As electric vehicles (EVs) become more popular, the challenge for car manufacturers is to remove drivers’ “range anxiety” while making the car more affordable. This translates into making the battery packs lower cost with higher energy densities. Every single watt-hour stored and retrieved from the cells is critical to extend the driving range.
Having accurate measurements of voltage, temperature and…
Unless you ride in a spacecraft, automotive power seats are probably the most complex chair in which you will ever sit. More adjustable than airplane seats – and much more comfortable than a dentist’s chair – automotive power seats provide a luxurious level of comfort, convenience and safety.
Whether you are moving the seat up and down, forward or…
Technology companies are looking to expand into more intelligent and advanced sensing in vehicle interiors. Consumers want to see applications such as child presence detection, occupant detection, vital-sign monitoring and gesture recognition. The in-cabin space currently has various camera-based and time-of-flight solutions; however, most of these are limited to only one…
As automobile gas mileage standards continue to increase (according to the Environmental Protection Agency, up to 40 miles per gallon by 2026), the challenge for automotive audio designers is how to provide an immersive audio experience while simultaneously reducing vehicle weight and improving overall efficiency.
If you design automotive external amplifiers, you can refresh your…
If your first car was anything like mine, it probably lacked sensor modules such as cameras, radar and lidar, which make the safety features of modern advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) like blind-spot detection, park assistance and collision avoidance possible. Because the data collected by these sensor modules directly correlates with passenger safety, it’s important that they work properly over time. Unfortunately…
The Euro New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) recently updated their standards for radar to improve driver assistance features in new cars.
NCAP standards vary by region; in the U.S., our NCAP is governed by the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration a.k.a. NHTSA and the Global NCAP is a centralized organization. However, all organizations have the same goal: to set…
As automotive original equipment manufacturers develop vehicles with increasing autonomy, automating the act of parking continues to evolve. These parking systems include park assistance (where a driver’s participation is still necessary) and automated parking (where hands-free operation is possible).
Today’s automotive parking systems use ultrasonic and camera sensors.…
Ground projection around vehicles has made great strides in recent years with the addition of logo projectors. Auto makers have used logo projection to enable vehicle owners to customize their car while still providing some functionality by lighting the ground around the doors. However, these systems are currently only able to display a single pattern and do not support any…
On our way to zero-emission transportation, hybrid electric vehicles (HEV) present a natural transition from internal combustion engines (ICE) to battery electric vehicle (BEV). This transition period will take years, and brings in several types of hybrid vehicles depending on the level of electrification. On one end, we have mild hybrid vehicles with typically…
With a swipe of the hand, gesture detection gives drivers a new way to control in-cabin climates, lighting, windows, infotainment systems and more. There are currently several options for adjusting various comfort and convenience functions in the cabin. However, manipulating the buttons, knobs and especially touchscreens requires drivers to divert their eyes.
Today, many…
Automotive emissions standards are becoming more stringent every year, making it challenging for internal combustion engine (ICE) car manufacturers to keep up. One of their efforts to reduce emissions involves electrifying the drivetrain, either partially or fully, to improve the effective efficiency of the engine, partially disable the engine or eliminate the engine completely (see Figure 1).
Of course, this electrification…
When you can create automotive applications that do more with fewer parts, you’ll reduce both weight and cost and improve reliability. That’s the idea behind integrating electric vehicle (EV) and hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) designs.
What is powertrain integration?
Powertrain integration combines end equipment such as the onboard charger (OBC), high-voltage…
*Please note this article originally published in EDN.
Millimeter-wave (mmWave) radar is one of the primary sensing modalities for automotive and industrial applications because of its ability to detect objects from few centimeters to several hundred meters with high distance, angle and velocity accuracy, even in challenging environmental conditions.
A typical radar sensor…
Jürgen Belz, senior consultant, functional safety and cybersecurity at Prometo, co-authored this technical article.
The migration from internal combustion engines (ICEs) to electric vehicles (EVs) requires at least five new electrical/electronic/programmable electronic (E/E/PE) systems. Figure 1 depicts these systems within an EV.
Figure 1: Block diagram of a typical EV powert…
Bluetooth® Low Energy is on a path to become ubiquitous. The Bluetooth Special Interest Group estimates that by 2024, all new phones, tablets and laptops will support Bluetooth Classic and Bluetooth Low Energy. They also expect 35% of devices to ship with single-mode Bluetooth Low Energy by 2024, which represents 300% growth in annual shipments.
The reason for this is the…
Jürgen Belz, senior consultant, functional safety and cybersecurity at PROMETO co-authored this technical article.
With functional safety and security concerns in automotive electronics gaining attention, including in standards bodies, it’s important for automotive designers to enable functionally safe and secure automotive electric powertrains. Functional safety, cybersecurity and high-voltage safety play an important…
A wireless BMS allows vehicle designers can remove heavy, expensive, maintenance-prone cabling and improve the reliability and efficiency of hybrid and electric or hybrid vehicles (HEV/EV). TI’s solution for wireless BMS empowers you to reduce the complexity of your designs, improve reliability and reduce vehicle weight to extend driving range.
To speed automakers’ development time for wireless BMS, we requested…
Think of a passenger car as a collection of electronic control units (ECUs) that are distributed across the length and breadth of the car and talk to each other using different networks. When adding more advanced automotive electronics for vehicle-to-everything (V2X), automated driving and vehicle electrification, the number of ECUs increases and the amount of data exchanged grows.
Moreover, the increased number of ECUs…
Recently, there has been a big push in the automotive lighting industry to improve both vehicle headlight functionality and driver visibility, which has led to the development of adaptive driving beam (ADB) headlights. ADB is an automotive exterior lighting system that automatically controls the high beam, to allow the driver to focus on the road ahead without manually controlling…
Most of today’s automotive vehicles use some level of autonomy. The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) defines five levels of autonomy, from level 0 to level 5 (Figure 1). In this technical article, I’ll discuss the DC/DC power-supply needs…
Automotive suppliers and original equipment manufacturers are heavily investing software R&D efforts on adding new functions and features to achieve autonomy, electrification and connectivity. Still, enabling these functions by adding more electronic control units (ECUs) is not sustainable when it results in increased complexity and cost.
There are two ways to consolidate…
The core function of the body control module (BCM) is to monitor inputs such as the state of the high-beam switch and enable or disable power to the corresponding loads such as the high-beam lamp. The BCM also includes circuits that monitor different functions for faults. When a fault is detected, the driver could be notified, in some cases additional circuits in the BCM drive…
Co-authored by Kevin Stauder, systems engineer, automotive body electronics and lighting
For decades, the internal combustion engine (ICE) has run the car as well as the heating and cooling systems. As the automotive industry electrifies and transitions to hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) with small combustion engines or fully electric vehicles (EVs) with no engine at all, how will the heating, ventilation and air-conditioning…
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