Preparing my presentation slides before the September USA Automotive IESF conference I reviewed what EV car producers were producing and saying they would produce. I wanted to re-examine the attraction of the Capital tool suite for systems/electrical engineers who are designing architectures, Electrical Distribution Systems (EDS) and manufacturing optimizations
It depends of course on how you define “electric” and “car” and “company” what the numbers are of new entrants to the market in the last 5 years. Conservatively that’s about 250 world-wide. You may find higher estimates on-line. Let’s not debate whether a joint venture is actually a new company, or if a battery company’s reference platform is actually designing a car to take to market. The significant thing to ponder is how many ventures are new in the last 18 months, and how the longer-established automakers are heavily investing ahead of expected rapid market expansion although in many countries less than 1% of new passenger vehicle sales are electric. It is gratifying, but not surprising so many of these startup companies have engaged with Mentor to provide them with electrical platform design tools.
What’s in it for you? Tools ready for the Electric Vehicle Environment
Capital has a unified environment covering design to manufacturing. It is unique in affording a platform level view of the vehicle design. A systems architectural phase of design data begets a detailed realization of those high level plans. Simulations and validations are performed in-situ, and because Capital is a technology platform constructed with supplier partner collaboration in mind, in so far as device documentation inputs are used, multiple user access and transfer of data at different phases is facilitated. I looked in my research to ascertain was what parts of the solution appealed most to the EV startup sector. I found Capital matching the concerns and requirements characteristics of the new customers designing the next generation of electric powered vehicles. I’m confident that through delivering model based systems engineering fitting a need to virtualize EV companies’ product and validate the entire platform Capital will continue to be a success in the next 10 years like it has in the last 10. It will save weeks or months of additional design time
Contemporary Electrical Distribution System concerns of an EV startup company.
http://go.mentor.com/4VKxF is link from the IESF conference. Watching and listening to Ulrike Hoff’s presentation is like a dispatch from the front line of developing electrical designs for EV cars. It is news from a practitioner who is resolving engineering problems. Last year at IESF I remarked that many EV customers were shy of revealing in public how they worked and what issues they were overcoming. I believe openly discussing the challenges and rewards of software automation for electrical design in automation is a win-win for participants. Sharing experience of best practices to implement a module of software, or some features and functions doesn’t reveal a competitive advantage – it helps you understand how to do more with fewer people at required quality and do it faster. That’s something all startup companies want to do.
Startup Electric Car companies have specific needs for software tools other companies do not have.
Making productive use of the right vehicle electrical platform design tool.
Sometimes it is an over-simplification to use simple models. But hey, this a blog not a PhD thesis so here comes a 3 legged stool. Startup EV companies face challenges and opportunities that R&D groups of long established Automotive OEM’s don’t. Designing an electric vehicle in a company that has made gasoline powered vehicles for the last 70 years, there’s a set of enterprise software tools, for release control, product lifecycle management, CAD. Also you have your desk, a computer and several management structures.
Role play
Electric Vehicle startups – as do established equivalents – design by using people, tools and process. Let’s assume we have the finance plus a burning desire to make an eco-friendly, world beating, fast-selling electric vehicles’ electrical distribution system. Let’s begin buying ourselves some software automation tools to help with the design, the engineering. Ok, that’s easy, you might be skeptical but I know exactly the Capital modules which will do the trick and perform admirably. Thus tools are taken care of, Capital is the best in class. There’s a leg up.
Next staffing, good people are needed it’s true. You look at me and I look at you. You don’t know many and I know a few. The ones I know are employed and your nominees too. We can spend ages chasing down leads, calling friends of friends, dealing with recruiters. We may talk with consulting engineering firms about outsourcing our staffing. We will lunch with and sweet talk engineers who are working at other companies and consider increasing offered salary. There is a significant skills deficit in the jobs market in this area. Find someone with Capital design-to-manufacture experience willing to move employment generally means competing with at least one other prospective employer.
If thou acceptest an electrical engineering job verily I vouch thou shalt have this company cloak with embrocaded hem for thine own sole use
Next the design process itself. An excellent tool can inform aspects of the design to manufacturing workflow. Capital is essential and central to the workflow of course. It is a comprehensive means to an end. But we have to decide how we are designing, and capture that process in a way every stakeholder, every part of the engineering family involved in the electrical platform design can understand, appreciate, support and follow. We get our painstakingly assembled team together, we ask for a show of hands – “who has an overview of the process, who will own the process?”
A systems engineer is responsible for the architecture, a mechanical engineer is responsible for the packaging of the electrical interconnect in the virtualization of the vehicle, an electrical engineer signs off on the performance of the overall system, develops and validates wiring. A manufacturing engineer with electrical engineering knowledge handles the EDS supplier contracting and 30 engineers contribute device connection information. Yikes! Looks like the chief engineer or CTO alone owns the entire process. Custodianship is best closer to the decisions which can immediately impact quality. Lean running and flexibility is one thing, but policies defined at the last minute by someone who acts because no-one else has stepped up is not generally a beneficial way of working unless you want barely restrained chaos in place of process.
On the 3-legged stool analogy you may not be legless, but two wobbly legs is normal in EV.
Worst case – start off with Capital then hire the rest of your team and implement a process and refine it.
Organizational Culture Match
Mentor staff can significantly help with design process definition when deploying Capital, but I look for a match up in corporate culture. Individuals like to have vendors who understand business needs, listen to issues from the standpoint of someone who empathizes and can help. Subject matter experts are great, but their expertise must be relevant. I have learned too that a successful vendor should match up by showing a positive corporate culture that to some extent mirrors, inspires the EV startup customer.
In personal motivation one first detects a distinctive corporate culture in EV startups. Employees are vision based – sign on to a group mission, perceive careers following a trajectory of a meaningful contribution to society. Individuals generally exhibit an appetite for risk when they plan and show energy and tenacity to achieve those plans.
Employees work longer hours than auto-industry average and teams are closer-knit, communicating with each other all the time and are supportive rather than territorial. So at Mentor we have learned how important it is to match that energy. 9 PM calls – no problem. All day workshops that run 7:30 AM to 7 PM; sure. Saturday – that deadline isn’t going away, let’s get it done. And start-ups have younger than average age profiles. Which means those of us a touch above 35 have to show a bit of stamina.
China is the largest single market world-wide for Electric Vehicles of all types. Non-Chinese companies all take note of what is happening there.