Automotive Electronics

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed a robotic disassembly system for spent electric vehicle battery packs to safely and efficiently recycle and reuse critical materials while reducing toxic waste. With the anticipated growth in EVs over the next two decades comes the issue of how to recycle the large lithium-ion battery packs that power ...

STMicroelectronics has agreed to buy a further $300m worth of bare and epitaxial 150mm silicon carbide wafers from Cree, bringing the total of the multi-year supply agreement to $800m. “We are very pleased that STMicroelectronics will continue to leverage Wolfspeed [brand] silicon carbide materials as part of their supply strategy for the next several years,” said Cree CEO Gregg Lowe. ...

The automotive semiconductor shortages are forecast to extend into Q1 2022 and possibly into Q2, says IHS Markit. Both Intel and Infineon have cautioned that the situation may persist throughout all of 2022, while Toyota is reported to be cutting vehicle production in September by 40%, from 900,000 units to 500,000 because of chip and labour shortages. The global forecast for ...

Dialog has brought out a family of high current, auto grade, step down, DC-DC buck converters. The DA914X-A devices deliver  current levels, up to 40 amps – a better alternative to power solutions that require a combination of a power controller and discrete FETs. The DA914X-A family integrates power FETs and all required control logic into a highly integrated, highly efficient ...

Vishay has introduced fast-acting AEC-Q200 qualified 0603 surface-mount fuses for automotive applications. Called MFU 0603 AT, versions of the one-time fuses are rated between 0.5 and 5A, with operation at up to 63 and 32V respectively, and over -55 to +125°C. The parts are 1.55 x 0.85 x 0.45mm. “The devices will be used in electric and hybrid electric vehicles, where ...

Cincon Electronics of Taiwan is aiming at railway applications with a 20W dc-dc converter that can run from between 10V and 160V. The series is suited for all kinds of voltage parameters in different regions because of its ultra-wide input voltage,” according to the company. “Since rail traffic will be exposed to a harsh environment for a long time, this ...

Automotive MCU sales will surge 23% in 2021 despite the shortages, says IC Insights. 32-bit designs are expected to generate almost 77% of automotive microcontroller revenues this year, followed by 18% from 16-bit and 6% from 8-bit. The huge market for automotive MCUs — which accounted for about 40% of total MCU sales over the last decade — has been ...

Getting ESD protection right for CAN-FD The expectations of travel and human interaction with vehicles is changing dramatically. As such, mega trends of increased connectivity, autonomous driving and electrification are pushing the evolution of automotive wiring harnesses and driving the growing demand for high-speed data transmission and bandwidth to realize advanced driver assistant systems. All of which needs to be ...

Infineon is aiming at augmented reality glasses and automotive head-up displays with a MEMs-based optical scanner. The company is giving very little away beyond this, except to say that the “MEMS scanner chipset features a tilting mirror which lays the foundation for a new generation of laser beam scanner projectors”, and that the chipset is a MEMS mirror and a ...

It is not often you see a new bipolar transistor introduced, and Nexperia has just revealed not just one, but nine of them. All in surface-mount DPAK (TO-252, SOT428C) packaging, they are intended for automotive (in AEC-Q101 qualified form) and industrial applications, and fill out the company’s MJD family to span 2 – 8A and 45 – 100V. The new parts ...