EPN Automotive Electronics Blog

Joystick for delivery

Delivery cars are everywhere and they are, at least in Germany, one of the major hazards for traffic safety and the environment. A think tank on future transport and mobility issues has just projected a new type of vehicle.

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.

How to mislead the public

The German motoring organization ADAC has just published its annual Emergency Road Service statistics. In a bout of misguided patriotism, the association interpreted the results as a huge success for German cars. Even a superficial glance on the making of the report shows that this is only true by omitting a very important fact.

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.

Slamming the brakes on theft

EMBEDDED WORLD 2011 – The security of automotive electronics systems is an escalating topic of concern for automotive OEMs, owners and the insurance industry. Hard times for thiefs in the future: Not only the electronic control of automotive systems is steadily increasing, with large amounts of data streaming through body control modules (BCM)/gateways which are difficult to crack. Freescale Semiconductor aims to help reducing the security risks for that data with new additions to its MPC56xx family of Qorivva 32-bit microcontrollers built on the Power Architecture.

Bienvenue en France!

For a better positioning and to solidify growth in embedded systems, the German Berner & Mattner Systemtechnik, is joining the French Assystem Group. The agreement stipulates that Berner & Mattner is being integrated into the Assystem Group as an independent unit and without any change in either staff or organization.

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

Compact cars stay on track

In 2009, the number of newly registered vehicles in Europe equipped with the electronic stability control program ESP/ESC rose from 55% to 60%. An evaluation of the new figures by Bosch shows that this was above all due to considerable growth in the compact car segment.

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.

Steer and turn

Steering-angle sensors measure the steering wheel's actual position, the value which an increasing number of systems use to determine the direction the driver wants the vehicle to take. Bosch’s new sensor LWS6 measures relatively over an unlimited measuring range. Its typical signal resolution is 1.5°.