OnStar: Getting Connectivity Wrong

OnStar: Getting Connectivity Wrong
by Roger C. Lanctot on 04-24-2022 at 6:00 am

OnStar Getting Connectivity Wrong

One of my pet beefs with the car industry is that car makers, on the whole, have failed to agree among themselves as to what basic vehicle connectivity ought to consist of. From car maker to car maker prices vary, bundles vary, free periods of service access vary and the variations get worse between model years as offers change and … Read More


Tesla: Canary in the Coal Mine

Tesla: Canary in the Coal Mine
by Roger C. Lanctot on 04-17-2022 at 6:00 am

Tesla Canary in the Coal Mine

The automotive industry is tied up in knots over cybersecurity. Consumers expect their cars to be secure. Car makers spend millions on securing cars, but don’t know how, what, or if to charge consumers for security.

Meanwhile, most cyber penetration reports to organizations such as the Auto-ISAC are related to enterprise attacks. … Read More


Auto Safety – A Dickensian Tale

Auto Safety – A Dickensian Tale
by Roger C. Lanctot on 03-27-2022 at 10:00 am

Auto Safety – A Dickensian Tale

As I prepare to join the International Telecommunications Union’s Future Networked Car Symposium – today through Friday – I am reminded of Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities” and its unforgettable opening paragraph – modified for a modern context here:

It was the best of times,Read More


Waymo Collides with Transparency

Waymo Collides with Transparency
by Roger C. Lanctot on 02-03-2022 at 10:00 am

Waymo Collides with Transparency

Anyone looking to U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to forthrightly assert a path-setting policy vision to guide autonomous vehicle development in the U.S. during his CES 2022 keynote was sorely disappointed. There was no guidance from the Secretary.

The issue has gained new urgency now that Waymo has sued the California… Read More


Musk: Colossus of Roads, with Achilles’​ Heel

Musk: Colossus of Roads, with Achilles’​ Heel
by Roger C. Lanctot on 01-23-2022 at 8:00 am

Elon Musk Achilles Heel 1

For Tesla, 2021 was an amazing year. A blindspot looms in 2022.

Critics cheered the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for opening multiple investigations into fatal and near fatal Tesla crashes.  Legislators decried the de facto beta testing of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving beta on public roads. And in December,… Read More


High-Speed Data Converters Accelerating Automotive and 5G Products

High-Speed Data Converters Accelerating Automotive and 5G Products
by Kalar Rajendiran on 11-10-2021 at 10:00 am

Enabling Technology Omni Design SWIFT

While the trend towards System-on-Chip (SoC) has been gathering momentum for quite some time, the primary driver has been integration of digital components, spurred by Moore’s law. Integrating more and more digital circuitry into a single chip has been consistently beneficial for performance, power, form factor and economic… Read More


Yep – It’s Still an Analog World in this Digital Age

Yep – It’s Still an Analog World in this Digital Age
by Daniel Nenni on 11-02-2021 at 6:00 am

Fig 1 Omni Design Blog 271021

With all the advances in digital technology to serve mankind’s insatiable appetite for automation, it’s easy to lose sight of the reality that we still live in an analog world.  It’s easy to take for granted that somewhere in the chain of events that takes place in the process of applying state-of-the-art computational technology… Read More


High Reliability Power Management Chip Simulation and Verification for Automotive Electronics

High Reliability Power Management Chip Simulation and Verification for Automotive Electronics
by Daniel Payne on 10-11-2021 at 10:00 am

iWave waveform min

Automotive electronics bring strong demand for power management chips, but its strict reliability requirements also pose new challenges for chip designers. The chip needs to be able to work in various harsh environments such as high temperature, low temperature, aging, abnormal power supply, etc. Although the traditional… Read More


Heterogeneous Package Design Challenges for ADAS

Heterogeneous Package Design Challenges for ADAS
by Tom Simon on 10-04-2021 at 10:00 am

Hetergeneous Package Design

Increasingly complex heterogeneous packaging solutions have proved essential to meeting the rapidly scaling requirements for automotive electronics. Perhaps there is no better example of this than advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) that are found in most new cars. In a recent paper published by Siemens EDA, they … Read More


Auto Semiconductor Shortage Worsens

Auto Semiconductor Shortage Worsens
by Bill Jewell on 09-29-2021 at 2:00 pm

Sep 2021 fcst

The shortage of semiconductors for automotive applications is getting  worse. Recent statements from major automakers:

  • General Motors significantly cut production at eight North American plants earlier this month due to the semiconductor shortage. GM expects North American vehicle production in the second half of the year
Read More