Next-gen components power safer, smarter vehicles

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Aug. 13, 2026 –

By Gina Roos, EDN

As the automotive industry continues to shift toward software-defined vehicles (SDVs), autonomous driving, and connected vehicles, it raises challenges around performance, reliability, and security. Component makers have a big role to play by delivering next-generation designs that support the transition to these new automotive architectures.

The July/August issue takes a look at advances happening at the component level that are enabling next-generation automotive technologies. These range from zonal microcontrollers (MCUs) and gallium nitride (GaN) and silicon carbide (SiC) power devices to connectors and LEDs/LED drivers. We also look at safety and security challenges in SDVs. 

As vehicle electrical/electronic architectures evolve and the automotive industry transitions to SDVs, it raises new technical challenges for automakers. In particular, the move from domain-based to zonal architectures that group vehicle functions presents challenges, as each zone controller needs to handle a wide range of tasks. This means the ECUs in a zonal design require compute capabilities that can handle both time-sensitive and compute-intensive workloads concurrently.

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