUs (Electronic control units) and other on-board systems has become more or less standardized with bus systems like CAN, LIN and sometimes already MOST and Flexray , there are still many proprietary communication solutions in the powertrain area.

Multec cleans Polo

Delphi and Volkswagen have developed a "green" diesel system for the new 3-cylinder VW Polo BlueMotion. This allows the automaker to offer consumers a vehicle with relatively low CO2 emissions and fuel consumption, while still delivering suitable powertrain performance.