[Technology Report]
Auto Electronics Revs Up For "Greener" Pastures
Safety, environmental concerns, fuel efficiency, and greater passenger comfort and convenience spur innovation in today’s cars.
The automobile and electronics industries are struggling mightily through this economic tumult. Straddling these two giants, however, is a shining beacon—auto electronics.
At last year’s Convergence Conference, a panel of experts from General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, Honda, and BMW suggested that the cost of electronics in a car will increase beyond the oft-quoted 20% figure and climb to 40% to 50%.
Getting more extreme, Honda senior chief engineer Toyohei Nakajima says electronic content could rise dramatically as automakers gravitate toward hybrid and fuel-cell cars. He emphasized that “90% of a fuel-cell vehicle’s cost could be electrical or electronic, depending on how you define it.”
“Fuel economy and mass management are paramount right now and we cannot turn away from developing technology for this in the present economic downturn,” says Chris Thibodeau, GM’s director of global technology engineering for electrical/electronic products.
SAFETY FIRST Government mandates for electronic stability control (ESC) will propel sales in certain automotive segments, according to iSuppli Corp. Typically, an ESC system consists of three sensors—a gyroscope, an accelerometer, and a pressure sensor—all of which can be made on a microelectromechanical-system (MEMS) process. MEMS pressure sensors are used to modulate the braking of individual wheels to realize changes in trajectory computed by the ESC’s motion sensors.
Other directives will also influence the use of MEMS sensors. The European Parliament, for example, just passed a proposal that will make tire-pressure sensors for new cars mandatory after November 1, 2011. This is bound to boost the applications of tire-pressure monitoring systems (TPMSs).
The proposal aims to reduce car carbon-dioxide emissions by keeping tire pressures within an optimum range. Although TPMS regulation has been in place in the U.S. and gives auto manufacturers leeway on how to enact TPMSs via indirect methods, the European initiative may lead to new approaches due to tougher requirements.
The underlying fundamentals of the automotive electronics industry are arguably stronger than they have ever been, with increased electronics penetration the only realistic way of meeting future environmental and safety requirements, according to market researcher Strategy Analytics. Beyond this year’s market, which the researchers believe has shrunk, Strategy Analytics forecasts automotive electronics to grow to $203 billion by 2013, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.5% from 2008 to 2013.
Safety features like adaptive braking will boost the demand for semiconductor ICs, according to market research firm Semico. Its researchers foresee triple-digit growth rates over the next five years for semiconductors. Strategy Analytics sees growth in ICs thanks to innovations in automotive infotainment systems, with a 50% increase in demand for semiconductor ICs between 2008 and 2015.
Keith Obenyiya, C2000 microcontroller unit (MCU) product line marketing manager for Texas Instruments, also anticipates growth areas. “Power control and conversion in hybrid and electric vehicles will be major challenges and will require higher-performance MCUs,” he says. “There will be many MCUs required in vehicles, although the number may not be as high as the typical 35 to 40 we’ve come to typically expect in cars due to the availability of higher-performance modern floating-point MCUs.” He also expects vision and infotainment systems with heads-up displays to merge and LED headlights in wider use in a few years.
EYES ON THE ROAD Making automobiles safer through the use of electronics has been a continuing trend for many years. Higher-performance image sensors and processors are key contributors.
OmniVision’s 0.25-in. format OV7960 and OV7962 CMOS system-on-a-chip (SoC) sensors feature less than 0.01-lux low-light performance in a 62-pin lead-free package, which the company claims is 50% smaller than competitive units. They’re designed to meet the growing demand for driver-assistance systems. The OV7960 is optimized for interlaced NTSC/PAL signals formats, while the OV7962 is meant for digital progressive and analog applications.
Such CMOS image sensors will continue to take over tasks that once were the domain of charge-coupled device (CCD) image sensors, as CMOS image sensors drop in price and increase their performance levels. According to Techno Systems Research, the percentage of CMOS image sensors in cars will ramp up from about 20% in 2008 to nearly 70% in 2012.
Smarter processors are the brains behind many automotive vision systems. The STMicroelectronics Mobileye vision system, which incorporates the company’s second-generation EyeQ2 image processor, is deployed in many high-end European cars for greater driver awareness. It’s also available as an aftermarket feature for drivers in Southern California.
The EyeQ2, which can make decisions based on visual information, has six times the processing power of the first-generation EyeQ1. It also adds a pedestrian-detection feature besides the lane-departure warning, adaptive headlight control, traffic-sign recognition, collision- avoidance, and forward collision-warning features found on the EyeQ1.
NEC Electronics Corp. offers second-generation IMPCAR scalable automotive image processors that can execute up to 270 GOPS. They’re useful for detecting nearby objects such as other vehicles and lane markers in real time, enabling the development of automotive safety systems that require intensive computing.
Obstacle detection systems are core components of future intelligent transportation systems (ITSs) under development worldwide. Here, the focus is on integrated traffic-management systems that feature vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication. Also, autonomous, radar-based, obstacle-detection systems are being tested. In fact, Toyota plans to roll out such a system this year.
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