May 2020

8 MARKET NEWS Issue 2 2020 Power Electronics Europe www.power-mag.com Keeping Cool as the Electric Vehicle Market Heats Up Some of the biggest hurdles to widespread adoption of electric vehicles are range anxiety, battery longevity and safety. As the electric vehicle market grows and for it to reach its full potential, there is an increased need for effective thermal management of the vehicles. A new report from IDTechEx covers several aspects of thermal management for electric vehicles including the batteries, motors and power electronics. There have been several high-profile battery related fires from well-known automotive manufacturers and in stationary energy storage from South Korea, this does little to instil confidence in potential consumers. With this in mind several new regulations have been proposed relating to safety aspects unique to electric vehicles, the likely outcome of this being that manufacturers will be required to halt thermal runaway at the individual cell level and warn the vehicles occupants, giving them at least 5 minutes to exit the vehicle once a thermal event occurs. Several factors must be considered when designing an electric vehicle for safety, from the materials used in the battery pack construction to thermal runaway prevention and early detection. Several companies are designing methods of stopping thermal runaway between cells including flame retardant encapsulants, interweaved products and phase change materials. Effectively dissipating heat from the battery module or pack to a heat sink is also important and usually carried out using a thermal interface material, this is another area where manufacturers have adopted several strategies including gap pads, fillers and conductive adhesives. Every manufacturer has their own methodology to thermally manage their batteries with no clear consensus on the most effective design. Companies like Tesla are set on their patented water-glycol coolant lines which “snake” their way between the cylindrical cells in the pack, whereas OEMs like Nissan and Toyota are committed to air cooling. Active cooling of batteries with fluids allows the vehicle to be kept cool in conditions where the vehicle is stationary but the batteries are in high demand (e.g. during fast charging), but also allows the batteries to be raised to optimal temperature in cold ambient conditions, these are significant advantages but come at the expense of weight, complexity and cost. Despite these caveats, IDTechEx has observed a market shift towards liquid or refrigerant cooling and foresee this trend continuing into the future, especially following the rise of charging with 350 kW sources, with the amount of liquid or refrigerant cooled batteries exceeding 500 GWh by 2030. In addition to the batteries and motors the power electronics also have to deal with significant heat, especially with the trend towards operating at higher power densities and temperatures. The way in which wire bonds and soldering is carried out as well as the material used makes a big impact on the performance and longevity of the power electronics. Several OEMs are also shifting towards using advanced substrates and even eliminating the thermal interface material altogether. The new report from IDTechEx on “Thermal Management for Electric Vehicles 2020- 2030” covers all the above topics through extensive research including primary interviews from companies in the field. The report covers the strategies used by major OEMs, emerging technologies and market forecasts for electric vehicles and their thermal management technologies. www.IDTechEx.com First Mobility Innovation Hub in UK Plug and Play, a pioneering US innovation platform for startups, will be partnering with MIRA Technology Park, a leading automotive R&D cluster, to create the UK’s first Mobility Innovation Hub. As renowned automotive ‘technology cluster’, MIRA Technology Park is currently home to 40 mobility sector companies, including many iconic brands and they collectively employ over 1,200. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, Plug and Play is the world’s largest innovation platform. It specialises in corporate innovation and the development of early-to-growth stage technology startups, bringing together the best startups, entrepreneurial investors, and ambitious global corporations. Situated at the heart of the UK’s automotive sector, the Mobility Innovation Hub will be located at the MIRA Technology Park. It provides R&D facilities and access to skilled engineering expertise, thereby immersing the successful startups in a rich eco- system to facilitate their rapid growth. The partnership, supported by key government bodies such as Zenzic, will enable OEM and Tier 1 corporates to fast track their innovation agendas whilst supporting startups to prove their concepts and find routes to market for their innovations. “With the global mobility industry facing unprecedented change amid megatrends in EVs and connected and autonomous vehicles, the need to accelerate innovation, through investment in talent and technology has never been greater,” said Mike Olmstead, CRO at Plug and Play. ““Having already established a successful track record in the US and the rest of Europe, the high-quality of startups and academic research emerging from UK universities makes it an attractive market to enter. As such, we knew the MIRA Technology Park – with its prime location in the heart of the UK mobility sector, pioneering facilities and high-profile tenants – was the right fit for us. We look forward to achieving some great things from this collaboration.” www.plugandplaytechcenter.com The GaN power business will exceed $350 million by 2024, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 85 %, according to market redearcher Yole and its sister compamies Knowmade and System Plus Consulting. But Super Junction Silicon MOSFETs will survive. Superjunction (SJ) technology was commercially released in 1998 by Infineon. Today new players are entering the market, but the historical players keep their lead by decreasing production costs as much as possible or by introducing different technologies. The improvement of Silicon SJ MOSFETs will keep these devices on the market and drive them towards standardization and popularization. GaN-on-Si HEMTs are good competitors for silicon SJ MOSFETs in the 600/650V power device range. They offer new capabilities, such as higher switching frequencies, higher power density and an increasingly competitive manufacturing cost. For many years since 2010 the GaN power device landscape was dominated by pure GaN start-up players like EPC, GaN Systems, Transphorm, and Navitas, which chose the foundry model and mostly used TSMC, Episil, or X-FAB. In just a few years, IR/Infineon and Transphorm have reached the strongest IP position in the GaN Market Accelerates