48V Issues and Prospects

Unlocking the Opportunities 2017-2025

DUBLIN, Jan. 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

The "48V Issues and Prospects: Unlocking the Opportunities - 3rd Edition" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

48V - a key automotive technology of the 2020s

48V is clearly going to be a very important technology in the coming decade. Some senior OEM executives say it should be one of those fundamental technologies that should be adopted by all ICE vehicles in the future.

Key benefits for 48V are that it is is a system that augments combustion engines to reduce fuel consumption, reduces particulate emissions in diesels and improves the driver experience by increasing the responsiveness of the vehicle.

48V systems can help OEMs deliver most of the reductions in CO2 emisisons required by regulations at a fraction of the cost of full electrification - a real benefit in a world of political uncertainty about the future of EV subsidies - and without having to tackle the barriers to adoption (such as range and cost) thrown up by more fully electric solutions.

What this report offers

The report offers insight into the opportunities and challenges offered by the development of 48V Power Supply Systems for automotive OEMs, established suppliers and potential new entrants.

It looks at new systems and new applications that are enabled by higher voltage power systems - and the ripple effects on electrical and electronic architectures and feature configurations that could follow.

48V systems will get better

There is a lot of room for improvement in the technology, according to two leading engineering consultants familiar with the area:

Jason McConnell, Business Unit Director at IAV Automotive Engineering:

People are looking to integrate technologies, putting the battery, power electronics from the inverter and the DC-DC converter in one box so you've got less cabling. 48V technologies can be adopted over a large number of vehicles; there's definitely reusability and scalability in most designs.

Tomasz Salamon, Engineering Operations Manager for Hybrid and Electric Systems at Ricardo: Eventually we'll see more components going to 48V, which gives you smaller and more-efficient electrical components and more power capability.

And these benefits will be enhanced by scale effects.

Rudolf Stark, head of the Hybrid Electric Vehicle Business Unit at Continental has said that his company expects good market penetration across all vehicle segments, from A to D. That, he says, will bring large quantities of the technology to market and ensure cost-effective production.