E-mobility

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High efficiency through optimized vehicle software

E-mobility is all about maximum efficiency. Expensive and heavy batteries must be utilized in the best possible way, making vehicle development a balancing act between optimized power management and user comfort. On the software side, this mainly means handling large volumes of measurement data. OEMs and suppliers need the right tools to collect, visualize, and process them.

The illustration depicts a stylized, futuristic car surrounded by people and diagrams.

While a classic combustion engine requires measurements from a few cylinders, electric car batteries have 200 or more cells that must be analyzed and compared simultaneously. This highlights the growing demands on measurement, validation, and calibration systems with the shift to electric vehicles. Sophisticated energy management systems are now essential, as battery capacity is limited by weight and cost while still meeting high comfort and performance standards.

New challenges in electric vehicle development

Software is at the core of electric vehicles. OEMs and suppliers with legacy systems from conventional vehicles often face these challenges:

Managing complex components

Sophisticated components (batteries, electric drives) with complex functionalities require new features for measurement and visualization.

Energy efficiency

There is a high need for solutions to optimize the energy distribution in thermal, drive, electrical, and charging systems.

Cost efficiency

Sales opportunities and profitability of electric vehicles depend above all on reducing battery costs while maintaining or even increasing their range.

Flexible solutions for all drivetrains

Illustration of a developer in front of a virtual car

Our ETAS vehicle experts support your individual journey

Whether hybrid, electric, or hydrogen drive, ETAS solutions are suitable for all modern drivetrain types with high requirements regarding their software and hardware development process. We offer you a holistic package: INCA tools for calibration, diagnostics, and validation, ETAS MDA (measure data analyzer) for visualization, analysis, and documentation of measurement data, ASCET for model-based application software development, and the ETAS Analytics toolbox (EATB) for easy reporting.

“Finding the perfect balance between range and service life to get the most out of a battery is a matter of calibration. Our solutions address this challenge.”

Klaus Grabmaier, Technical Architect Measurement & Calibration at ETAS

A deep dive into our development tools

Designing new functions

image shows a graphic that explains how to design new features for emobility by using ETAS software and hardware

Electric motors require high-speed control functions because the torque produced follows current directly. This means that time behavior has become more important in development, prototyping, and testing. ETAS provides a variety of solutions for new function design, which fullfill these requirements:

Rapid prototyping

The rapid prototyping approach facilitates cycle times of down to 200 μs. This makes it the ideal solution for fast control cycles of electrical machines.

Software engineering

The ASCET software development is designed specifically for vehicle systems with real-time constraints. ASCET covers state-oriented programming for battery management and supports many important development standards such as ISO 26262, as well as the creation of AUTOSAR software components, making it a holistic approach for all e-mobily use cases.

Calibration

Direct and fast ECU access via INCA-MCE (measurement and calibration embedded/fast ECU access) provides an innovative solution for fast measurement and calibration. It enables a direct connection between the ECU test bench and calibration tools, with 400 times faster calibration cycles compared to conventional approaches using the ASAP3 interface. This speed advantage maximizes the potential of new, dynamic calibration methods, substantially minimizing calibration times. Simultaneously, the HEV test system load decreases through fast reponses when limit values are exceeded.

Dynamic environment

The development of new drives takes place in a dynamic environment with constantly changing requirements. Additional flexibility and the easy extension of the development environment with specialized, low-complexity software are becoming more and more important. HEV projects require a high degree of interdisciplinary collaboration. Results from various development environments must often be integrated for testing on a single platform. Therefore, openness to all important standards is an important prerequisite. ETAS tools offer this openness.

Automotive software development tools must always be considered within the context of the overall system. When developing complex systems, tools must be modified to meet specific requirements. With its application and engineering services (AES), ETAS supports the optimization of the embedded software development process and offers services in defining, implementing, and operating customer-specific solutions. Our development tools have a proven track record in hybrid drives, HiL testing of electric motors, battery management, and ECU networks.

Measurement solution

The ETAS measurement solution effectively measures voltages in high-voltage electrical systems of hybrid and electric vehicles while ensuring a high level of safety through electrical isolation close to the measuring point. By combining probes with versatile modules such as the ES411, ES415, or ES441, it provides a flexible measurement instrument tailored to high-voltage applications and suitable for use in vehicles. Seamless integration with the ETAS measurement system and INCA delivers an efficient solution for measuring voltages during the calibration and validation of electrical drive ECUs.

Applications

Typical applications are the measurement of voltages on the traction battery, on individual cells of the traction battery, or on intermediate circuits. For instance, voltage measurements can determine the battery charge condition, its behavior under load, oscillations in the high-voltage on-board power supply, or the targeted discharge of the battery in safety-critical situations independently of the ECU. In combination with synchronous current measurements, the power consumption of consumers on the on-board power supply can be determined.

Integration into the measurement and calibration system

The ES415 module provides four measurement channels with configurable measuring rates of up to 100 kHz each. It detects the connected probe type and automatically adapts its measuring range for each channel. The measuring range and the probe characteristics are transferred to the measurement software, where the correct physical measurement value is automatically displayed.

In the measurement system, several ES411 modules may be linked to each other or to other measurement modules of the ES4xx series. ES4xx measurement modules are supported by INCA. Using an XCP interface, the ES4xx modules and the isolating measurement probes can be integrated into measurement tools of third-party suppliers. ES4xx measurement modules can be connected directly to the host PC using Ethernet. Alternatively, the measurement modules may be connected to the ECU and bus interface modules ES592, ES593-D, or ES595. The measurement modules are synchronized with each other and with ES59x modules with microsecond accuracy. Voltage changes in the high-voltage system are measured by INCA synchronously to the ECU internal measurements and signals of vehicle buses (FlexRay, CAN, LIN).

Flexible configurations

The CBN400 and CBN401 cables come with four one meter long measurement lines each. Upon request, ETAS offers customer-specific variants with one, two, or three probes and different line lengths.

Mastering complexity

The graphic depicts how ETAS tools offer support in mastering the complexity in software development for electric vehicles

Especially for HEVs, overall systems are becoming more complex. Many functions are distributed across an ECU network. In addition, there are more and more functions which operate across drive, transmission, and brake system components. Mastering this complexity is becoming a competitive advantage. The following ETAS tools offer support:

INTECRIO

With INTECRIO, software components can be connected with each other. The entire function can be validated without hardware in a virtual environment. Together with the high-performance, modular rapid prototyping system ES900 tests with real sensors, actors and ECU networks are possible within the lab and the vehicle.

ASCET

The ASCET tool family for model- and state-based software development, simulation, and automated code generation supports HEV developers through reusability of existing components, definition of real-time behavior, and compliance with automotive standards such as ISO 26262.

RTA, RTE

Used in millions of applications, the RTA operating system, which complies with the AUTOSAR runtime environment standard, offers a robust development solution – especially given increasingly complex ECU coding required in areas such as HEV.

INCA

The distribution of functions on various ECUs also increases the complexity of calibration. The measuring, calibration, and diagnosis tools of the INCA tool family offer numerous possibilities to master this complexity. INCA makes it possible to display and process various calibration labels distributed across different ECUs as well as vehicle bus communication data on one surface. Management of different ECUs such as access over different busses and protocols is abstracted. This streamlines the calibration process, providing a decisive benefit, in particular when working with HEV functions. The same labels can also be measured and calibrated synchronously on different ECUs, substantially enhancing data security.

Rapid function development

New functions for the electric drive train must be developed quickly and reliably. This applies to individual components such as the closed-loop control of the electric motor, the battery and thermal management, but also to the common drive management of gearbox, electric motor, and combustion engine with start-stop operation, recuperation, and power-boost (hybrid management). In addition to many approved solutions, ETAS offers a lot of innovations:

EHOOKS
EHOOKS is a method for external and internal bypass concepts facilitating the flexible and easy insertion of hooks into existing software states without changing software source code.

Pre-calibration
With Simulink®-INCA coupling (INCA-SIP) or open XCP interface for simulation PC (INCA-SCX), INCA can be used via appropriate interfaces as consistent experiment and calibration surface and to carry out calibrations on the virtual model before the respective hardware is available. Developed data records can be reused in the following calibration steps.

Cybersecurity in e-mobility

The shift to electric cars requires a conversion of the E/E architectures and, above all, new connectivity options, for example for charging stations or OTA updates. However, these are also new entry points for unauthorized software or cyberattacks, requiring a new security concept for vehicles. ETAS provides flexible state-of-the-art solutions for these new challenges, and an expert team for individual approaches for all use cases.