“Perceptions of Vehicle Reliability Increasingly Influence New-Vehicle Shopping Decisions”,
J.D. Power’s 2016 U.S. Auto Avoider Study finds: “Vehicle reliability has become a top consideration in deciding which vehicle to buy. This year, 55% of new vehicle buyers cite reliability as a leading purchase reason—the third-most frequently cited reason after exterior and interior styling”.
With the perception of vehicle reliability being at all time high, the attention turns to the semiconductor industry as sophisticated ICs started invading cars for the past 20 years and are now on track to become one of the largest costs of the finished good in nowadays productions. And the trend is accelerating with the Electrical and Hybrid Vehicles. The technology to allow smooth transitions between electric and combustion engines is extremely complex to develop. Furthermore on the safety side, controlling a combustion engine is relatively easy by switching off the fuel pump. This is not the case for electric motors who can become erratic, demanding a higher level of safety standards to the engine controller and drive train. Autonomous driving, active anti-collision systems, over the air updates,… all require even more ASICs and power components than ever before.
Not only are there a large number of ICs in modern cars, but they have to operate in harsh environment (of temperature, humidity, vibrations) and for 10 to 15 years!
IROC Technologies has been working on automotive cases for more than ten years and brings its large expertise to its customers. Here are few cases we worked on:
- Functional reliability analysis of an European ECU (Public Authorities)
- Development of hardened FF using our TFIT tool for MCU in automotive (US customer)
- Multiple components radiation testing for large automotive component provider (Japanese customer)
- Radiation testing of multiple SRAM used in automotive applications (European customer)
- R&D project for the EU (MorV, Resist)
- Power MosFet radiation testing
- Multiple MCU tests and analysis for Korean manufacturer