EPS with active steering for 24V commercial vehicles

As a supplier of semiconductor and system solutions, Infineon is constantly improving itself by producing innovative and efficient solutions. The market trends of CAV (commercial construction and agriculture vehicles) requires increasing eco-friendly products with environmentally friendly solutions. Especially, for commercial construction and agriculture vehicles that need to operate at the highest possible availability and the lowest possible total cost of ownership (TCO).    

Driving assistant systems is expected to increase even more in the CAV market, especially for reducing the risk of accident, reaching efficient consumption, and better TCO for commercial vehicles.  Even the political regulations will have a determined influence on the future of mobility. The upcoming CO2 emissions regulations have a strong impact on commercial vehicles, such as buses, trucks, and forklift. 

Electrification of loads and higher voltages are needed as a contribution to a better and greener world. Hence, the new steering for CAV are motivated by major 3 trends: CO2 reduction, upcoming level3 and level4 automated driving stages, as well as recommendation for costs of insurance (because safer cars will have higher insurance costs). These three factors call for more technical optimizations. China, USA or all European regions are affected by these trends and will inevitably implement new electronic-based system solution.

The advantages of EHPS (Electro-hydraulic power steering) for CO2 reduction is important. It provides the demand-oriented amount of oil and pressure that is required to operate the hydraulic steering systems of industrial vehicles on demand.

According to these trends, Infineon delivers for all requirements the perfect fitting products by delivering the following system variants (see graph below).

ECU1/ level 0-1: EHPS - Pure electro-hydraulic steering benefits (basic and variable EHPS)

• Fuel savings of 0,9 to 1,2%
• CO2 reduction of 6 to 11g /km

At the same time, as using limited sensors, basic EHPS has lower safety requirements compared to more complex steering systems. Due to the need of more automated drive level 2 and higher, the EHPS and full EPS is and will be state of the art.

ECU2/ level 2: EPS with active steering benefits

• Using EHPS (Electro-Hydraulic Power Steering) for base functionality
• Adding 1x 3ph motor to generate torque overlay
• Motivation: reduced accident and insurance costs, active lane keep assist

Level 3-5: Fail-operational EPS benefits

• Full fault-tolerant steering
• Different variants in design
• Variants using hydraulic power
• Variants using electric-only power steering
• Synergies with fault-tolerant EPS for cars
• Motivation: highly automated trucks: level3, level4

Discover the right products and resources you need to start your EPS with fail-operational steering for highly automated commercial vehicles.

This whitepaper will introduce the major trends for the commercial, construction, and agricultural vehicles (CAV) vehicles. Infineon’s solutions for fuel efficiency, lower emissions, safety, and connectivity will revolutionize the automated driving market.

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