Hello,

NXP has preannounced an interesting BMS "satellite" chip that manages up to 18 cells, with cell voltage measurement accuracy of 1mV, an integrated shunt amplifier for current measurement, and a seemingly weak, per cell, integrated bleedoff-style per-channel cell balancer. A nice, overkill, automotive temperature range and has all the certs.

Seems great for those of you that are building EV packs sustainably - in sustainable modules versus poor second-life-friendly cell to pack and cell to chassis packaging. A cell package is not cheap if it goes from the EV to the shredder and fails to subsidize cell/module/pack replacement through resale into a second life usage, keeping the serviceable EV itself out of the shredder.

Satellites on your up to 90V battery modules are interconnected via a proprietary transformer-coupled "TPL link, which uses differential sinewaves to encode what is essentially an SPI bus. No word on budgetary pricing.

Also in today's articles mix is an AI coprocessor you can add to bring AI into your system and Bil Wong covers when to take a public domain RTOS into a commercially sourced/supported fork.

There's a controversial blog I wrote on copper tariffs where I call on the automotive industry, in particular (it affects all of us in EE), to shoot it down. Looking into it objectively, the reasons I conclude that the tariffs are being imposed are pretty ugly and you can probably sense that in my writing. Hard to suppress emotion when you're only half-Vulcan.

As we had discussed in last Thursday's AENL, automotive is using a lot of RF these days, and whether it's tire pressure monitors, keyfobs, or playing tunes off an occupant's phone, RF can't happen without an antenna. Included is a piece from our sister publication, Microwaves and RF, about antenna design.

Let's see what I can find for you on antennas in the Electronic Design archives that looks interesting...

enjoy,

-andyT