Under the awareness of Green Environment and energy conservation, EV market has taken a huge leap forward. Governments also formulate related laws and regulations. Along with EV market, semiconductor, E&E components and power system industry also raise up, and reliability tests become a major consideration. As the expert of reliability validation, DEKRA iST was invited to share our experience and point of view in “2021 Trend of EV Seminar,” which was held on April 16th in Nangang Exhibition Center. 

Wangchu Chen, Senior Technical Manager of DEKRA iST, pointed out the “Pain Point” of EV industry at the beginning, “Vehicle OEMs often require the guarantee that the failure rate of components should be less than 1% for at least 10-years, but they rarely explain how to satisfy this condition.” Take the “C.A.S.E.” Intuitive Mobility presented by Mercedes-Benz as example, which includes “Connected,” “Autonomous,” “Shared” and “Electric”, and each has the power to turn the entire industry upside down. But the true revolution is in combining them in a comprehensive, seamless package. This is also an opportunity for electronic components suppliers to enter automotive industry, includes components, MOSFET, IGBT and so on.
For Internet of Vehicle, we could find the entry point from studying the industry development nowadays. Base on the data from California DMV in 2020(note), there’re some clues in the number of autonomous cars and the rate of disengagement. Along with the popularity of autonomous cars, will the demands of purchasing vehicles still exist in the future? Both network communication and signal connection play important role in autonomous vehicle technology, neither CAN nor CAN FD are power enough for multiple high-speed data transmission, because even a millisecond delay would cause a serious accident. This is the reason that transmission quality plays an important role in IoV industry, which is one of an advantage of Taiwan corporates.

On the other hand, using high-voltage batteries in EV became more and more popular. It can not only provides better dynamic, but also reduce current through solving heat issue and reducing thickness and weight of wires. To enhance the ride comfort, components integration is more and more common. However, the complex components integration could also cause the difficulties of maintenance.

Reliability standards are various in each market. Due to the strict operation environment for vehicles, compared with commercial or industrial grade, both “product reliability lifetime” and “operating conditions” requires higher standard in automotive grade. In commercial grade, it is common to use single sample for each test, i.e. 10 samples to 10 tests, in order to increase the confidence levels. In contrast, the tests in automotive grade are divided into several legs and operate in order, especially in reliability demonstration tests, including thermal cycling test, high temperature test and high temperature and high humidity test. Samples are under each kind of stress step by step to simulate the reliability lifetime of 10 or even 15 years. To avoid over-stress situation, it’s necessary to clarify the design limit range and the product application range. Take vehicles service life as an example, both various climate and batteries charging time should be considered as well.
Processing profound experience in reliability tests, DEKRA iST delivered the concept of “Close Loop for Quality Control.” During the process of tests, it becomes a cycle from prototype, EVT, DVT, PVT/MP to field return. Analyzing and comparing RMA data from field return is the most important step for OEMs and suppliers.  
 

 

DEKRA iST team also provided professional consultation service in the seminar promptly. For more information, please feel free to email us. 
📧sos@dekra-ist.com

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