Opportunities for Molex from Smart and Autonomous Vehicles

1 Technical Challenges of Smart and Autonomous Vehicles

Molex has always believed that experience is the core of the automotive industry. Today's automotive industry is developing at a rapid pace. We are committed to providing customers and partners with profound and unique insights and solutions to help them stay at the forefront of the industry.

To this end, Molex conducted an industry survey on the theme of "The Future of Automobiles" earlier this year to help us better understand the approximate development trends of new models around 2030, including key features, development projects and innovations. According to the survey respondents, the top three features most likely to become standard by 2030 are high-speed WiFi, wireless charging and car-to-car communication.

Molex is currently working to support customers’ development of autonomous driving technologies and help realize the dream of building in-vehicle connectivity, including wireless, wired, 5G, vehicle-to-vehicle and/or through in-vehicle wiring.

In order to smoothly transition to the era of driverless driving, many technical challenges need to be overcome in all aspects of vehicle design. For example, the challenges faced by the control system of driverless cars mainly revolve around issues such as safety, security and standards. In order to achieve full driverless driving, future vehicles will contain hundreds of sensors, and all the data generated will need to be processed, analyzed and fed back.

Communications will be an important feature of future cars. Vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) connectivity will help find free parking spaces or electric vehicle chargers, while vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications will allow nearby vehicles to signal each other and exchange information on road conditions.

To meet these major development trends, Molex is focusing on developing some important technologies, including distributed antenna solutions, high-precision positioning and millimeter wave (mmWave) technologies.

Distributed antenna solutions: Molex sees distributed antenna solutions as the future of connected vehicles. This technology has a huge impact on how vehicle electronic architecture evolves into a regional architecture that combines vehicle to network and vehicle to vehicle infrastructure (V2X).

Connectivity is one of the key factors in enabling smart and autonomous vehicles.

Not only will self-driving cars need to be connected to work, but connected infotainment will also contribute to driver safety and passenger comfort during the journey.

High-precision positioning: This technology is a key enabler for autonomous vehicles, and Molex is focused on optimizing GNSS antennas for high-precision positioning systems and the development of technologies related to GNSS systems.

Millimeter wave technology: Millimeter wave technology will be able to greatly enhance signal transmission capabilities and data upload speeds in V2V and V2X applications.

2 Molex’s solution?   

Over the past 30 years, as the demand for interconnects has accelerated, Molex has played an important role in providing connectivity services to the automotive industry. Today, Molex is a market leader in high-speed network connectors and cable assemblies for gigabit communications, fully capable of supporting the next generation of vehicle architecture: the zonal architecture.

Molex is also a global market leader in Vehicle Antenna Solutions (VAS), which help optimize connected cars and provide optimal performance for positioning, broadcast tuners, V2X and more.

Molex is also a market leader in consumer device integration (CDI) products. CDI solutions support the integration of the following related smart devices (SmartDevice):

■ Charging (USB and wireless charging)

■ USB hub for data transfer

■ Wireless charging

■ Superior reception (the cellular signal your smartphone receives) using Molex “compensators” and antenna coupling solutions integrated into our market-leading wireless charging systems

For nearly 30 years, Molex has played a vital role in the automotive industry, especially in addressing the need for seamless connectivity between mobile devices and data services. During this period, Molex has provided more than 95% of the engine control and powertrain connectivity solutions for a major automotive OEM. Molex adheres to its traditional advantages in network technology and its long-standing reputation for product quality and customer collaboration to meet the growing consumer needs of the entire automotive ecosystem, including electrification, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), automotive high-speed networks, vehicle antenna systems, connected mobility solutions, and vehicle-to-everything communications (V2X).