An internal combustion engine (ICE) is a mechanical system that has been around since the 19th century (Figure 1). It’s amazing how it works, considering that it only takes fuel to generate thousands of horsepower and make a car go from 0 to 60 mph in under 3 seconds. But all good things must come to an end; stricter government standards such as Tier 3, Euro 6 and China 6a are…

Although today’s vehicles automate several aspects of the driving experience, the true forces behind moving from partially autonomous to fully autonomous cars are not car manufacturers but rather mobility service providers such as taxi companies, rental car companies, delivery service companies and cities that need to provide safe, efficient, accessible and affordable…

According to a study from the U.S. Department of Transportation¹, the average American spends the equivalent of just under 2 1/2 weeks behind the wheel every year. The longer drivers and passengers spend in cars, the greater their need for real-time data transmission and in-vehicle entertainment.

Consequently, premium audio is becoming one of the biggest growth areas for automotive…

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 with a combo-box architecture.

What’s a combo-box architecture?

A combo-box architecture integrates powertrain end equipment such as the onboard charger (OBC), high-voltage…

Radar sensors are not only changing the way that vehicles sense the environment around them, but also how they sense what and who is occupying them. Imagine a car that is capable of detecting a forgotten child in the backseat or a driver with a medical issue and a system designed to take action to mitigate the situation.

Radar’s ability to sense through solid materials makes it possible…

This article appeared in Electronic Design and has been published here with permission

Designing for today’s automobiles is a balancing act.

Between meeting increasingly strict emissions standards and powering the growing number of on-board systems and gadgets, today’s vehicles need to be as efficient as they are high powered. To achieve this convergence of efficiency…

For the last several years, two powerful forces have driven the use of active safety measures in advanced driver assistance systems (ADASs): The European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP) 2025’s Pursuit of Vision Zero traffic safety project and consumer five-star safety ratings.

Pursuit of Vision Zero will challenge vehicle manufacturers to offer the best…

Today’s vehicles have more intelligence and more connectivity than our mobile phones did 20 years ago. They are in near-constant communication with the world, whether through subscription-based communications services or built-in cellular functionality. In the future, this will include vehicle-to-vehicle communication. The core controlling communication to the outside…

Connectivity’s ubiquity in the world is certainly gaining momentum in the automotive industry. Many car owners think of automotive wireless connectivity as a simple interaction with an in-car infotainment system, but new applications are emerging, whether it’s personalizing an owner’s interaction with the vehicle, creating a path for lower-power connectivity operation when in…

(Dan Torres co-authored this technical article.)

Updated 1/7/21

Lithium battery cells are continuously getting more affordable and energy dense, and can drive hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) and electric vehicles (EVs) farther, longer. With these advancements, automotive design engineers can now turn their attention to further enhancing efficiency by reducing the size and weight of the battery management system (BMS…

Automotive instrument clusters are in the middle of a revolution. The cluster is rapidly becoming a part of the larger infotainment ecosystem. Consumers are driving around with intelligent, quickly evolving displays on their dash, but the audio chimes – the essential driver alerts that come from a speaker housed inside the cluster – are lagging behind.

Cluster audio…

It's incredibly important to indicate a system failure to users, especially when it comes to automotive lighting.

Consider the turn indicator in an automotive rear light, for example, which signals that a driver wants to change lanes or make a turn. A common and growing light source for turn indicators is LEDs, driven by a dual-stage LED driver circuit topology that includes a first-stage buck voltage regulator and…

There are three clear automotive trends: the migration to semi-autonomous and autonomous vehicles, vehicles connected to the cloud with increasing data bandwidths, and vehicle electrification. These trends are driving changes to vehicle architectures. The current vehicle architecture is an ever-increasing number of engine control units (ECUs) connected by low-speed Controller Area…

Advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) features have been proven to reduce accidents and save lives. According to Consumer Reports, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety shows that there were 50% fewer front-to-rear crashes with vehicles equipped with forward-collision warning and automatic emergency braking technology compared to cars without these systems in 2017…

This article was co-authored by Trevor Dowd.

Whether the application is your smartphone, your TV or your car’s headlights, having more pixels is usually better. These additional pixels increase the readability of small text and make small details visible on TVs.

New automotive headlight applications like adaptive driving beam (ADB) became available when technology…

Electrification has created a new paradigm in automotive power systems; whether the design is a hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) or fully electric vehicle (EV), there are new design challenges to address. In this technical article, I’d like to highlight some of the primary challenges in high-voltage current sensing and share additional resources to aid and simplify your design process. 

For an introduction to current…

Designing a better powertrain is the most significant way to reduce automotive emissions. Whether it’s improving the efficiency of a combustion engine or designing electric vehicles (EVs) or hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), electrification is powering a massive evolution of the powertrain as we know it.

This white paper, Basic considerations for sensors in the powertrain, examines the future of powertrain sensors…

During my first visit to the U.S., my brother and I drove from New York City to Columbus, Ohio. Although the 650-KM (400-mile) journey was long, our car’s automatic transmission and cruise control made the trip more comfortable. The effectiveness of an automatic transmission and cruise control relies on the precise control of proportional solenoids and motors, which…

In the cost-driven automotive industry, reducing bill-of-materials (BOM) costs by sharing resources across multiple subsystems (when possible) can give manufacturers an edge. Traditional automotive end-equipments often use independent hardware to control specific functions of the car, and chances to combine functions may be overlooked.

Adaptive headlight systems | Animated rear lights | Personalized interior lighting | Brighter, customized puddle lights | Transparent window displays

Automotive lighting continues to evolve at breakneck speeds. While LED light sources…

Everywhere you turn, you hear about “cars of the future.” As the automotive industry continues to make leaps to higher levels of autonomy, how will the driving experience evolve when people less actively drive the car?

That is no longer a hypothetical question. As our attention will no longer be directed at operating the vehicle, in-vehicle entertainment will become…

Connected driving, even though it exists today, still has a long way to go. In the future, vehicles will communicate with the driver, other cars, the road and surrounding infrastructure, pedestrians, and the cloud, all while giving passengers a constant connection.

Thanks to these increasing levels of connectivity, vehicles will be able to receive, interpret and transmit data – both within the vehicle as well as with…

In the future, your vehicle’s windows may display all kinds of information. New automotive technologies promise to turn standard automotive windows into single-color or even full-color dynamic displays. The two primary applications behind this trend are vehicle-to-pedestrian communication and advertising, illustrated respectively in Figures 1 and 2.

Figure 1: Ride-hailing…

In my previous article, I introduced the use of TI’s 77-GHz millimeter wave (mmWave) sensors for interior sensing applications like child presence detection, passenger detection and intruder detection.

The need for child presence detection has found its place on the EURO NCAP roadmap, driving car manufacturers to offer this feature. Adding child presence…

Car access has become more convenient as design engineers take advantage of technologies that are widely used in other applications. The automotive industry has evolved from providing mechanical keys to unlock vehicles to fobs with buttons that can unlock vehicles. Now, the most common form of car access revolves around passive entry passive start (PEPS) systems, enabling drivers to enter their car but also start the…