⎁ Automotive

Boards that survive the under-hood.

Automotive electronics fail thermally, vibrationally and electromagnetically — usually all three. We design PCBs to AEC-Q-qualified parts, IATF 16949-aware processes and CISPR 25 EMC limits, with thermal sign-off backed by TRM.

−40 to +125 °Cgrade-1 ambient envelope

ASIL A–Dfunctional-safety partitioning

AEC-Q100/200qualified BOM filter

48 Vmild-hybrid rails routinely

AEC-Q BOM filter

Every active and passive part screened for AEC-Q100/Q101/Q200 grade and temperature class before placement — no late-stage substitutions that void qualification.

ISO 26262 partitioning

Safety-relevant nets, redundancies and diagnostics laid out for ASIL A–D requirements with independence between channels and diagnostic-friendly placement.

LV124 / CISPR 25 layout

Reverse-battery, load-dump and transient survival in the protection stage; CISPR 25 emissions controlled at the IC pin, not by a heroic downstream filter.

TRM thermal sign-off

Steady-state and transient (cold-crank, fault) thermal simulation — the report goes in your validation pack, not just a screenshot.

Standards we design to

IATF 16949 (QMS-aware design)
AEC-Q100 / Q101 / Q200 (component qual)
ISO 26262 (functional safety)
ISO 7637 / LV124 / LV148 (transients)
CISPR 25 (EMC emissions)

Powertrain + body

12 V / 24 V / 48 V architectures
GaN/SiC traction and DC/DC
BLDC and PMSM motor drives
BMS + cell balancing
Body controllers and ADAS sensor PCBs

Reliability practices

Conformal coat / underfill clearance
Vibration-aware part orientation
Thermal-cycling derating
Filled-and-capped vias for Class 3
PTH reliability and pad design

The brief

A 5 kW 48 V→12 V converter for a mild-hybrid had to hold up through LV124 cold-crank transients and pass CISPR 25 Class 5 conducted emissions.

What we did

Re-stacked to 3 oz heavy copper plus bus-bar attach; widened the high-side gate loop so the measured loop inductance came in under 4 nH.
Re-tuned the input filter topology against a TRM-correlated thermal model — same parts, ~half the dissipation in the input chokes.
Filtered the output node at the IC pin (not 30 mm downstream); CISPR 25 conducted emissions dropped by 14 dB.

Outcome

Survived 5,000 LV124 cold-crank cycles in qualification; CISPR 25 Class 5 conducted passed on A-sample with a fully AEC-Q BOM.

Automotive-grade engineering requirements

AEC-Q200 passives: Rated -40 °C to +125 °C (under-dash) or +150 °C (under-hood). Consumer-grade caps delaminate at thermal cycle 500. Capacitance derating at +125 °C can be 80% — your 100 nF cap becomes 20 nF when hot.
Thermal cycling fatigue: IPC-SM-785 fatigue model: 5,000+ thermal cycles in the automotive life. Via aspect ratio must be ≤8:1. Copper creep on heavy 3-oz pours requires finite-element verification.
CISPR 25 EMC: Automotive radiated emissions limits are stricter than consumer CE in the AM/FM bands (150 kHz–1 GHz). Layout dictates whether your switching converter passes. We design loop areas to pass CISPR 25 before the chamber.
ISO 7637-2 transient immunity: 12 V systems see +100 V load-dump, -200 V inductive transients on the battery rail. Protect every line. TVS diode selection + layout is a first-pass design requirement.
Operating temp range: We select components, specify solder alloy (SAC305 for -40/+150), and validate the thermal model with TRM before the BOM is released. No surprises at PPAP.

Are you AEC-Q certified?

AEC-Q is a part-level qualification — not a design-house certification. We design WITH AEC-Q-qualified components and to the layout rules those parts assume, so your qualified BOM ships qualified.

Can you take an ISO 26262 ASIL-D design?

We support ASIL A–D layouts: independence between redundant channels, diagnostic coverage, hardware-error-model-friendly placement. Tool-confidence and process audits remain on your side per ISO 26262 part 8.

Do you do EV traction inverter PCBs?

Yes — high-current bus-bar attach, GaN/SiC gate-loop layout, isolation barriers, and TRM-backed thermal sign-off. Correlation is typically ±3 °C bench-to-sim.

Take the under-hood seriously.

AEC-Q parts, CISPR 25 layout, TRM thermal sign-off. Fixed-fee band in 60 seconds.

Scope a project ↗All industries

Boards that survive the under-hood.

The deliverables.