Thanks to its innovative sensor for electric motors,
EFI Automotive wins a major tender for the Volkswagen group and continues its collaboration with the world’s leading automotive companies. After about ten years of research and development, EFI Automotive’s teams have developed a new electronic sensor for electric motors. Thanks to this innovation, the group won a major tender from the German car manufacturer Volkswagen. This long-standing EFI Automotive customer was impressed by the advantages of this new technology: “The sensor we have developed is unique on the market and offers many advantages,” explains Olivier Brunel, E-mobility & Strategic development Market Manager: “It is more robust than a conventional solution in the face of the many disturbances present in an electric motor such as electromagnetic fields for example; it is extremely accurate since it allows the rotation of the motor to be measured to within 0.1 degrees, and finally, it can be very easily assembled and dismantled, which is of particular interest to a car manufacturer like Volkswagen. »
Close collaboration with the manufacturer
Once the tender was won, the EFI Automotive team worked closely with the German group. The project had about ten people on the EFI side: from the design engineer to the purchasing manager, including the quality expert, the industrial expert and of course the project manager who acts as conductor and link with his counterparts at Volkswagen. It involved almost as many people as there were trades. “These are people we know well because we have been working with them for more than twenty years,” explains Olivier Brunel, “we had to meet very demanding specifications and meet the standards of all the Group’s brands. »
The first stage takes place internally, with the construction of a model and the first tests on EFI Automotive’s own benches in Lyon. Once validated, the part is developed as an “A” prototype and sent to the customer who in turn tests it on his own installations. Depending on the results of the tests and developments, the part is declined in version B then C until the final version is validated by both partners. The customer can then start industrialization. “During the project, our biggest work focused on the electronic chip,” explains Olivier Brunel, “it allowed us to obtain quite remarkable results in terms of measurement accuracy, an essential factor in the case of electric motors.” All the exchanges and round trips lasted about 18 months.
A project that supports a booming electricity market
For the major car manufacturers, the transition to hybrid and all-electric powertrains is accelerating. EFI Automotive is now reaping the benefits of several years of investment in research and development on electric motors.
