2020 may turn out to be a key milestone in the world’s journey away from
fossil fuel dependence. The economic slowdown caused by the Covid-19 pandemic
has given a powerful insight into an environment with cleaner air, changing
peoples’ working and traveling habits and highlighting the damage caused to
our planet by climate change. As countries around the world strive to re-start
their economies, the recognition that reliance on fossil fuels has to end for
the sake of climate change is driving demands to “build back better”.
The transport sector, responsible for around 24% of CO2 emissions globally, is
fully in the environmental spotlight, and governments are pushing ahead with
ever stricter regulations on vehicle emissions. Norway is at the more
aggressive end of the scale, planning to phase out all new sales of internal
combustion engine, (ICE), passenger cars by 2025. In the rest of Europe,
targets vary between 2030 and 2040, and China is aiming for a minimum 50%
market share of New energy vehicles (NEVs) by 2035.
The global automotive sector is responding to these looming emissions
deadlines, with all major manufacturers, including Volvo, Daimler, Volkswagen
and Ford announcing massive investments in EV development programs. Led by
Tesla, the market leader with almost 30% of global sales in the first half of
2020, global automakers collectively launched 143 new EVs in 2019 and plan to
introduce another 450 models by 2022.

Perhaps one of the biggest barriers to EV adoption thus far has been consumer
perception over EV price and performance limitations, especially range; the
distance a vehicle can travel before the battery needs to be recharged. These
perceptions are progressively eroded as charging infrastructure
increases and the industry invests heavily in improving EV development, with a
strong focus on battery technology and efficiency improvement.
The modern automobile contains a number of advanced electronic subsystems,
each responsible for controlling specific functionality, such as ADAS,
infotainment, functional safety and drivetrain, including battery management.
The architecture of these onboard systems has evolved away from multiple
electronic control units (ECUs) to a collection of domains, each managed by
domain controllers which share data and collaborate with each other. These
domain controllers are based on powerful, embedded microcontrollers which
enable complex processing, using advanced techniques such as virtualization,
formerly the preserve of datacentre-based servers.
The impact of this onboard processing capability increases exponentially
thanks to developments in vehicle connectivity. C-V2X technology leverages the
improved performance and coverage of cellular networks to share the massive
amounts of data generated by the car and its sensors, (up to 4 Terabytes per
hour), to the cloud. This shared data enables a number of value-adding use
cases, including insurance, fleet management, preventative diagnostics and
intrusion detection. The connected car also brings the power of cloud-edge
processing and artificial intelligence to enhance the power of the onboard
domain controllers.

The ongoing quest to improve vehicle efficiency and range is driving
significant research and development in the propulsion control domain, where
energy optimization is a key challenge. A hybrid-electric vehicle (HEV) can
optionally be powered by its ICE or its electric motor, and the vehicle’s range
is directly dependent on the optimal use of these energy sources. Powerful
control algorithms within the propulsion controller decide which source to
use, where to use the ICE, where to use the electric motor and where
regenerative braking can be used to increase the battery charge state. The
quality of these decisions, which directly affect the vehicles range, is
enhanced when the controller has access to cloud-based contextual information
such as precise location, traffic conditions, average speed of route, expected
duration of journey, charging stations locations, gradients on the planned
route and driver style.
Vehicle connectivity also enables energy optimization to be enhanced by
cloud-edge processing techniques, where deep learning frameworks train machine
learning (ML) models in the cloud. These ML models are deployed to the domain
controller in the vehicle (the edge) where they use a process known as
inferencing to make predictions based on real-time data generated from the
vehicle’s sensors.
To integrate the power of this technology, vehicle manufacturers require
access to specialist knowledge backed by in-depth resources and NXP
Semiconductors are one of a select number of organizations in the ecosystem
with this capability. A global leader in auto microprocessors, ADAS, radar,
secure car access, infotainment and in-vehicle networking, the NXP comprehensive
solution portfolio enables our customers to accelerate the design of their
next generation automotive designs, enabling rapid time to market and
scalability.
We have a strong track record working with some of the world’s largest
vehicle manufacturers to deliver high performance, safe and reliable mobile
solutions. To learn more about our specific capabilities, look out for our
forthcoming whitepaper, “
Using Vehicle to Cloud Connectivity to Extend
Electric Vehicle Range” on our website.