Futuristic vehicle tech makes up a big part of CES 2022 in Las Vegas – and not only with the large car manufacturers. Semiconductor makers and software designers are touting new products and features to enable driver assistance and autonomous tech for upcoming vehicle models as well.
One of the biggest makers of semiconductors for vehicles, Texas Instruments, announced a new 77-GHz radar sensor able to detect objects up to 40% farther away from the vehicle when compared to traditional radar sensors.
The increased ability of the AWR2944 radar sensor is designed to give vehicle engineers more capabilities to help vehicles monitor blind spots and navigate corners. It integrates a fourth transmitter to provide 33% higher resolution than existing radar sensors. The ability to see 44% father away is based on Doppler division multiple access signal processing, said Ryan Manack, director of automotive systems engineering at TI. The sensor is also 30% smaller than others today.
Updated capabilities of new sensor platforms will be necessary as high-end vehicles will need to quickly process up to 100 million lines of code in some high-end vehicles, he said.
An evaluation module of the AWR2944 is now available on TI.com for $549. It is priced at $23.95 in 1,000 unit quantities.
Also at CES, HERE Technology has announced its library of data for three-dimensional lidar is available on its HERE Platform, capturing in high fidelity for millions of miles of roads in 50 countries.
Also, HERE said it has added more than 400 indoor parking garages in Europe and North America for end-to-end navigation. Such insights will help electric vehicle driving locate parking spaces on maps where they can charge their vehicles, HERE said.
HERE, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., is majority owned by a consortium of German auto companies and Intel with 9,000 employees.
Analysts widely believe the chip shortage for automobiles that has wrecked manufacturer revenues in 2021 will continue well into 2022. Key components could be available for no more than 60% of the global demand for EVs, according to Real-Time Innovations, a maker of autonomous vehicle software used by half of the top 10 public EV companies.
Because of the impact of the chip shortage, new automotive power players will emerge in 2022, said Pedro Lopez Estepa, market development director for automotive at RTI. He named the IPOs of Arrival, Lucid and Rivian.
However, he said traditional automakers could create in-house semiconductor development with a clear advantage over the newcomers.
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