Change for a good reason.
For the first time being held in the USA outside of Detroit the Motor City, San Jose is the chosen venue for this time around. Registration is open and attendance is free. Michiganders like myself, can be assured the move is not intended to be permanent. The event with keynote speakers, technical sessions and networking time keeps to a now familiar, tried and trusted format.
https://www.mentor.com/events/iesf/automotive-conference is where you can register. Wherever your work is based it is worth your while checking out the agenda, and deciding to register.
IESF comes back to Michigan September 2020, traveling via Portland Oregon, which in June 2020 hosts at the same time the 33rd International Electric Vehicle Symposium (EVS).
The California locale shows intention to reach a slightly different audience and attract participants with a somewhat different perspective. The increasing emphasis on electric and autonomous vehicles and transportation solutions has been there in plain sight over the last decade at IESF events – including in presentations involving me personally at the USA show and overseas. The region including San Francisco and San Jose is home to companies and the facilities of companies headquartered overseas which are contributing massively to the innovation and new product introduction in automotive. Pretty much all companies you can name in this region in the EV/AV space use software automation tools from Siemens Industry Software and from Mentor Graphics, a Siemens Business. Most likely there are some other companies you can’t name, and they use Siemens solutions too – you can’t name them because they are in stealth mode to safeguard their IP or consciously avoiding publicity. They drive “under the lidar” so to speak.
Not just startups – electric and hybrid pickup trucks from the big 3 USA automakers are going to be on the roads shortly. Recently Ford has pledged to invest over $11-billion into electric and hybrid models by 2022 for example, recently showed an electric F150 pulling rail freight cars. And the company you first think of disrupting the USA passenger automotive market is not so much of a startup these days – grappling with elevating the Model 3 manufacturing volumes aiming towards 10,000 a month currently nudging 1,000 a week at the Fremont, CA factory. And the Tesla Roadster was the first production vehicle sold by the company in 2008 – yes, more than a decade ago. Tesla innovates in how they design cars, including electrical distribution system design. Corporate goals impact requirements to lightweight the interconnect, to reduce mass and have resulted in patent applications from Tesla which give some insight into their forward plans to drastically minimize wiring content.
Software to handle these problems has been around for more than a decade too.
Electrical connections may be carried 100 yards of wire or 1 mile or of wiring in a vehicle. Either way it has to be designed and built error free. The newer organizations designing and building cars, buses, trucks and off-road vehicles ATV’s, RV’s etc. with electric drive trains share a common desire to see the hard-wired connections generated as outputs from their design activity. There is near unanimity in the engineers I have talked to that they need to be equipped with tools providing a very high degree of automation. The automation they seek is obtained applying rules, algorithms and synthesizing design outputs from the digital models of physical and logical components/systems definitions – models of vehicle functions and requirements and drive modes and operating states. Automation is pretty much your only chance of keeping control of the design when things change. And things do change. Oh yes they change. Electronic controllers split and combine and get replaced completely as one vendor falls out of favor and another provides the product needed. Network strategies and interconnect routes through the vehicle change as the product takes final shape. Changes affecting the electrical design in electric and autonomous vehicles usually drop on you fast, frequently and can have substantial impact.
Views of different levels of information – an architectural-topology view; a logical platform level view.
If the engineering challenges were simple there’s no point in a day-long conference.
Helping users to change the design, understanding the impact of the design change downstream to where the electrical distribution will be produced is what Capital delivers to customers. Elimination of risk and obviating the need to validate using cumbersome and error-prone techniques is the promise. It is relaxing sometimes to not have to use all of your brain – but to match check with highlighter pens, open PDF drawings with mark-up and redlining tools, feasting your eyes on schematics spread across conference room tables – well that sort of thing might just as well be done away with and replaced with something more efficient. There are only so many hours a day you want to work – even when you are designing and building a product which will revolutionize personal transportation, or freight logistics, or to traverse the wilderness off-road or even explore the lowest depths of the ocean floor. Might as well spend your time to the maximum value and use that big brain and all the brain cells doing the things which will change the world not change the cells on a spreadsheet.
Half and hour design and assemble
Later you can relax and use a small part of your brain when you get home from work to do something like I did last night making some pretty decent Thai inspired soup with ramen noodles. A design and release to build workflow delivering attractive product to appreciative consumers in 30 minutes. No specification changes, no end user feature complexity proliferation, a manageable validation regime to go through (take a taste test every now and then) raw materials assembled into finished product by one assembly operative (me) and no sourcing or logistics challenges for the components or tooling.
Brothy and poultry; coconut-chili heat with base notes of lemongrass and ginger.
