PCB Industry Helps The Automotive Industry Revolution

Weight is becoming a major concern for automakers, as more electronic circuits are added to vehicles that are fully or partially battery-powered. How to reduce weight and thus reduce energy consumption and increase mileage is the most important concern. The entire automotive industry chain is exploring new methods such as replacing substrate materials, fusion of different types of sensors, and reducing the total amount of wiring harnesses.

"Flexible circuits and printed circuits have the potential to replace these components and significantly reduce the weight of the system, while allowing electronic devices to more seamlessly integrate with the physical structure of the car," said Stone of Brewer Science. The range of polymer materials used to make flexible circuit substrates, and their unique ability to stabilize into the desired shape after molding or molding, opens up new possibilities for the production of electronic systems that meet automotive requirements. "

Testing new flexible circuits may be another issue, and now the flexible circuit board industry is gradually forming a standard.

Tools for designing wiring are also being improved. "Advanced vehicles can have 5000 meters of wiring, more than 100 ECU, 500 LED, etc. Designing these complex electronic and electrical systems is now beyond human capabilities," said Andrew MacLeod, Mentor's director of automotive marketing. "The virtual design of the electrical and electronic systems allows the creation of optimized platforms that can be constructed correctly and reduce the cost and weight of the vehicle."

TDK-Invensense's Sauvage suggests that one way to reduce wires is to use a daisy-chain network topology. "Now the way you see the sensors interface with the central unit is actually different. When you start to have more sensors, they can be with the microcontroller or it can be with the GPU or CPU. All These will reduce the necessary wiring. This means that you can even have a system where all sensors are connected to each other like a daisy chain system, connect the sensors connected to the sensors, and connect the sensors to the sensors connected to the controller. So the wires Not many-to-one, but one-to-one, one-to-one, so you can save weight. "