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SMT Trends and Technologies: Route 66

If you ever plan to motor west,  Travel my way, take the highway that is best.  Get your kicks on route sixty-six.  

I’m listening to the Rolling Stones sing those words as I drive toward Southern Europe for my summer vacation. It’s a bit like the roadmap for automotive electronics, you may say, and I wouldn’t argue with you.

Important Automotive Electronics Trends

The 2013 version of the iNEMI roadmap predicts an average market growth of 7.9% in value for the automotive electronics market for 2011-2017.

Hybrid and electric cars make up a major growth area which hardly existed before the turn of this century, but now account for about 8% of worldwide sales. By 2021, alternative fuel drive train systems are even expected to reach 28%! However, many things need to change before electric cars become really popular. The most important areas needing improvement relate to increasing the driving distance, reducing charging time, increasing battery life and reducing total costs of car ownership. Additionally, there are also still far too few charging stations.

Automotive electronics will doubtless play a major role in closing these gaps. The major growth in electric cars is expected in urban areas where both space and clean air are at a premium. Half the world’s population now lives in megacities, with very dense traffic and many pedestrians, so increasing car safety is also critical.

Part of the solution will come from integrating connectivity and active safety devices. That includes vehicle-to-infrastructure communication (e.g., weather condition-related drive parameter settings), vehicle-to-vehicle communication (e.g., collision avoidance and road train convoys) and ultimately, driverless cars for automatic interactive driving.Read the full column here.Editor's Note: This column originally appeared in the August 2013 issue of SMT Magazine.