An Austrian collaborative project involving Silicon Austria Labs, Infi­neon Tech­nolo­gies Austria, and AVL List has developed innovative solutions for modern high-voltage and low-voltage vehicle electrical systems, enabling more compact, reliable and fault-tolerant electrical systems for future electric vehicles. After a two-year run, the REDSEL research project was successfully completed, focusing on developing a redundant high-voltage/low-voltage electrical system architecture that enables a flexible and fail-safe power supply in electric vehicles and makes it possible to eliminate the need for the traditional low-voltage battery in electric cars in the long term.

“The tech­nolo­gies we’ve devel­oped lay the ground­work for lighter and more robust vehicle elec­trical systems, thereby making a signif­i­cant contri­bu­tion to the advance­ment of elec­tric mobility — all the way to future autonomous appli­ca­tions,” said Albert Frank, project leader at Silicon Austria Labs.

At the core of REDSEL is a redundant system architecture with active load balancing between two high-voltage batteries, ensuring even load distribution and significantly increasing operational reliability. This is complemented by the development of a power electronics converter with multiple inputs that, due to an innovative magnetic integration concept, is particularly compact, efficient and space-saving. Technologically, the project used the newest semiconductor solutions: on the high-voltage side, 750V silicon carbide MOSFETs (CoolSiC™) were used, and on the low-voltage side, 30V OptiMOS-7 devices were employed for the first time, offering significant efficiency advantages over previous 40-V solutions, with improved electrical system specifications in modern electric vehicles enabling the safe use of these early development prototypes.

In addition, a new safety architecture for switching and shutdown functions was developed, replacing mechanical relays with semiconductor switches, thereby increasing reliability, reducing required installation space and weight, and enhancing the system's operational safety. 

“REDSEL is an excel­lent example of how new, inno­v­a­tive system solu­tions can emerge through collab­o­ra­tion between acad­emic and indus­trial part­ners. The system demon­strator devel­oped for the project impres­sively demon­strates how new vehicle elec­trical archi­tec­ture can be imple­mented more safely and scal­able in the future,” empha­sizes Ernst Katz­maier, project leader at Infi­neon Tech­nolo­gies Austria.

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