Electric vehicles (EV) use two different power systems; a high-voltage battery (200 to 450 VDC) for traction and a low-voltage (12 V) one for supplying all the electric appliances in the vehicle. Traditionally the low-voltage battery was charged from the alternator, but in today's vehicles it gets its power from the high-voltage battery pack. However, in specific electric car architectures, this low voltage battery should be ready to help recharge the high-voltage battery pack in order to provide energy for cranking the car. This means that the on-board DC-DC converter must be bi-directional and very efficient as well as highly reliable in order to run the complex control algorithms needed to ensure an energy-efficient solution.
Our products and solutions
ST has a wide offer of discrete semiconductors including AEC-Q101 qualified IGBTs and both silicon and silicon-carbide (SiC) MOSFETs and diodes, AEC-Q100 qualified galvanically isolated IGBT and MOSFET gate drivers and SPC5 32-bit automotive microcontrollers to enable scalable, cost-effective and energy-efficient solutions for implementing these challenging converters.
