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16 Smart Mobility and the Technologies Paving the Way E lectrification is one of the megatrends shaping the automotive industry. Nowadays, it is shifting from improving high fuel efficiency rates to providing an optimum range to people in terms of connected vehicles— through Levels 2 and 3 of autonomous driving. Electrification is becoming significant on powertrain and the entire vehicle system, consolidating multiple Electronic Control Units (ECU) across several segments. Vehicle Electrification has the attention of both government regulatory bodies and environmentally conscious consumers. On one side, new laws are enacted globally to reduce carbon dioxide emissions at the fleet level, and together with stricter fuel economy regulations, means a demand exists for new electric components in the powertrain to help make it compliant and efficient. Consequently, carmakers and new market entrants are designing and rolling out their new electric and hybrid vehicles (HEVs/EVs) to exceed market expectations. On the other side, customers are changing their consumer habits to accommodate an ecofriendly lifestyle. More people prioritize alternative combustion, low emission, or zero-emissions powered vehicles to traditional internal combustion engines (ICEs), changing how the green-tech market behaves. The Power of Electrification Toño Hernández, NXP Semiconductors Figure 1: Five vehicle electrification architectures fulfill the needs of the electrification market Becoming electrified brings some challenges for carmakers, Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), and suppliers. Moving toward electrification is about the change from ICE to a hybrid or fully electric model and about changing and updating vehicle production lines, increasing production capacity for batteries, and deploying a robust electrification infrastructure. Nonetheless, automotive startups worldwide are mainly focusing on building electric vehicles (because of its low market barriers), and traditional carmakers are mostly developing hybrid vehicles (to overcome the gap between the past and future). Most of them are considering the five different vehicle electrification architectures to fulfill the needs of the electrification market (Figure 1).