Renesas Electronics Europe supports Eco Solar Breizh racing team for World Solar Challenge 2013 in Australia

Renesas Electronics Europe has announced that it is sponsoring and supplying electronic components to Eco Solar Breizh, a multidisciplinary association based in Brittany, France. The mission of Eco Solar Breizh is to develop a solar-powered racing vehicle and participate in the WSC (World Solar Challenge) in 2013. The WSC is a 3000 km race across Australia, from Darwin in the north to Adelaide in the south, in cars powered by energy that must come from the sun or be harvested from the kinetic energy of the vehicle itself. Along with the sponsorship, Renesas Electronics Europe is donating microcontrollers to the Eco Solar Breizh development team. The components will be used for energy harvesting, energy and battery management, sensor measurement, and communication within the car. In addition, Renesas Electronics Europe engineer Sébastien Walger is heading up the electronics aspects of the Eco Solar Breizh project and is participating in the WSC race as a driver. Eco Solar Breizh and Renesas will held a launch event for the prototype in Brittany this month. Renesas will also showcase the car on the company's stand at the Electronica trade show in Munich, November 13-16. The Renesas components driving key aspects of the vehicle's energy management include eight R8C23 MCUs, which are well suited to automotive applications due to their ability to execute instructions at high speed. The vehicle also includes a Renesas RX62N MCU used for telemetry via wireless data transfer. In this case, the measurements captured by the MCU will transmit via Bluetooth to a smartphone. To enable additional energy harvesting, the development team is integrating four Renesas RL78 MCUs, one on each suspension mechanism. The RL78 family is designed specifically for ultra-low power applications in automotive and other markets, enabling customers to build compact and energy-efficient systems at lower cost. "We're very excited to be working with Renesas and Sébastien Walger on the electronics in our solar-powered electric car," said Jean-Luc Fleureau, Team President, Eco Solar Breizh. "The microcontrollers we're using are tried and tested. They communicate information to the driver and help the car conserve energy - a crucial point in the middle of the Australian desert! Although the World Solar Challenge in 2013 is our short-term objective, this combination of advanced technologies is sure to be of interest to vehicle manufacturers in the future too." "It's an honour for me to be able to work on the Eco Solar Breizh project as well as at Renesas Electronics—and the two are very complementary," added Sébastien Walger, Senior Field Application Engineer at Renesas Electronics Europe. "This is because Renesas is committed to its Smart Society strategy and to the development of eco-friendly smart systems to help reduce energy consumption in the future. As one of the Eco Solar Breizh Racing Team drivers in the World Solar Challenge, I'm looking forward to experiencing first-hand the advantages of these advanced technologies in the automotive sector." Renesas Eco Solar Breizh