The tomorrow of yesterday is here today.
At the start of this year, registered electric vehicles (EVs) on global highways totaled just over 10 million vehicles.1 That number represents the tiniest of slivers in most pie charts, accounting for less than 1 percent of all vehicles on the road. But, when you compare that number to just 1,191 EVs sold in the U.S. in 2010, the explosive growth of EVs in the past decade can be seen.
Legacy automotive and EV-exclusive manufacturers have several forces driving them forward: automation, energy efficiency, voiding, miniaturization, component warpage, high power, and high-reliability alloys among others.
To help automakers navigate these areas, Indium Corporation has launched a new technical webinar series – Driving e-Mobility: Rel-ion™ – which focuses on the opportunities and challenges present in the rapidly evolving e-Mobility market.
Whether you are new to the e-Mobility market or are a more seasoned veteran, the range of topics in this five-part series will prove beneficial to anyone involved or interested in EVs and the automotive industry.
Our first offering—“Increasing Requirements for Electrical Reliability in Automotive Applications” by Technical Manager (DACH)/Technologist – Advanced Applications Andreas Karch—is available in our archive. Karch focuses on the demands faced by materials used in electronic assemblies, particularly in the area of “no-clean” solder pastes with a focus on surface insulation resistance (SIR).
Our second session—“Voiding Mechanisms and Solutions for High-Density Automotive Electronics” by Principal Engineer and Global Accounts Technical Manager David Sbiroli—is also available in our archive. Sbiroli discusses the most persistent of all defects since the earliest days of SMT assembly: voiding in solder joints.
The next three sessions are:
- Increased Reliability for Higher Mission Profiles in Automotive Electronics – June 28
- Design Considerations for Board Layout & Material Selection – Sept. 21
- Best Practices for SMT Assembly & Root Cause Analysis – Oct. 12
Our featured experts in this series bring a combined 80+ years in the automotive landscape.
If you look back to the earliest days of EVs, those first small-scale EVs created by innovators in Hungary and the Netherlands are the definition of an early concept when compared to today’s robust models. In the U.S., chemist William Morrison debuted in 1890 a six-passenger vehicle capable of a top speed of 14 mph.2 Today, vehicles from Tesla, Mercedes, BMW, Porsche, Ford, and Volkswagen3 among others can easily cruise at highway speeds, travel 200+ miles on a single charge, and are much less inhibited by weather than those batteries available at the turn of the 20th century. (Thermal management via Indium Corporation® products is key to battery lifecycle, depth of discharge, performance, etc.)
Although soaring gasoline prices and tightening emission rules since the 1970s brought greater focus on EV vehicles, they were always considered the vehicles of tomorrow. Well, tomorrow is today.
Authored by MarCom Specialist Christian Vischi.
References:
1 https://www.iea.org/reports/electric-vehicles