The quest to speed things up in the auto industry even includes the movement of electrons that carry the data for vehicle functions and communications.
At TE Connectivity, engineers know that their electronic hardware can only work as fast as data can pass from point A to point B to be processed and acted on.
In the future, says TE Connectivity President Sameer Pagnis, “it will be very important that the car is connected to infrastructure, that cars are talking with each other, that the cars have architecture which can collect data, transport it back and forth, and can create insights about the data.”
The keys to supporting the complex vehicle architectures that make features such as advanced driver-assistance systems possible are fast-moving data and fast processing.
“Truly high-speed data networks in a car have become more of a necessity for building the future architecture of the car,” Pagnis said. “To simplify this architecture, you need high-speed data transmission. You need computing to be centralized, and you need a high degree of edge processing as well.”
Edge processing is the placement of logic and data manipulation onto sensors to have processing take place closer to the action, so to speak.
“You have tens, if not hundreds, of different electronic control units on the car,” he added. “Operating at very high speed is crucial so that the connectors perform extremely reliably when these kinds of occurrences are taking place as you’re driving.”
Faster data processing is a work in progress for the industry. And TE Connectivity, a Swiss electronics supplier to automakers such as Tesla, is reaching out to other industries it supplies to find a solution.
“We have been operating in the data and devices space where we have been working with hyperscale customers with data centers, where high-speed data transfer and error-proof data transfer has been the core of those product portfolios,” Pagnis said. “We have a lot of knowledge that we can leverage as we come into the automotive space.”
The challenge is doing it in a way that’s long-lasting, Pagnis said.
“Designing the specifications for the future is the crucial aspect here that the OEMs have to wrestle with,” he said.
TE Connectivity racked up $12.2 billion in sales last year, specializing in terminals, connectors, relays, contactors, sensors and cable assemblies, Pagnis said, all of which will be critical to letting data flow faster.
“I think the future is nearer than most people think,” he added. “For suppliers like us, we have to continue to build that capability where we can address not today’s needs, but also for tomorrow’s needs.”