Infineon chip flaws to disrupt IONIQ 5 EV production | Hacker News Reader

Infineon chip flaws to disrupt IONIQ 5 EV production

kedglobal.com

109 pointsrobin_reala103 comments

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>Hyundai Group is pushing for internal chip production

HAHA, good luck even coming close to specification of Infineon parts.

>LACK OF ALTERNATIVES

no shit Sherlock, this is life on the bleeding edge

>It is also trying to shorten the delivery time by transporting chips from global semiconductor makers by air.

you mean they used ocean freight on tiny light components (maybe hundred kg per 10K cars) to cut costs? :)

>Infineon accounts for 12.7% of global automotive chip output, trailed by the Netherlands-based NXP and Japan’s Renesas with 11.8% and 8.4%, respectively.

automotive, but not EV. Afaik NXP makes zero IGBTs, they make gate drivers. Renesas makes some, but their EV grade parts were supposed to start shipping in 2021 and didnt https://www.renesas.com/us/en/products/automotive-products/a...

On point. Hyundai can bitch and posture all they want but those chips aren't some commodity parts they can multi source or make themselves not matter how much money they throw at the problem. You can't bring up decades of analog microelectronics design experience overnight.

So they have to deal with whatever issues Infineon has. It's part of the risks of being on the bleeding edge. That's why even luxury German car companies usually stay on older tech.

Power semiconductors aren’t the most bleeding edge. SiC technology is a recent game changer leveling all market players to the same tech level. IFX advantage with silicon is gone. The structures are big and Hyundai-Kia conglomerate can afford their own production for sure. They also have Samsung there. And they know their requirements best and can optimize for them instead of buying off-shelf parts from IFX. German premium manufacturers also don’t use 800V system with fast charging while Hyundai-Kia does.

Samsung doesn't design cutting edge analog chips.

Just because they fab NAND, DRAM, and cutting edge logic chips, don't mean they can switch to high performance analog chips on a whim.

There's a reason, Infineon, TI, Vichay, and other's are still highly profitable.

Are the physics and manufacturing of analog vs digital components really so different that there's no applicable knowledge transfer? I would be surprised to learn that.

Well, there's more transfer than nothing, but the hard parts of digital (sophisticated logic, absurd per-gate reliability, low feature sizes) just don't overlap much with the hard parts of analog, which is all about device physics and materials.

Sure, the people who design logic transistors would probably adapt quickly to designing power transistors, but they are a very small part of a very large machine. For example: a digital organization may have learned through harsh and repeated lessons 100 subtle ways to be more conservative about device changes. FinFETs took 15 years to go from R&D to prod, for example. While this level of risk aversion might be critical for shipping billion-transistor devices, it may be maladaptive for shipping single transistors, where a 15 year deployment leaves you 10 years behind your competition.

Likewise, the processes (patterning, etching, implantation, etc) are largely similar, but the digital side has made colossal investments optimizing for things that just don't matter as much for analog design. The famed EUV machines? What does a power transistor gain from tiny features? I'd be surprised if they were useful, let alone useful enough to justify the cost, let alone useful enough to justify the cost and the risk of repurposing a machine for process innovation. Like using a F1 car to commute to work -- even if cost were no object, extreme optimization for one purpose makes it worse at others.

Power electronics gain surface area from small feature sizes, allowing the electrons to diffuse more efficiently seen as lower loss and higher switching frequencies.

Same with gate design.

It's not that there is zero applicable knowledge transfer, but there are definitely some fundamental differences between digital components and analog power devices, in particular.

For digital, the transistor are CMOS, optimized to be as tiny as possible, running at < 1V, and with individual devices mostly driving microamps, going up to milliamps in some particular areas of the chip.

For power, we're talking about IGBTs, optimized to handle as much power as possible with maximum efficiency, at hundreds of volts.

They are both semiconductor devices, but they are about as similar as the engine for a sports car vs. for a panamax cargo ship.

The feature size of power electronics is fundamentally limited by the dielectric breakdown voltage of materials. Under a high enough voltage potential, even the best insulator [1] will "break down" and become a conductor

The dielectric breakdown voltage of SiO used on wafers is about 2.7x10^9 V/m (2.7 V/nm) so a 600V part that relies on SiO for insulation has to have a minimum gap of at least 222 nm [2] between any conductors that carry that voltage. Cutting edges nodes manufacturing CPUs and stuff generally deal with single digit voltages so while a lot of knowledge can carry over, the meat of the designs are very different.

[1] Even a perfect vacuum would breakdown due to the Schwinger effect, but at an astronomical voltage potential like 10^18 V/m.

[2] It's actually a lot more complicated at that scale, but it's a useful ballpark value.

Audi/Porsche do use 800v systems with fast charging:

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a28903284/porsche-taycan-e...

>> Power semiconductors aren’t the most bleeding edge. SiC technology is a recent game changer leveling all market players to the same tech level.

IGBTs are not quite a commodity at highest specs, and power modules are yet another years-long development. Infineon has been building modules with high power density for decades and that experience will also carry over to SiC chips. Where I'm at we are building our own SiC "modules" from discrete components for now and these are much larger than Infineon power modules - but we are air cooled ;-)

It seems like there should be a standard form factor for 3-phase power modules by now. That would make them easy to replace even if you have different specs.

>German premium manufacturers also don’t use 800V

Taycan uses cree sic, bleeding edge. GM signed up for those too.

If you have a consistent supply of something then a slow but lower cost delivery method is entirely sensible, as is switching to higher cost but faster methods when there have been interruptions.

The story also mentions that their internal plans are for lower spec items.

> If you have a consistent supply of something then a slow but lower cost delivery method is entirely sensible, as is switching to higher cost but faster methods when there have been interruptions.

It might make sense from an economical point of view, but not from a resilience point of view. Ignoring the chip shortages over the last two years, there have been major disruptions in ocean freight logistics. Given the relatively high value density and the crucial role of these components in the vehicle manufacturing process, making air-freight the default would have been a sensible choice as well. Despite the feasibility of alternatives

The problem isn't that a ship got delayed with the chips on board, they threw out months of production at the factory due to a flaw before shipping them. So switching to air freight now is just boring and sensible (and would also work if a ship got delayed too, meaning the cheaper option is basically risk free).

Even with consistent supply, for a high value low weight item, ocean shipping does not make sense simply from a time value of money perspective. Also, it makes planning that much more difficult, you have to adjust orders that much farther in advance.

Not really true - depending on volume.

In almost all certainty they have volume commitments out months - and have for at least two years.

JIT stopped being a reality a while ago.

If you know you're sitting on 2 months of inventory, and you're getting shipments that are equal to 1 month of capacity every month, and it takes 3-5 weeks by sea, it's a perfectly reasonable thing to do still.

Also, depending on their contracts, they may not pay the vendor until they receive the goods at their location, so the sea freight shipment doesn't have a cost for time value of money.

If you're sitting on a buffer, time value of money doesn't matter - and only gets worse by spending more money to get it sooner if you can only produce say 5k cars/week - doesn't matter if you get parts sooner you can't use.

With semiconductor manufacturing, you are in a dance where customers need products now but your lead times can be weeks or months. This has always been true, even pre-pandemic. Customer demand forecasting is a huge deal in this space, since they still pursue "lean planning" and "JIT production" as much as possible to out-compete on delivery times and volumes.

Inventory costs are necessarily minimized in this framework, with all the supply hiding further back in the chain. Once the products are done, they're packaged and shipped; there is basically no buffer. So you don't have resilience of that sort, though you do have a significant off-ramp (in terms of the products still in process) to help adjust to market shocks if necessary.

Instead of this kind of inventory-buffer plan common in Western economists' and analysts' assumptions, you have instead resilience in the relationships between you and your customer and the stability that confers. Because the supply chains are so long and complex between semiconductor manufacturers and their customers, it pays to keep good relations with your supplier (and with your customer). So account managers and supply planners are very careful not to cancel orders or adjust delivery dates so as to maintain that congenial relationship. This is the main lesson higher-ups learned from their time spent playing the Beer Game[1].

Source: worked in Infineon's logistics and supply chain department

[1] https://beergameapp.com/

Generally agree, but I think 2022 isn't the case of "consistent supply".

> good luck even coming close to specification of Infineon parts.

You don't have to meet or beat the vendor's expectations when you have the ability to build them in any manner you deem fit. Vertical integration shouldn't be about a direct 1:1 replacement of your vendors. It should be a 2-way street wherein your requirements adjust relative to your revised ambitions. In-house design cycles can allow cheaper and more rapid development so a lot of other levers become available to pull.

Also, power ICs aren't exactly requiring EUV tools, multi-patterning and other bleeding-edge manufacturing knowledge.

Oower ICs require a mostly seperate form of bleeding-edge manufacturing knowledge. Power electronics has been improving immensely over the last few decades, in large part due to such advances.

> you mean they used ocean freight on tiny light components (maybe hundred kg per 10K cars) to cut costs? :)

No… they used ocean freight because that’s how you ship assembled shit from China. This whole chip shortage thing is bullshit, it has nothing to do with the chips themselves, and everything to do with the cheap labor assembling hundreds of parts - many of them chips and electronics, but also not - into a single “part” to dodge import restrictions around how much of a car is made “foreign.” It’s insane how hard this is to communicate to people and how hard they’ve bought into the absolute bullshit.

That's not a "chip", it's a large power semiconductor.

Those things are somewhat boring commodity components, but the electric car people want them smaller and cheaper, which means more exotic technologies.

Looking for IGBTs on DigiKey shows a bad situation. Most of the availability is on "marketplace". DigiKey used to be entirely a primary distributor, dealing directly with manufacturers, stocking parts, and shipping them to buyers. Now they also have an eBay type operation where you can buy from sketchy resellers.

"wait time for IONIQ 5 buyers should be longer than one year."

Ouch.

> That's not a "chip", it's a large power semiconductor.

Still, a module like this[1] is kinda like an integrated circuit, ain't it?

Not saying that's the part mentioned in the story, but it's an IGBT from the same company.

[1]: https://www.richis-lab.de/BipolarA04.htm

Most discrete transistors are made with IC-like process and contain surprisingly intricate internal structures.

Especially "smart" transistors, like this[1] VN820-E[2]. Hard to argue that ain't an integrated circuit.

[1]: https://www.richis-lab.de/FET13.htm

[2]: https://www.st.com/en/automotive-analog-and-power/vn820-e.ht...

In any case, it probably doesn't contain features as small as found in modern CPUs.

When people talk about the "reliability" of EVs, I think that a hugely-overlooked aspect is the reliability of the supply chain (including engineering, design, and component supply). It's all very well having a fantastic design for a zero-emissions, comfortable, fast and efficient family vehicle, but it's not much use if it can't be made.

I'm very curious why this statement is so unpopular. It's demonstrably true, at the current moment.

Presumably because the supply chain problems have also been impacting non-EV vehicles. Peugeot last year had to switch back to analogue dashes on some models as the electronics for the fancy screens weren’t available.

At least that is an option for a non-EV! Maybe Hyundai should work on a mechanical or otherwise analogue motor controller.

Now you are thinking outside the box! why don't Hyundai just use a potentiometer to control the motor.

They can even make it go to 11 on the performance spec.

The main reason is that both EVs and ICE vehicles have complex supply chains that are currently being disrupted. It isn't like ICE vehicle's supply chains can't be disrupted like an EV supply chain, it is just disrupted by different things.

I ordered a Ford Maverick Hybrid last year in October. Things that have been constraining items for Ford in that last year: Spray in Bed Liner

Co-Pilot 360 (Blind spot monitoring and such which is on both regular gas vehicles and hybrids)

Luxury Package (Again available across both gas and hybrid, I believe because of heated seats)

Tonneau Cover (Again available across both gas and hybrid)

Mud Flaps

Overall EVs are mostly new vehicles, new vehicles tend to require new parts so the supply chains are younger and less robust. Older EVs such as the Chevy Bolt seem to be available right now.

All of the things you mention are electronics, which are at least (arguably) optional, or at least minimal, on an ICE.

I am not saying an ICE is a better idea. I'm saying that an EV is, by some definition, unreliable from the drawing board onwards.

To really put the cat among the pigeons - does this make it, in a practical sense, less sustainable?

Not all.

AFAIK the spray-in bedliner is a physical component.

Tonneau cover, depends on the model. Mine, there was a slight delay, but FWIW was a 'rolling' (i.e. no electronics) style.

Mud flaps, pretty sure are not electronic.

As another 'ancillary' item, wiring harnesses have been hard to come by, which has an impact on both ICE and EVs. Electronic, but not a silicon supply constrained component per se.

My bad, missed those.

My point still stands - a dependency on electronics, and especially cutting-edge electronics, makes you dependendent on a complex and fragile global ecosystem.

So does depending on anything with plastics or steel

Electronics are not minimal on an ICE. Sure on a very old diesel engine you could make that argument. But modern cars require a whole suite of electronics just for the engine to function. You have position sensors, engine controllers, air flow sensors, emissions sensors, CAN bus modules. Sure it is possible to make a vehicle without those but that vehicle will not be nearly as efficient as modern vehicles, won't run nearly as long, and people won't buy it.

Largely the main issue is reliability has nothing to do with it. It is all producibility. Currently every car company is struggling with producing vehicles ICE or EV. Nobody is asking is the Ford Bronco sustainable? Even though the wait time is longer than the Ioniq 5. Vehicles that people are not as excited about like the Prius or the Bolt are available right now.

You could make a perfectly usable ICE-powered vehicle from scratch in a blacksmith's forge, and indeed that's basically how the earliest ones were made.

Good luck doing that with an electric vehicle.

That isn't really a worthwhile path to go down. Since said vehicle would be barely functionable. If that is the threshold I can wrap copper wire to make my own electric motor and put thousands of potato batteries in parallel to connect to it. Then control speed by manually touching the wires together.

I believe the first EV might even predate the first ICE vehicle.

Reference: https://www.energy.gov/timeline/timeline-history-electric-ca....

https://www.carsguide.com.au/car-advice/who-invented-the-fir....

"Barely functional" in what sense?

The vehicle you could make with a "Black smiths forge" would be barely functional by todays standards. If your standard is something that converts stored energy into motion EVs and ICE takes similar levels of technology to implement. Which is why they were both invented around similar times.

>Which is why they were both invented around similar times.

The ease with which you can make oil-based fuels convert chemical energy into mecahnical motion, is the reason that EV development largely stopped until quite recently. Efficient EVs are the pinnacle of materials and electronics engineering.

It seems like just the opposite to me. The current wave of EVs are very early technologies that stem from neglecting the cost of batteries for a long time.

15-20 years from now, they'll likely look more like the pinnacle of engineering, but they are actually pretty crude right now.

> The current wave of EVs are very early technologies

The efficiencies of the various powertrain components are very high (eg, charging efficiency and motor controller efficiency). I really don't see how they can be improved by very much.

The main area of improvement is the battery.

>they are actually pretty crude right now

Interesting. I am assured that they are the latest and greatest in motorised transport!

> >they are actually pretty crude right now

> Interesting. I am assured that they are the latest and greatest in motorised transport!

These two concepts are not mutually exclusive.

In that case I'll hold off on buying an EV until these new, futuristic and not at all crude vehicles get made.

Hopefully by then, we'll have solved the problem of how to sustainably fuel both the manufacturing process and the fuelling of EVs.

Again, what are you defining as "barely functional"? What would they not do, what would be lacking?

Bear in mind that no-one cares about things like iPhone integration, reversing cameras, lane assist, or any of the other pointless crap that overcomplicates modern vehicles.

>That isn't really a worthwhile path to go down

It sure is. Given a year in my garage, I bet I can make a more useful, power-converting device from scratch using internal combustion tech than using electronics.

>I believe the first EV might even predate the first ICE vehicle.

I also believe that is true. What's old is new again - time to get rid of those "dinosuar tech" ICEs and move on to...the even older EV?

Somehow electric delivery trucks are the new hotness, yet here in the UK, (lead-acid powered) milk floats are also a symbol of a byegone age.

Given they were invented around the same time a combustion engine and electric motor take a similar level of technology to create. They require a certain level of machining and material sciences. The biggest changes that have occurred is in the "fuel" massive leaps have been made in oil refining and battery tech.

Getting any kind of performance and efficiency out of an electric motor requires a sophisticated controller, which is why development of EVs stalled for so long. Semiconductor tech has only recently progressed to a point that makes this viable. This says nothing of battery tech, which has also seriously lagged.

Even now, EVs barely compete on practically any metric with ICE cars (except tailpipe emissions) - in my opinion, the main drivers of market demand for EVs is marketing for the new shiny, and government regulation (at least here in the EU/UK. It will be illegal to manufacture an ICE, quite soon).

Electric motor controls have been around a very long time. That isn't to say they haven't gotten better but I would say the largest part of the motor controllers that requires sophistication is regenerative braking and such. But just controlling a motor speed has been around for many years, example hybrid electric trains, elevators, water pumps. Motor controllers were not the limiting factor for EVs it was battery tech. Not sure what metrics you are looking at but EVs cost less per mile to operate, accelerate faster, are quieter, and have lower maintenance. Those may not be the metrics you look for but saying EVs can't compete is ridiculous.

>Electric motor controls have been around a very long time.

Not in a format that is useful for EVs, there hasn't. Only recent developments in semiconductors have made it viable to design a motor controller that is very efficient across a broad range of torques and speeds, and is also lightweight and cheap enough for use in a small passengar vehicle.

>example hybrid electric trains, elevators, water pumps.

Those examples of controllers have almost nothing in common with modern EV controllers.

> Not sure what metrics you are looking at but EVs cost less per mile to operate, accelerate faster, are quieter, and have lower maintenance.

Let's have a look at those.

I am not convinced that the "cost per mile to operate" has been fully worked out over the full lifetime and ownership of an EV - we have yet to see how the overall economics of EV ownership will work out as they filter down the 2nd hand market chain.

We will also see how the cost of maintentance works out - EVs are not currently known for being reliable.

https://www.forbes.com/wheels/news/ev-reliability-varied-as-...

Accelerating quicker - well, that's fine, if you want to burn through battery, and mess around at the lights. It's also not too hard to find or modify a car to make it have more acceleration.

That just leaves quieter - which is an undeniable benefit, if only it were safe for multi-ton hunks of mobile metal to be silent. As it is, all the EVs I've seen have speaker-generated tones at low speeds.

That's certainly true for Newcomen's atmospheric engine, and possibly true for Watt's steam engine, but certainly not for an Otto cycle engine. You would at the very least need a lathe and mill to make the precision parts necessary.

Come to think of it, a video series about bootstrapping a 19th century machine shop from a 15th century blacksmith's shop would be extremely interesting.

Here we have an advantage, because we don't really need to make any precision components - we have millions of them just lying around.

>When people talk about the "reliability" of EVs

I haven never heard of somebody talking about the "reliability" of a car, or any other durable good, in reference to the reliability of its supply chain. Saying that a product has a fragile supply chain is not a valid counterargument to somebody touting its reliability.

"EVs have an especially fragile supply chain" could be a true statement on its own, but "EVs have a fragile supply chain, therefore they're unreliable" is only true if we use a different definition of "reliability" than people typically use in the context you gave.

Interesting thing to think about, eh? I think we are going through a permanent shift in the availability of electronic components, and this idea will become more widespread (that is, the reliability of supply chains),

Not really. Also using words in a different way than everyone else doesn't make you insightful, it makes you a bad communicator.

At the one hand you have a point. Semiconductor production can be quite specialized, and an accident at a fab can completely halt the production of certain products for years if not permanently. This is what happened to AKM[1] not long ago.

On the other hand it seems unlikely to me that auto manufactures would allow their portfolio to be so exposed. If this accident had been more like the AKM fire, I'm sure Kia would have found a replacement chip.

And as others have pointed out, it's not like modern ICEs can be made for sale without quite a lot of advanced electronics.

[1]: https://www.audioholics.com/news/fire-destroys-akm-audio-chi... (also see comment from "Matthew J Poes").

>On the other hand it seems unlikely to me that auto manufactures would allow their portfolio to be so exposed.

Yet here we are.

>it's not like modern ICEs can be made for sale without quite a lot of advanced electronics.

Indeed. We're all doomed.

> When people talk about the "reliability" of EVs, I think that a hugely-overlooked aspect is the reliability of the supply chain (including engineering, design, and component supply). It's all very well having a fantastic design for a zero-emissions, comfortable, fast and efficient family vehicle, but it's not much use if it can't be made.

This argument is only being made because widespread EV adoption is a new phenomenon and they are still a fraction of the market of ICE cars.

We could flip the tables around. Modern car engines are highly precise machines. If we were just starting to make them, they too would have enormous supply chain problems. Only a couple of companies would realistically be able to produce the components with the required tolerances and lifespan.

Once most cars on the road are EVs, we'll have plenty of suppliers.

And yes, EVs _are_ reliable. Orders of magnitude less components and even fewer moving parts. ICE vehicles require a whole chain supplying more stuff all the time, even for vehicles already on the road.

Oh, and don't get started on battery materials. We too thought that our oil reserves were not able to satisfy the demand of so many cars (not to mention other industries). We found new reserves and some that were not economically feasible became available, as technology (and demand) improved.

>This argument is only being made because widespread EV adoption is a new phenomenon and they are still a fraction of the market of ICE cars.

No, it's being made because the manufacture of an EV and all of its component parts requires advanced materials and processes from around the globe.

>We could flip the tables around. Modern car engines are highly precise machines. If we were just starting to make them, they too would have enormous supply chain problems. Only a couple of companies would realistically be able to produce the components with the required tolerances and lifespan.

Pfff. I could make an ICE engine in my shed, if I wanted to.

>And yes, EVs _are_ reliable. Orders of magnitude less components and even fewer moving parts.

The stats don't support this. Just because a component shouldn't move, doesn't make it reliable. This is, honestly, a silly argument - everyone knows that the most unreliable and costly part of their car these days is the electronics.

https://www.forbes.com/wheels/news/ev-reliability-varied-as-...

>Oh, and don't get started on battery materials. We too thought that our oil reserves were not able to satisfy the demand of so many cars (not to mention other industries). We found new reserves and some that were not economically feasible became available, as technology (and demand) improved.

True - but shows that EVs don't solve the "we're pulling huge amounts of resources out of the earth's crust" problem. Do you have any idea how much money is being made in the mining industry right now? My partner works in the industry. They don't know what to do with all of the money they are making.

"Chip" has become synonymous with integrated circuit, but the meaning was originally:

"In electronics, a chip is comprised of semiconductor material cut from a larger wafer of material that is only a few millimeters on one side. On this chip, a transistor or integrated circuit may be etched but only occupy one-thousandth of an inch of the chip’s surface."

Another variant of the original meaning is that chip is anything that can be surface mounted without additional mechanical support. Think "chip MLCC" or "chip resistor". The IBM's article on SLT seems to use "chip" in this meaning.

That's the same meaning. Multiple capacitor layer elements are simultaneously imprinted as an array on a relatively large sheet of foil, and then chipped into individual elements, like silicon chips are chipped from a wafer.

> wait time for IONIQ 5 buyers should be longer than one year

This is the case with many high-demand Hyundai/Kia vehicles right now (Sorento/Telluride/Stinger) that might not be EVs.

I considered trading in my current vehicle at the start of the year for a PHEV Sorento, but I don’t want to be stuck paying 7% APR if Bank of Canada continues to increase rates by the time of delivery.

They should have used MOSFETS instead of IGBT's for their power electronics...

IGBT's have pretty much been displaced as the best solution to any engineering problem now - so I'm very surprised they're being used in a new design. Tesla has eliminated IGBT's from their new designs since 2016/2017. I have a suspicion Hyundai might be trying to reuse designs from previous models...

There are plenty of suitable MOSFETs available to buy today, retail. Some silicon carbide MOSFETs and drivers are near drop in replacements. Minor design revisions would be needed, new software, and lots of drivetrain stuff would need to be retested. There wouldn't be any systems-level changes.

They cost a few cents extra, but compared to delaying release by 12 months, that doesn't seem like an issue.

I wonder if there are perhaps other delays, but pinning everything on these late IGBT's will be good fodder for the lawsuit about how much compensation Infineon owes for failure to deliver the ordered parts...?

Where can I get SiCFETs that costs cents more than IGBTs? Please share your source. IGBTs are still very popular in most power electronics designs - mostly due to cost, but if what you say is true, then that will change very quickly.

Considering this car is on a completely new platform I also assume there are technical reasons for it.

> Minor design revisions would be needed, new software, and lots of drivetrain stuff would need to be retested.

All of those changes would push a series release very far into the future. A "minor design revision" incurs a mountain of verification / validation / testing etc. It will be much cheaper and faster waiting for the components.

> They should have used MOSFETS instead of IGBT's for their power electronics

Can you elaborate on this?

My understanding has always been that MOSFET is more ideal for higher-speed, lower-voltage operation, while IGBT is better for low-speed, high-voltage operation.

This used to be the case, but recent advancements in mosfets has made them more suitable for voltages up to about 1000v.

The 'high speed' bit actually translates into more efficiency, less cooling, less weight, less cost, etc.

Thats because when designing any switched mode power supply, you need to decide on a switching speed. They might range from ~8kHz (in early EV's - they make a whine) to 2Mhz+ (used in phone chargers), and can be dynamic.

Every switch loses some energy, since while the switch is mid-switch ie. 'half on', it is having huge resistive losses. You therefore want each switch to be completed as fast as possible, and to do switching as infrequently as possible.

However, switching too infrequently has downsides. For a given motor inductance, if you switch less frequently, there will be more ripple current - ie. the current flow in a motor coil will rise while the switch is on, and fall when it is off, and if you turn the switch on and off less frequently, that rise and fall will be more. Ripple current reduces efficiency, because the power delivered to the wheels is proportional to the average current, but the losses are proportional to the instantaneous current squared - so ripple wants to be minimized.

The only other way to reduce ripple current is to increase the motor inductance - but that involves more metal in the motor core (heavy, expensive), and that also has other negative performance side effects.

So, in summary, system design is about balancing the desire for high switching speed (less ripple current therefore more efficiency) with a low switching speed (fewer switches therefore fewer losses during switching). Since MOSFETS can switch faster, the losses involved with each switch are lower, so they can use a higher frequency and reduce ripple current, less iron in the motor core, less weight, less cooling in both the motor and drive electronics, and generally better all round.

Apart from cost. They cost more. But the cost is usually outweighed by the savings in all the other systems of less cooling, smaller motor core, higher efficiency therefore smaller battery, smoothing capacitors can be smaller.

> There are plenty of suitable MOSFETs available to buy today, retail. Some silicon carbide MOSFETs and drivers are near drop in replacements. Minor design revisions would be needed, new software, and lots of drivetrain stuff would need to be retested. There wouldn't be any systems-level changes. > They cost a few cents extra, but compared to delaying release by 12 months, that doesn't seem like an issue.

Replacing such an important component in the car is totally a 12 month+ endeavor. Validations and tests are long, long things. Unless you're Tesla, and are grabbing whatever you can find in the nearest BestBuy and put that in the car that day.

They should (and I expect they do) totally start work on alternatives, but that very likely won't bring them to market faster.

Does the much higher voltage compared to Tesla affect component choice?

Semiconductor manufacturing is such a tenuous proposition. This is why we simply cannot rely entirely on one vendor/process to make all our chips.

Vertical integration on simpler process nodes seems like a good idea if you are going to be in the business of making electric cars. To me, IGBT manufacturing for EVs is equivalent to building the valve train for an engine.

You have to have control over the fundamental aspects of your business or you are just a hat riding on top of someone else’s.

Back in the old days we had qualified second sources for all parts that went into engineering. In fact it was part of the design specification not to rely on one vendor. That put some limitations on what was possible as it pushed the technology back around ten years behind state of the art, but it did not in any way subtract from what we were delivering. Mostly because we actually could deliver it...

That's because the US military required it. Electronics and component reliability was so terrible that they started naming and shaming by publishing reports about exactly how each part was total crap. It showed industry that everyone else was making garbage, and that the military would pay for quality. Add in the second source rule, and suddenly everyone is in the business of making better quality parts.

Nowadays, there are additional market forces that drive higher quality. Technology also advanced beyond what you could do with discrete components and simple building block ICs. So the cost-benefit scales tipped towards allowing single source.

> You have to have control over the fundamental aspects of your business or you are just a hat riding on top of someone else’s.

Amazon Microsoft Google are hats riding on top of CPU vendors.

And these hats, honestly speaking, are doing much better than semis.

This also affects Kia EV6 as they mostly the same car. Which other cars are affected?

https://www.genesis.com/worldwide/en/models/luxury-suv-genes...

I don't know if the other models are affected but here are are some wiki links to their platform.

The Genesis GV60 is a battery electric compact luxury crossover SUV produced by Genesis, a luxury vehicle marque of Hyundai. Slotted below the GV70, it is the first Genesis product to be developed on the Hyundai Electric Global Modular Platform (E-GMP).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis_GV60

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyundai_Electric_Global_Modula...

Hyundai plan to release 23 battery electric vehicles, including 11 exclusively electric vehicles, using the E-GMP platform.

  Models released:
    Hyundai Ioniq 5 (NE) (2021–present)
    Hyundai Ioniq 6 (CE) (2022–present)
    Kia EV6 (CV) (2021–present)
    Genesis GV60 (JW) (2021–present)

  Upcoming models:
    Kia EV4 (anticipated to launch in 2022)[13]
    Kia EV9 (anticipated to launch in 2023)[14][15]
    Hyundai Ioniq 7 (anticipated to launch in 2024)[14][16]

The GV60 appears to be special because "The Crystal Sphere is one of the most compelling design elements of the GV60. It is not only an aesthetic element of the interior design, but it is also built to create an emotional connection between the driver and the vehicle."

So I had to look up this "Crystal Sphere" and it's just a funny shift knob that spins around when turned on. Okay.

My wife and I just agreed to put our deposit down so we can join the 2-year waiting list to get one of these cars. It's honestly just such a great vehicle for the price point it's at.

Guess it'll be 3 years then.

What are you driving in the meantime?

What makes it a great vehicle for you?

I’m in the market for a non-Tesla EV and found this to just be a mediocre car from price and features.

Best value EV is probably the Volkswagen ID.4 (or even the Bolt if you want smaller car).

Curious who these people are sinking tons of cash into over-priced, non-Tesla EVs.

Even with a $7500 fed tax credit AND some get up to $2500 for state, a complete rip-off vehicle for price.

This doesn’t even include the dealer shenanigans, more expensive trims (with some almost essential features), and “market adjustments” markups.

I guess it looks cheap compared to Tesla — but it’s not at all.

The killer feature here is the recharge time, compared to the ID4 it will charge a similar amount in 20 mins vs 40 mins. That adds up on road trips.

Its also more powerful, and has better tech (buggy/laggy infotainment is a common complaint on the ID4).

> mediocre car from price and features.

> over-priced, non-Tesla EVs.

> a complete rip-off vehicle for price.

> I guess it looks cheap compared to Tesla — but it’s not at all.

You seem to have an axe to grind. What are you comparing to? The ID4 is a couple grand cheaper at best. The model Y would have been $20,000 more expensive than my IONIQ5 (AWD, SEL model) if you include the federal tax credit.

Put very simply: Edmunds, the experts on cars, give the ID.4 an 8.2, and the Ioniq 5 an 8.3. They're both great cars.

Here's a review comparing the two. https://insideevs.com/reviews/586981/hyundai-ioniq-5-vw-id4-...

The one place the ID.4 wins is performance. If you want a fun drive, it's better. But that's not high on my list. Any EV is going to be more fun to drive than my ten year old Honda Civic. But the rest, the Hyundai wins the day.

Edit: also you're presuming I'm American and have your country's tax breaks, etc. Not the case, thankfully.

>The one place the ID.4 wins is performance.

"We picked the slower car." LOL

they talk about slow laggy UI, but dont mention frequent crashes and freezes still present full year from introduction

These were going for about 2K over in the new england area. I got mine for just a smidge over MSRP in July. With the $2500 MA rebate and federal rebate it's a good deal. Plus it's a fun car to drive and the charging is fast.

We've been waiting for our Ioniq 5 Ultimate since our order in Q3 2021...latest from them is that it'll come in "late 2023." 2 years seems optimistic at this point–and dealers have no idea, nor do they communicate about what that means–will I get a 2023 model or the old one?– it's an awfully run program, which is a shame because the car is pretty nice. I just don't think they'll deliver it in even the quoted 2023 timeframe at this point.

We ended up ordering a Model Y as a hedge and it came three weeks later.

p.s – Just an FYI that the waitlist is actually closed right now, so if a dealer takes your money to put you on the waitlist I'd question if that's what's actually happening. My local dealer is taking the downpayment and promising to put people on the waitlist when it reopens–so it'll be two years from whenever THAT actually is.

There is going to be a huge gap in used cars for the years 2020-2022 (at least).

The good news is that ICE cars have gotten so good that the ones made before then can last for a very long time.

I have no idea about the IONIQ 5 in terms of performance.I cannot afford it but boy is it a cool futuristic looking car. Love the design and the looks .

My neighbor bought one last month (after selling his Tesla 3) and let me drive it. It's nice, nothing ostentatious, definitely not performance-oriented. Quiet. Nice amount of space inside for a crossover, and I suppose it's just a Tuscon with different sheet metal outside. The dash, steering column, and cabin controls felt more conventional than the Tesla "nothing but an iPad" thing which was nice.

igbt is the cheap old way…

They could use SuperJunction Si or better SiC mosfets…

I would not buy an ev made of igbt…

    Since July 11th, 23 out of 56 stolen cars have been Kia/Hyundais models 2021 and older, that use keys to start," the police department posted on Twitter. "Anyone with a KIA/Hyundai that uses a key, please #lockitup."

This sounds like it is about older models? What is the relationship with this news? Just the brand?

Kia Boyz, trivial to hotwire

>“Stealing the SUVs is easy as 1-2-3,” according to step-by-step directions on YouTube and TikTok.

>Thieves tear out the steering column and use a simple USB cable to start the ignition. This affects Kia models from 2011 to 2021 and Hyundai models from 2015 to 2021. Both companies say 2022 vehicles have been modified to prevent this.

This issue does not affect push-button models. Just ones with keys. The Hyundai Ioniq is a push-button vehicle.

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