EPN Automotive Electronics Blog

“Energy-Efficient Driving 2014”

The complete supply chain around the automotive industry has joined the new research project called Energy-Efficient Driving 2014 (EFA 2014), bringing its expertise in direct co-operation. In fact, not many important brands are missing there: Audi, Audi Electronic Venture, BMW Group, Bosch, Continental Automotive, Elmos Semiconductor, Flextronics Automotive, FZI Forschungszentrum Informatik, Harman Automotive Division, Infineon Technologies and metaio . They are all focussing on the one and only target: cutting consumption by up to 10 % till 2014.

Car, house, grid

Japan sets the Trend: Instead of seeing the electrical vehicle individually as Europeans and Americans tend to do, Japanese cars and houses have more in common than a garage, at least when a German building company is part of the deal. In marketing terms this translates as “environmental friendly mobility meets ecological building”. This is also quite attractive for semiconductor manufacturers and as such a good reason for TI to join the HomeGrid Forum board of directors.

Power to the car

During the trade show PCIM 2010 which took place from May 4th to 6th in Nuremberg, the power semiconductor manufacturer Semikron presented its second generation of power electronic systems: SKAI. With power densities of 20 kVA/litre, SKAI is supposed to provide significant size reduction compared to the other standard products available. The systems are designed to operate with supply voltages between 24V and 850V and with output power ratings between 10 kVA and 250 kVA.

Small circuits for huge batteries

Electric and hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) need extremely big, heavy and expensive batteries. In order to make reasonably affordable cars, manufacturers need to save space, weight and cost practically everywhere else. A technology that promises to reduce board space by 70 % and halve costs for electric isolation certainly sounds interesting. Actually, HEV batteries operate at voltages of up to 600 V, so isolation is required for safe and reliable operation.