Hep Monatzeder, Mayor of the City of Munich, drives the electric car eWolf Martin Zeil, Bavarian Minister of Economics, Infrastructure, Transport and Technology (second from right), presented the Bavarian State Award for Electric Mobility to Peter Bauer, CEO of Infineon Technologies AG (centre), in the presence of laudator Prof. Dr. Josef Nassauer, Bayern Innovativ GmbH, Robert Metzger, Managing Director MunichExpo Veranstaltungs GmbH, and presenter Ilka Groenewold (from left to right) 8-bit microcontrollers from Infineon

Infineon Technologies has won the Bavarian State Award for Electric Mobility. Martin Zeil, Bavarian Minister of Economics, Infrastructure, Transport and Technology, presented the award to Peter Bauer, CEO of Infineon. The award went to the company in the “Drive Technology” category for the company’s microcontrollers ensuring smooth and hence efficient operation of the motor in electric bicycles, the so-called e-bikes. In addition, Infineon was also nominated for its active battery balancing solution in the “Storage Technology/System Integration” category.

E-bikes as a strong growth market

Within only three years, Infineon has carved out an approximately one-third global market share with 8-bit microcontrollers of the XC800 family in electric-powered bicycles. Since 2008, some 15 million e-bikes controlled by Infineon components have been sold around the world. Apart from the Asian market, the European market also holds enormous growth potential. Market experts expect to see the number of e-bikes sold annually in Europe more than doubling from the present figure of less than 2 million units to about 4 million in the year 2013.

Infineon’s chips are instrumental in reducing the cost of the drive and electronics in the e-bike and in boosting the energy efficiency of the overall system. The XC800 family enables Field Oriented Control (FOC) and hence smooth, efficient operation of the motor. Infineon’s 8-bit microcontrollers deliver the performance of larger and more expensive 16-bit and 32-bit chips. These features are pivotal in the very small and cost-critical drives for e-bikes.

Category Storage Technology/System integration

Another Infineon innovation was nominated for the Bavarian State Award for Electric Mobility in the “Storage Technology/System Integration” category: active battery balancing. This solution equalizes the highly disparate behavior of the over one hundred single cells of a battery during charging and discharging to extend the battery’s capacity, range and life by more than ten percent.

All ecartec award winners 2010

• Mitsubishi i-MiEV
• Peugeot i0n
• ELMOTO HR-2 EV II
• Goupil G3
• Akasol Intelligent Battery
• SEW-Eurodrive
• e-Flinkster & e-Call a Bike