Bench Talk

In this week's New Tech Tuesday, we look at vehicle electrification products from Littelfuse and Analog Devices

In this week’s New Tech Tuesday, we’ll review e-books provided by Vishay, Microchip Technology, ROHM Semiconductor, and NXP for design engineers to get up to speed on automotive design.

We just endured the biggest adventure of our Tesla commitment ... a long-distance journey, an 853km (530-mile) roundtrip in an EV equipped with a 50kW battery that has a 362km (225-mile) range between full charges. We learned valuable lessons, and we’re hopeful for progress.

What sets SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket launch apart from missions that came before it? While thrusting a Tesla into space has captured media attention, the Falcon Heavy rocket accomplished something else: controlling the booster trajectory so well that the side boosters fell back to earth in a controlled manner and landed vertically on predesignated landing pads.

All the hoopla about wireless charging doesn’t hold a candle to what Nikola Tesla had in mind: Providing alternating current through the ground and air and into the world’s products, eliminating transmission lines. If this sounds like fantasy, it indeed turned out to be, but the story of his scheme makes interesting reading.

Every major automobile manufacturer is working on them. The potential of autonomous vehicles is also attracting new participants, including Tesla Motors and Alphabet Inc., née Google. Interestingly, a mere eight days after Alan Mulally stepped down as the CEO of Ford Motor Company, he joined the board of Google. It’s even rumored that Apple is trying to find a suitable business partner for the same.

How many Tesla owners were on highways the next day, trying out their new Auto Lane Change feature? Flick the turn signal and the car will change lanes autonomously. The lane change feature takes advantage of the fact that lanes have line markings. Cameras are used to track the lines, and if the lines are missing or faint, it can confuse any good self-driving car, so you can count on highway lines to be as important as potholes in the future. The model S and X can now parallel park, too.

On April 30, 2015, Elon Musk announced to the world the Tesla PowerWall. In its first week alone, Tesla brought in $800 million dollars for their new PowerWall. Powerwall is a rechargeable Lithium-ion battery pack that will store energy for when you need it, or to use as a backup power supply during an outage. Unlike a generator, it doesn’t require fuel and creates no noise. What’s interesting is that the backlog of customer orders is already winding itself well into the second half of 2016. This is a sign that demonstrates there is a market demand for rethinking how we power our homes both from the perspective of lead-shifting and backup power. With a little speculation, it is also a product that just might serve as a backdoor to the mass adoption of smarter, more automated homes.

I had a very interesting conversation with a power electronics specialist regarding charging for electric vehicles. Let me elaborate: Charging for road taxes for electric vehicles. Those rich guys who can afford the Tesla are not paying road taxes like the rest of us. (I will call “us” The Combustibles Group.) And neither are the Leaf folks, either. The incentive in the U.S. is still a $7,500 tax credit for buying an electric vehicle. A tax credit here means that you figure up your bill to Uncle Sam on April 15 and then subtract $7,500 from what you owe.

Positioned as an alternative, more eco friendly answer to gasoline powered automobiles, there’s been lots of development and coverage on electric/hybrid vehicles. It wasn’t that long ago that the press proclaimed that the Tesla Model S was automotive perfection. (Or, as I would like to say in tribute to Ben Franklin… the tightest kite string in a bad storm with lightning.) All of that led me to wonder, what’s happening in the world of electric bikes or eBikes? After all, May is officially National Bike Month. Anyway, probably the most brilliant scientific and engineering mind ever, Albert Einstein, loved riding bikes. It even laid the groundwork to one of his greatest discoveries.