Japan’s Renesas has started moving sensors and optical components into body panels at an advanced car factory in the town of Biarritz, France, part of a series of high-performance computer systems that can go from concept to production in a matter of weeks, a Renesas official said on Wednesday. The move enables Renesas’s first prime so-called embedded system on a chip to be built from a complete package, which is crucial in making cars faster and more energy efficient, the official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Renesas has been building circuits for years, but body panels require bigger, more complex components, which had until now made it difficult to produce fully-integrated body kits. The Renesas system has been in development for six years, but has not previously been made available to carmakers, and carmaker Continental has chosen to adopt the Renesas system for use in its body panels.
Continental said it could use the system in the next model of its sports car, the TT. In all, Renesas and its customers are building 23 fully integrated body kits for Continental using Renesas and Digibody processors.
