The Post-Pandemic Era: E-Bikes Have Become a Way of Life
The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic has changed social interactions, the economy, work patterns, and people's lives. People have become accustomed to avoiding excessive contact with crowds. As a result, in the post-pandemic era, electric-assisted bicycles (E-Bikes) have clearly become a popular choice for modern people's transportation. The main reasons are their labor-saving, lightweight, no driver's license requirement, good mobility, leisure, and health benefits. Many countries' governments also encourage people to use E-Bikes for transportation and provide purchase subsidies, which have further increased the global sales of E-Bikes, especially in European countries, which are the most active in promoting them. Further analysis of the market sales situation reveals that consumers use E-Bikes for various purposes, including 40% for travel, 35% for urban commuting, and 25% for mountain climbing. It can be clearly seen that the demand for E-Bikes is driven by the popularity of outdoor sports and travel in the European market.
Regarding the selection of E-Bike CAN Bus transceivers, it is recommended to consider the following four points:
A. E-Bike system voltages are divided into 36V (maximum voltage reaches 42V) and 48V (maximum voltage reaches 54.6V). However, as CAN Bus connectors become smaller and smaller, it is easy for CANH/CANL to accidentally touch the DC voltage and cause overvoltage damage. Therefore, when choosing a CAN Bus transceiver solution, it is particularly important to require the fault voltage to be at least greater than 42V, and it is best to choose 70V, which can be backward compatible with 36V and 48V systems at the same time.
B. In response to increasingly advanced manufacturing processes, CAN MCU voltages are becoming lower and lower, from 5V to 3.3V. Therefore, you should choose a CAN Bus transceiver with a VIO pin function on pin 5. Through the VIO pin for voltage conversion, the transceiver I/O can be directly connected to 3.3V or even 1.8V, which can reduce space and cost of using a level shift circuit, as shown in Figure 1.
C. E-bikes and other products are more susceptible to electrostatic discharge (ESD) effects from the human body or electrical overstress (EOS) from the charging power supply.
D. Due to long-term use in outdoor environments, the temperature requirements are more stringent. It is recommended that the temperature consideration during design should reach 125 degrees, which is less likely to cause abnormal operation of the electronic system. If an abnormality occurs, it may cause product damage and repair problems, or even affect the brand image; making consumers no longer trust it.
Under the trend of light weighting, E-bikes now require smaller and smaller modules, smaller and smaller circuit boards, and more and more advanced manufacturing processes, making products more susceptible to electrostatic discharge effects and more vulnerable and sensitive. Therefore, electrostatic discharge system testing is becoming more and more stringent. The most basic test specification needs to pass the IEC61000-4-2 8kV contact discharge test. This verification method is used to simulate the situation of electrostatic discharge events encountered by the system during customer use. For this test requirement, as long as appropriate ESD/EOS protection components are added to sensitive areas, signal lines, and power supply terminals during design, protection measures can be taken before the product enters the market, avoiding damage or crashes caused by ESD damage to the internal circuit of the product.
AmazingIC has more than ten years of advanced data transceiver and electrostatic discharge protection design technology. In response to the needs of E-bikes, it has developed the CAN Bus transceiver AZKN6129P with its own patent. AZKN6129P adopts silicon crystal insulator (SOI) process, and the fault voltage is designed to reach 70V, which is the highest fault voltage in the industry. The single ESD withstand voltage of CANH and CANL is even as high as IEC61000-4-2 12kV/16kV for contact/air and includes EOS protection capability, as shown in Figure 2. From the perspective of the overall IC monomer protection of AZKN6129P, all its pins have the ability to withstand 5kV human body discharge model (HBM), 400V machine discharge model (MM) and 800V self-discharge model (CDM), and the anti-latch effect current can reach more than 400mA. With the future trend of new technologies, AmazingIC will continue to develop CAN Bus transceivers that better meet the needs of market customers, and can also provide perfect solutions for customized products.