The latest podcast from Electronic Specifier Insights looks at the future of automotive from Texas Instruments’ automotive division who recently assembled to discuss the latest trends in the market and to run an eye over the future of automotive.
When you consider the pace of acceleration in technology over the last century, I always wonder what some of the early pioneers would make of it today. Would Louis Pasteur look aghast at keyhole surgery? What would Alan Turing make of the processing power of the modern-day laptop? And what would Karl Benz make of today’s automobiles? His 1886 Benz Patent Motorwagen, which is widely regarded as the first automobile, used the Benz 954cc single-cylinder four-stroke engine and was capable of 670W of power – equating to an eye watering 0.9bhp.
A far cry from what rolls off today’s production lines, and a key part of that has been the growth in electronics technology within the car. Indeed, it is predicated that by 2030, 50% of the total cost of a car’s production will be its electronics.
This podcast discusses the findings of the roundtable.
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Find out more on www.ti.com/automotive
A far cry from what rolls off today’s production lines, and a key part of that has been the growth in electronics technology within the car. Indeed, it is predicated that by 2030, 50% of the total cost of a car’s production will be its electronics.
EVs
There are many automotive sectors that have emerged with the potential for ingenuity, but few have the potential of electric vehicles when it comes to changing our world for the better. Clearly the major issue for electric vehicles is, and has always been, range, and from the perspective of the power train, new technologies like SiC and GaN are playing a vitally important role here.
Matt Watson, General Manager for C2000 Microcontrollers at Texas Instruments, highlighted that the issue around doing a long journey on a single charge is both the challenge and the opportunity as the industry moves toward electrification.
There are a number of facets that consumers are currently wrestling with in regard to this. Firstly, is the ability to drive further on a single charge; another is the charging experience itself (making that faster and more akin to the patterns of a combustion engine). And a third would be improved vehicle dynamics, which is a possible by-product of the former two.
Crucial to driving further on a single charge is battery weight, which is something that can’t really be avoided. Watson explained that by working with its customers TI is investigating ways to reduce weight and improve efficiency with all the other components that feed that battery. There are technologies on the back end that allow for higher efficiency and smaller size, (thus improving power density), and it’s here that SiC and GaN are coming to the fore.
Reducing size can lead to smaller heat sinks; reduced cooling technology (meaning a possible switch from liquid cooling to air cooling); the elimination of fans; and a reduction in the number of magnets - all of which help with reducing weight.
Another piece of the weight jigsaw that’s being investigated is the integration of different functions into fewer enclosures. A car’s enclosures are the heaviest weight bearing piece of the electromagnetic components. Watson added that back end technologies are a key driver that is exciting the team at TI. The name of the game is to enable a higher switching frequency. That’s what enables the size reduction, and so controllers that can keep pace with that higher switching frequency and higher throughput help to enable this.
When it comes to EV charging, the same mechanics and electronics are at work. The end-goal is increasing energy efficiency, improving the time to charge, and reducing losses. And there are various architectures that OEMs are looking at to solve those challenges.
Watson highlighted that the hybrid electric vehicle powertrain is there to improve vehicle efficiency so that we can travel farther using less energy. And there are a variety of technologies that will enable that, so much so that at present we are barely skimming the surface.
Indeed, the current coronavirus crisis could ultimately result in significant growth for EVs. Transport contributes 23% of global carbon emissions, and driving is by far the largest element of that, contributing 72% of transport emissions. However, since the COVID-19 outbreak China, the country with the first reported case of the disease, experienced a 25% drop in CO2 emissions.
Therefore, as the environment benefits from what essentially amounts to a human hibernation, there will be an inevitable call for that to be maintained once the crisis has abated. This may see significant growth in electric vehicles, which could be energised when we do emerge from the current situation. And purchasing decisions are likely to have far more emphasis around environmental concerns - which will be good news for the EV industry.
48V
All that being said, the demands of electric vehicles, driving higher efficiency, and all the new sub-systems that have to be powered from the battery, is pushing the limits of traditional 12V systems.
Karl-Heinz Steinmetz, Texas Instruments’ General Manager for Worldwide Automotive Powertrain, highlighted that 12V has been the standard for the last five decades or so, and it’s getting to the stage where it is maxed out.
As discussed, a primary driver for the automotive sector today is around increasing overall efficiency - whether this is in the standard combustion engine, (which is still of course important); going to a hybrid (which is where we enter the 48V arena), or a fully electric car.
Steinmetz added that 48V is dealing with power levels from 15-30kW, and in the latest developments up to 40-50kW of electrical power supplied by the 48V rail (this is compared to a 12V system where we would only be looking at maximum power of around 3kW.
This dramatic increase in capability means benefits can be realised in elements such as the starter generator, dependent on the physical position of the electric motors, which allows you to add torque, while at the same time, enabling capabilities such as sailing or coasting - which means you can shut down the combustion engine while driving, and thus reduce emissions.
Additional applications of 48V includes electric turbochargers, cooling fans or heating systems. An example given by Steinmetz is if you’re heating your car on a cold winter day, via infrared heating seat panels, there are typically five panels per average passenger car, each using 500W of power. So, in this case you would have already eaten up the capabilities of a 12V system.
He added that in battery electric vehicles there are also power loads which you wouldn’t want to run from a high voltage but are too power hungry to be powered from a 12V system. One example would be automated driving with ASIL level four and five. Here we need redundant and independent automated driving computers. Each is expected to consume around 2kW of electric power. So, again, this cannot be done from a 12V system.
Again, this is where we find 48V coming to fore. 48V is enabling car manufacturers to meet the short-term goals (i.e. the worldwide emission standards), while at the same time, realising all the additional comfort, as well as mandatory, functions in the car.
Steinmetz added that 48V is an obvious choice to bridge the gap between the combustion engine and HEVs for the foreseeable future as it offers a more dynamic power choice. 48V is clearly for hybrid and will bridge the gap as well as enlarge the lifetime of existing platforms via 48V electrification. However, at the same time, it is a long-term investment to establish 48V in battery electric vehicles and plugin hybrids.
To give an idea on why the electrical efficiency is important; he gave an example of a 100kW traction inverter - if we increase the efficiency just by 0.5%, that would be equal to around 50km of additional mileage from a single charge. Every efficiency gain matters and looking at the market, it is now a direct purchase trigger for the end customer.
How wireless connectivity is impacting 48V
Traditionally, when we talk about wireless connectivity inside of the car, we think about infotainment or telematics, but those types of systems are now quite established, and people know what to expect.
Mattias Lange, General Manager of Connectivity at Texas Instruments, added that the industry is seeing a lot of new types of use cases of wireless connectivity in the car. Right now, there are two areas that are really interesting for TI. One of them is remote car access (using things like a phone as a key), which greatly integrates the personalisation and how we interact with the car.
The other area is applications like wireless battery management systems. In the car today, the individual cells in the battery pack are connected over cables, which are heavy and the connections in those cables tend to break.
We’ve discussed previously about how we can reduce the weight of the car with various technologies, while at the same time increasing the reliability and the robustness of these types of functionalities.
Therefore, Lange added that the requirement from the market is to replace those cables and connect these cells individually and wirelessly. He added that for the past couple of years, TI has developed a technology where you can do this using 2.4GHz technology with a special protocol that gives you both the reliability that you need, and the right level of safety. And in that way you can actually reduce the overall cost and weight of the system, as well as increasing reliability.”
Safety
A recurring theme throughout is that the developments being worked on by TI tends to cater towards trying to mainstream technology which already exists. Sameer Wasson, the company’s Vice President in Processors, picked up on the issue of safety (which is integral to the future of the automotive market), and how the company is bringing disparate functions of the car together to make them work as one system.
He added that TI focus on making sure its sensing technology, whether it is vision sensing technology with a camera, or RF sensing technology with radar, works to make the car aware of its surroundings, and make the driver experience more integrated.
He commented that while there are many companies trying to do this at autonomy levels 1-5, it’s TI that are focussing on making it more mainstream. Trying to create technology which caters to a wider set or to the entire car line, making it more affordable, and bringing it to cars which are more practical on the road rather than being a very elite, small segment of the car sector.
It might be easy to put a supercomputer in a car and let it have enough horsepower to do every computation possible, however, it is not a practical solution for the vast majority of mainstream vehicles. Wasson highlighted the years of TI’s automotive system learning experience - including translating those performance requirements into an automotive system, while making sure the safety, security, the long lifecycles of these cars is taken care of, ensuring the high level of quality and reliability which is expected, and then making sure that these systems work together from the point of view of providing a good holistic user experience. Wasson added that this is probably the biggest opportunity in the sector for TI and what ties all of the company’s automotive strategy together.
Safety in a car is nothing new of course. Take the seat belt for example. It was first available as an optional extra as early as the 1940s, became law less than 20 years later, and is the simplest form of car safety that there is. However, in the modern world and with the advent of greater technology, safety is starting to have real influence in the consumer’s buying decision.
Wasson added that five to ten years ago, when you purchased a car, you would take notice of elements such as your car’s dashboard, and what your wheel rims looked like, etc. These are still customer care abouts today, but now consumers are starting to ask questions like; will this car stop by itself? Will it give me blind spot detection? Will it do lane change assist? Will it help me in traffic jams?”
This trend is being reflected at the OEMs who are starting to control their R&D spend to ensure that these requirements are something which they can differentiate on. A statistic from Consumer Reports in the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety reported that in 2017, there were 50% fewer front to rear crashes in vehicles equipped with forward collision warning and automatic emergency braking technology compared to those without it. And although 50% is a substantial figure, as we see OEMs start to put more of this technology into their vehicles, it would be encouraging to see the number of accidents decrease still further.
If you look at the level of ADAS driver safety features in cars available today, the amount which have any level of active safety is still fairly low. There are 100 million vehicles sold each year, so integrated safety technology has still only punctuated a small segment of the market. So there are some amazing opportunities when it comes to bringing this technology more mainstream.
TI launched its Jacinto 7 family earlier this year, focusing specifically on making safety mainstream. Wasson added that TI’s imaging and camera technologies, along with its millimetre wave radar, are tieing these systems together and making it available for tier ones and OEMs to be able to bring this technology to the mainstream.
Wasson stressed that it’s an evolution, and nothing evolves in isolation. TI still believe level one to level three is where the majority of the evolution and the majority of the focus is going to be. There will be specific level five evolutions as well, and TI’s technology does cater to that as it scales. However, Wasson added that the 80% part of the market is where the company is trying to optimise as that’s where the biggest opportunity lies.
Thank you for listening and be sure to tune in next time for further instalments in Electronic Specifier Insights’ podcast series. Bye for now
This podcast was sponsored by Texas Instruments