Driving the electrification of commercial vehicles – trends and solutions offered by Infineon

Overview

This webinar will be broadcasted at 9 am New York, 6 am Los Angeles, 3 pm Berlin.

Electric mobility reaches far beyond passenger cars. According to EU studies, heavy-duty vehicles generate 25% of all exhaust in traffic. This includes in-city delivery vehicles, public transportation and construction machinery.

Currently, the development of electric buses for urban transportation is accelerating and both, smaller delivery vehicles and long-range trucks are following.

The all-electric heavy-duty vehicle demands highly efficient semiconductor solutions in a range from some watts to several hundred kilowatts, spanning at least 5 decades of power.

Inside the vehicle, two parallel worlds of electronics coexist. One is the low-voltage domain supplying on-board functions from driver convenience to lighting in a 12 V or 24 V environment. High-voltage batteries, topping off at close to 1000 V, drive the other world.

The largest consumer of power remains the drive train, followed by climate control systems for heating and air conditioning. Subsystems that include pumps, fans and compressors are omnipresent and require highly efficient semiconductor solutions. The link between those worlds are DC-DC-converters that replace the classical alternator, which is now obsolete.

Besides driving an electric vehicle, charging the batteries is an important topic. Several potential options for this exist. On-board chargers connected to three-phase supplies pose a potential solution if longer periods for charging are available. Opportunity charging to supply power on dedicated positions is a further option. Either wireless power transfer by inductive coupling is used or an electrical connection is established by pantograph.

Charging the vehicle with high-power DC-chargers is the most powerful option. This currently allows charging powers of up to 350kW. Operation with two chargers in parallel can even double the charging power.

Infineon offers the broadest portfolio of power modules and related products such as gate drivers, microcontrollers, sensors, power supply ICs, as well as security controller, and have the ability to provide functional safety where needed.