Issue link: https://resources.mouser.com/i/1510154
36 EV and Connected Transportation failure is a terrible inconvenience. Failure of a vehicle or a piece of heavy-duty equipment can mean a loss of productivity, resulting in an impact on one's business, or in a worst-case scenario, can cause serious injury or death. Safe operation is critical. Charging, maintenance, and crash mitigation must all be done in a safe manner. The complexity of electric vehicle architectures and basic operating principles is closer to airplanes, energy grids, and consumer electronic devices than it is to ICE vehicle approaches. It is critical that the ICT industries work with companies in other verticals to bring new, application-specific solutions for their customers. Material scientists and contact physicists need to collaborate to innovate viable, robust solutions for the fast-growing EV market, where a plug-in charging connection will experience thousands of mating cycles over its lifetime. Testing and validation techniques will be pushed to physical and safety-critical limits usually reserved for aerospace and industrial applications. Added complexities for both manufacturing and field service drive the need for innovative tools and methodologies to be developed. TE Connectivity as the Partner of Choice TE Connectivity (TE) is "all in" when it comes to harsh environment connectivity and enabling the success of vehicle electrification. TE's team of engineers and scientists engage closely with customers to support their success by providing robust solutions tailored to their specific needs and vehicle architecture. TE accomplishes this by harnessing three key strengths: • Leveraging depth and breadth of expertise across the company. We have a strong portfolio of connectors, contactors, sensors, relays, power distribution units (PDUs), and wireless solutions that serve multiple industries. Our hybrid and electric mobility products have been used in electric vehicles since their beginning. We leverage our global footprint to ensure we have design and prototype capability where our customers design their products. We invest extensively in R&D, looking to solve industry challenges before they become problems. Our engineers and scientists are actively engaged in various standards committees and industry consortia. We have an extensive network of test and validation laboratories worldwide to ensure we can support our customers' specifications. • Leveraging more than 75 years of physical connectivity expertise. TE is a component supplier that invests in system knowledge, enabling it to speak our customers' technical language. The company has developed thermal, EMI, and RFI modeling tools, allowing it to work with customers and address system-level issues to optimize component design. TE's application tooling team makes sure that TE's connectivity solutions align with customers' manufacturing methodology. The company has developed a unique termination approach for high-power cable assemblies that provides a robust connection, supporting our customers' electrification plans. TE has power management experience and know- how across many industries, with the ability to bring that capability to the automotive market. TE leverages its miniaturization know-how from the semiconductor and consumer electronics colleagues, and the high-power knowledge from aerospace and energy industry colleagues helps to solve similar on-vehicle connectivity challenges, as well as off-vehicle charging infrastructure development. TE's team of scientists and contact physicists are renowned throughout the world for connectivity technology solution development. • Leveraging its electronics architecture and functional integration expertise. TE works with its customers, providing application support, to optimize their systems by providing the pieces of the puzzle for optimized integrated component solutions. In many cases, TE provides components that are sub-systems. The company can provide sensor clusters with localized processing and serial data connectivity, making customers' systems easier to manufacture and making them more flexible/scalable. TE provides complete inlet assemblies with a high-power connector for charging, actuators to lock the charging cable to the vehicle, sensors to provide temperature and current information to the battery module to control charging, and LEDs to provide state-of-charge and state-of-health information to the vehicle operator. As customers develop new and improved vehicle architectures, TE is teaming up to provide optimized design of scalable sub-systems and components for them.