Stellantis buys aiMotive, MOU with Infineon; Tesla airbag OTA; Micron silicon ROT update; Riscure new fault injection probe.
Infineon has a non-binding Memorandum of Understanding to supply automaker Stellantis with CoolSiC “bare die” chips by reserving manufacturing capacity in the second half of the decade to the direct Tier 1 suppliers of Stellantis. CoolSiCs are Infineon’s silicon carbide (SiC) semiconductors.
Stellantis will acquire aiMotive, a startup specializing in AI and autonomous driving development tools. Under the terms of the agreement, aiMotive will become subsidiary of Stellantis and continue selling aiData, aiSim, and aiWare to other partners. Founder László Kishonti will remain as aiMotive’s CEO and keep its startup culture. Stellantis is already developing its own technology platforms (STLA Brain, STLA SmartCockpit, STLA AutoDrive), which the company says will deploy at scale across the four all-new STLA vehicle platforms (STLA Small, STLA Medium, STLA Large, STLA Frame), starting in 2024.
Tesla will use an over-the-air (OTA) update to fix an airbag problem that caused a 30,000-vehicle recall. The airbag deploys when it shouldn’t during some low-speed collisions.
Japanese automaker Suzuki and semiconductor company Rohm have joined the Japanese private equity fund JIP’s proposal to take over Toshiba, the semiconductor and electronics company, according NikkeiAsia. Rohm will invest up to $2.1 billion, Suzuki tens of billions of yen. and JIP (Japanese Industrial Partners) $15B. JIP is talking to 20 companies to join its consortium to acquire Toshiba.
At the LA Auto Show, Toyota unveiled its new Prius model, which despite its update, had automotive media wondering why Toyota was sticking with hybrids and the Prius. Prius sales have gone down to under 30,000 vehicles sold in 2022, from a high of 236K in 2012. Toyota does have more EVs planned.
Nidec, a Japanese electric motor maker, plans to build $715M electric motor plant in Mexico.
Renesas entered the automotive radar market with its first automotive radar transceiver chip, the RAA270205. The chip is 4×4-channel, 76-81GHz radar transceiver that uses technology from Steradian, a company Renesas’ recently acquired. The new chip will be available in and is part of Renesas’ ADAS Sensor Fusion Portfolio.
General Motors’ CEO Mary Barra said the car company’s electric vehicles will be profitable by 2025. Not so much for other EV makers. According to Reuters, every time Lucid Group or Rivian sells an electric car, they are losing hundreds of thousands of dollars, mostly because of material and production costs.
The UK satellite firm Exobotics now has a multi-million-pound contract from its customer Quantum Generative Materials (GenMat) to construct a high-precision, remote sensing prospecting satellite to find unexploited mineral deposits using CubeSats. The CubeSat, which will have a hyperspectral imager, is scheduled to launch into orbit later this year aboard a SpaceX rideshare, according to a press statement. GenMat is planning to eventually launch constellations of satellites that will cover every inch of the planet. The number of GenMat satellites in orbit could reach 600, the company says.
Russia plans to double its earth-observing satellite constellations in 2023 through 2025, according to Aviation Week.
The United States’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released decision tree tools for its Stakeholder Specific Vulnerability Categorization (SSVC) system, which the agency developed with help from Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute. The SSVC is a decision tree to help organizations using the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) navigate through the security vulnerability reporting and tracking process. SSVC was created in 2019.
To assist organizations with using SSVC, today, CISA released:
In the 4,300 tests Synopsys Cybersecurity Research Center (CyRC) conducted for its “Software Vulnerability Spotlight” report, 95% of the targets had a vulnerability (a 2% decrease over last year’s numbers). High-risk vulnerabilities found went down by10% year-over-year and were still found in 20% of the systems. Critical vulnerabilities were in 4.5% of the systems (a 1.5% decrease from last year).
Riscure announced the availability of a new type of fault injection probe, the EM-FI Transient Probe with Adjusting Pulse Width (EM-FI APW).
Micron is expanding its silicon root-of-trust portfolio, Authenta, by releasing a cloud platform for its silicon security portfolio and adding more functionality to Authenta on Serial Peripheral Interface NOR (SPI-NOR) devices. The company is also working with security expert Swissbit AG.
Renesas laid out its Wi-Fi roadmap with a focus on Wi-Fi client and access point chips for for Wi-Fi 6/6E and Wi-Fi 7. Renesas said it is delivering production volumes of high-performance Wi-Fi 6E access point CL8000 chipset family, is sampling its 2×2 Wi-Fi/BLE combo chip supporting Wi-Fi 6E tri-band switchable radio (6GHz, 5GHz & 2.4GHz), and is developing a Wi-Fi 6E chipset with Wi-Fi doppler imaging technology. The 2×2 Wi-Fi/BLE combo chip will have 160MHz channel bandwidth and up to 2.4Gbps Data Link Speed, addressing multimedia streaming applications, IoT gateways, and cloud-connected devices. Renesas says it is leveraging technology from its Celeno acquisition to address a wide range of Wi-Fi client and access point applications for Wi-Fi 6/6E and Wi-Fi 7. Renesas is also adding an narrowband IoT (NB-IoT)-capable wireless module to its low-power WAN product line. The new RYZ024A supports Cat-M1.
Infineon showed off a smart air conditioner at electronica this week that analyzes the air quality and temperature using CO2 and room occupancy sensors. The air conditioner itself turns on and off, infusing cold or fresh air. Predictive maintenance system informs the owner if the system needs maintenance, and edge computing and data pre-processing with AI gives access to room condition data in addition to device control and maintenance.
OSAT ASE broke ground on a new chip assembly and testing facility in Penang, Malaysia.
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