Keynote: Quality and Innovation - The Drivers for Modern Automotive Electronics

Ulrich Abelein (Audi)

Abstract

The field of automotive electronics went through an impressive change over the last 20 years. Starting from a purely mechanical system with some electric parts a modern vehicle turned into one of the most complex mobile electronic devices used today in our modern society. Electronics made cars safer, greener, more comfortable and easier to handle. Most innovations we have seen in vehicles over the last decade were either directly or indirectly enabled by electronics.

This development lead to completely new challenges for the automobile industry. Electronics knowledge became a core competence for a car maker and semiconductors have a essential influence on overall quality targets. Treating innovation and quality as a unity is therefore absolutely necessary for the use of state-of-the-art technologies in automotive applications.

The megatrends of the upcoming decade will even intensify these effects further. Car-to-X solutions, advanced driver assistance systems or e-mobility are just some examples of upcoming functions based on a highly integrated electronic systems. The realization of such complex systems under automotive conditions makes it necessary to move the unity of innovation and quality to the next level.

This talk will give an overview of the challenges and chances of modern automotive electronics. It will highlight the general boundary conditions of the automobile industry with respect to electronics and their consequences for semiconductor development, qualification and manufacturing. Furthermore some new approaches to deal with current and future tasks in the field of high quality automotive electronics will be sketched.

Curriculum Vitae

Ulrich Abelein is responsible for semiconductor quality and failure analysis within the AUDI AG. His responsibilities include the Audi semiconductor failure analysis lab and the strategic development of the fields of qualification and quality strategies for automotive semiconductors as well. He studied microelectronics and economics at the Technial University of Munich and the University of Hagen respectively.

2003 he joined the group of Prof. Eisele at the University of the Federal Armed Forces in Neubiberg/Munich. There he worked in the in the field of novel device concepts on silicon and process technology development. In 2008 he took over his current position at the AUDI AG.