What is a reason-able vision of the type of automotive electronics consumers will demand in the future? By developing a vision for automotive electronics, engineers can stimulate exploration of various technologies, which can lead to new product developments.
Consumers continue to demand solutions to offset the negative impacts of automobile use—such as air and noise pollution, depletion of the Earth's natural resources, accidents causing injury and property damage, urban sprawl, traffic jams, and lost drivers — while wanting options and amenities to provide comfort, entertainment, connectivity, and ease of operation. In other words, consumers want cars that are nonpolluting, fuel efficient, safe, efficient in getting them from point to point, comfortable, easy to operate, and affordable to purchase and use, and that have entertainment features connected to phone and computer.
Vision is defined as the ability to anticipate and make provisions for future events; foresight and insight; imagination. To have vision is one thing; to act on it is another. Making a vision into reality must involve a process.
Figure 1 shows an example of a model that provides a structure for turning visionary product concepts into functioning hardware. The model combines global market trends, market considerations, and engineering considerations into product and technology roadmaps, which then can be used to create technology products and subsequent product strategy.
Global market trends consist of socioeconomic, technology, business, political, economic, and environmental matters. Socioeconomic concerns include longer life expectancies, generational preferences such as the Generation-X desire for cell phones and Internet access, growing population centers, increased global automobile demand, and social and economic infrastructures.
Technology and business issues include the current explosion of computer technology, communications, and technology developments made in consumer electronics, with after-sale services becoming moneymakers and differentiators. Political and economic concerns that must be examined are globalization of the automotive industry, reductions in product life cycles, and new competitors from other electronic markets.
Many environmental issues relate to the automobile. These include reduced pollution during manufacture and operation, use of energy-saving recycled materials in the manufacture of new products, and recycling of electronic products at the end of their useful life.
The market expects improved quality, higher functionality, and shorter time to market — all at competitive prices. Globalization of products is also expected, but with regional differentiation. New products must be integrated into systems as modules that can be varied to fit individual applications. Technology is another key issue. Technologies must be proved reliable, but advanced technologies are preferred. Electronic hardware must be simulated via software, then validated with controlled conditions to assure proper functionality.
As engineers design future electronic products, they face many challenges. Cost per function is a major barrier. New systems are quite complex, containing many different functions. Design requires a greater level of integration than is currently available. Minimum size, mass, and volume are becoming major market discriminators. As products are increasingly miniaturized, power and management design issues become harder to solve. Other key challenges will be producibility, manufacturability, and testability.
Computer power, speed, and software will play increasingly important roles in automotive computers. Their power and speed will approach those of office systems, while the software will increase greatly in complexity compared to software used in automobile computers today.
All major disciplines in an electronics manufacturing company must contribute to a vision for product development. Marketing, sales, advanced engineering, product design, purchasing, manufacturing engineering, and operations each has a specific role to play in a new product's development.
Marketing and sales have the job of determining what products are wanted or needed by consumers and automotive OEMs. These wants and needs are translated into product development plans called product roadmaps that define product requirements. Engineering then determines the technologies that must be developed or refined to meet these requirements; technology development projects follow. An important step in this process is the merging of product roadmaps and technology projects to determine fit and timing so that gaps can be resolved.
As technology projects continue, development activities are supported by cross-functional teams that include product design, purchasing, manufacturing, and operations. These groups provide critical input to the project. Each product line also learns of the particular technology issues in areas of responsibility that will allow successful implementation of certain technologies. New technologies should not be implemented into production without a coordinated multifunctional team that is represented by all disciplines.
As new technologies are developed for new products, they also become available for existing products. Thus technology visioning not only helps stimulate the development of new product strategies, but it can also move new technologies into existing products for future applications.
Next-century winners
Delphi Automotive Systems' vision of marketable products for the next century includes products and systems for:
• Advanced thermal comfort
• X-by-wire control
• Modular chassis
• Collision avoidance
• Mobile multimedia
• Advanced energy systems
• Smart sensors and actuators
• Integrated vehicle E/E applications.
Three of these — x-by-wire control systems, collision avoidance, and advanced energy systems — are illustrated in Figures 2-4.
X-by-wire systems can be used to control steering, throttle, braking, and suspension. An advantage of this type of system is the elimination of mechanical links from the driver's controls to the control actuator. Mechanical links are expensive to manufacture, add weight, complicate and add labor to the assembly of the vehicle, and require excessive maintenance over the life of the automobile. X-by-wire systems are the enablers for the automated highways of the future. Vehicles with the appropriate electronic systems can be controlled by central computers and ultimately drive themselves in complete harmony with other automobiles in dense traffic. Automated travel reduces energy consumption, improves travel time, and makes highways more efficient — thus reducing the need for more expensive highway construction.
Collision avoidance systems contain radar and vision sensors; warning displays; brake, throttle, and steering control systems (x-by-wire); and processors and software. The primary goal of these systems is to inform the driver of impending danger of either a collision or an out-of-control situation that could lead to a dangerous consequence. The next level of a system design would be to take control of the automobile and make corrective action to prevent danger in parallel with a warning to the driver.
Advanced energy systems will help with operation of the highly automated vehicles of the future that require more onboard energy. To power the additional electronic options under consideration, higher voltages such as 42 V are being considered. This requires new energy generation, storage, and control systems. Movement of automobile engines toward hybrid and fully electric designs will require new motors/generators, converters/inverters, and batteries. These systems will provide the power and range that the automobile needs while consuming less energy.
On-engine controller case study
The visioning process is illustrated using the example of an on-engine controller. There is a strong market pull by automobile manufacturers to mount engine control modules on the engine. Manufacturers would like to assemble and test engines as a mechanical and electrical system prior to shipment to automobile assembly plants. This ensures that "known good engine systems" are assembled into automobiles. It also lessens assembly cost and disruption of the assembly line when compared to today's marriage of controller to engine during the final assembly of the automobile.
Other controller features demanded by the market, in addition to the new mounting location, are improved emissions control, enhanced diagnostics, integration of engine and transmission controls, up-integration of EMS functionality, and electronic throttle control. Moving the mounting location from under the hood to on-engine significantly changes the operating environment of the controller. Both operational temperature and vibrational concerns increase. Figure 5 shows the increasing severity of environmental conditions expected by moving the controller location.
Size and weight of controller designs also are expected to be reduced. To meet the size and weight specifications of the on-engine controller with a similar IC set, market and engineering considerations required that most of the ICs would have to be bare-die mounted to save substrate space. Higher component assembly density and advanced materials technologies can result in design complications such as thermal effects and increased costs.
Based on design and cost studies, engineers identified the most robust and cost-effective design for engine control applications to be flip-chip bare-die mounted to thin, high-density laminate with heat sinking directly to the flip chips. Three projects were conducted based on this decision: flip chip on laminate development, flip chip in high-volume surface mount assembly operations, and backside thermal heat sinking of flip chips. Figure 6 presents the final assembled circuit and the key technology elements developed for the on-engine controller.
The new technologies developed for this on-engine product have benefited other product lines, including a brake controller design that used the flip-chip on-laminate technologies. The ABS project required a thicker substrate and greater current-carrying capabilities than the engine control application. Additionally, conventional through-board thermal-transfer technologies are needed.
Ceramic hybrid products have also benefited from the developments of the on-engine laminate controller. Improved underfill materials, larger IC die size and I/O functionality, new design guidelines, and common assembly processes with laminate and fine-line substrates are a few of the enhancements that have been realized for ceramic substrate applications. Figure 7 shows a ceramic product with these improvements.
It is critical for progressive automotive electronics companies to have a clear vision for future products. This vision is used to generate technology roadmaps that identify technology development projects. The projects allow product vision realization via innovative product designs. Both new and existing product designs benefit from the design rules and manufacturing processes developed.
Information was provided by Daniel K. Ward and Harold L. Fields, Delphi Delco Electronics Systems.
