Automotive News Europe - March 2020 - 21

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Peter Schiefer
How widespread are Infineon technologies in hybrid and full-electric cars?
We are the market leader in electrifying cars. In 2018, 15 out of the top
20 biggest selling plug-in hybrid and
electric cars used our power technology and products. In automated driving, we are very strong in radar technology and two out of three 77 GHz
(gigahertz) radar sensor chips sold
come from Infineon.
Infineon is very active in cybersecurity. How real is the hacking threat?
The connected car of the future will become a comprehensive mobile device in
the IoT (internet of things) environment.
This means cars become attractive
as a business case for cyberattacks.
Cybersecurity is a must have with digital mobility. It creates and builds trust
for the customer.

Peter Schiefer
❚ Infineon Automotive
Division President
❚ 54
❚ Started current
job in 2016

hat are your main challenges?
Preparing the technologies and
manufacturing capacity required for
electrified, automated, secure connected driving. Currently, the automotive
market is weak and also hard to predict
due to general economic and political uncertainty. Therefore, the biggest
challenge is predicting the market cycle
and adjusting to it. The good news for
us is that even if the number of cars
sold stagnates, the electronic content
will continue to increase because there
are several structural growth drivers.
The biggest of these are electrification
and automated cars.
Who are Infineon's customers?
Typically, they are Tier 1 companies developing the electronics systems sold to
automakers. But we often have the opportunity to talk directly with automakers so that we understand future technology trends very early on.

MARCH 2020

What is the value of the semiconductor content in the average family car?
About $355 (322 euros). This excludes
the combustion engine. If you include a
classical combustion engine this adds
another $62. If it's a so-called mild hybrid you add another $114, which puts
the semiconductor value up to about
$530. In a full hybrid or plug-in hybrid,
with their bigger electric motors, the
semiconductor content is much higher,
a total of $785. It is about $775 for a
battery-electric car.

"Cybersecurity is
a must have with
digital mobility.
It creates and builds
trust for the customer."

Will quantum computing make hacking easier or more likely?
Quantum computing has much more
processing bandwidth and we need to
assume that in the future this technology will enable much more powerful attacks. Therefore, Infineon is working on
new cryptographic algorithms and their
implementation on embedded devices
with limited processing power.
What's your timeline on the roll out of
autonomous cars?
Our forecast that there will be 4 million
cars at (SAE) Level 4 or 5 automated
driving in 2030 has not changed because we started with a more conservative approach. When it comes to Level
2 and 3, we have a slightly different
perspective now. We had thought that
by 2025 there would be about 3 million
Level 3 cars sold but given the complexity we have reduced that to 1.5 million
by 2025. On the other hand, we see an
additional trend emerging that we call
Level 2 plus. At this level, it is all about
adding more radar sensors and camera
modules including their respective data
processing power. This is a big opportunity for us.
-- Olive Keogh

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Automotive News Europe - March 2020

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