Accessibility to technology is reinventing the concept of smart cities from connected
infrastructure to at-home IoT today's consumers are aware of the growing need for solutions that
contribute to a more sustainable lifestyle the electric vehicle market is absolutely expanding to
new areas we're really pushing the boundaries and the envelope of what's been possible in the past
the expansion of both electric vehicle designs and renewable energy technologies are clear
indicators of this trend join us as we look beyond the walls of tomorrow's smart homes
Digi-Key presents: City Digital brought to you by Littlefuse, Taoglas, U-Blox, and Supply Frame
as new electric vehicle designs hit the market and battery technology takes center stage renewable
sources of energy have become a major focus for top manufacturers so one of the big differences
between a gas car and electric car is that the electric car can operate a lot more like an
appliance right you plug it in it has continuous power you can have an app checking on it you can
pre-heat the car on top of that we're starting to see more and more integrations with things
like solar panels home storage energy time of use rates where your car can be much more intelligent
about when it recharges and refuels batteries are absolutely long-lived assets you know you look at
the curve of over their life what their capacity is and you know absolutely at some point they're
going to drop below what's practical for an automotive use case you know modern ev is
actually very good battery management systems so over 10 or even 15 or 20 years you might only see
you know 10 or 20 degradation so you know then you still have like 80 capacity and
tons of opportunities to reuse that especially in a stationary storage aspect you know imagine
basically taking the battery out of your electric vehicle and just screwing it to the wall in your
house and bam you have another 50 kilowatt hours of battery backup for free that'd be pretty great
little fuse is an industrial technology manufacturing company
focused on empowering a sustainable and connected world
little fuse we provide products throughout all of our business units for solar power protection
and then on top of that the automotive fuses and circuit protection devices that we're developing
would be used to protect the charger and the vehicle and the charger on the vehicle alike
inherently it will have that capability of using the vehicle as battery storage so that you can
charge up the vehicle using solar panels during the day maybe supplement the house power at night
when there's no sun so that you're not putting as much strain on the grid matt cole senior vice
president of e-mobility and corporate strategy at littlefuse explains how electric vehicle batteries
have become a larger part of the smart home one of the things that's really exciting about this
space you know particularly from a consumer and a smart home perspective is this convergence of
alternative energy like solar and energy storage and electric vehicles is now you can actually
consider an electric vehicle as a home energy storage device actually an enormous energy storage
device where you could actually power your home for a couple of days in some cases that creates
new opportunities in the vehicle itself because now it requires bi-directional charging you know
historically you would only charge the vehicle the energy would go one way and now actually
vehicles have to be able to conduct bi-directional charging where yes the charging circuit charges
the vehicle but then also where the vehicle then has to be able to deploy the electric
energy out into the home or or energy storage or whatever the application is we're actually also
seeing recycling of batteries that are going from a vehicle once it's no longer right for a vehicle
but then it can go into a container for an energy storage application yeah the whole life cycle is
now important to the customer you know it's not just about them not burning a gas engine they do
they are thinking a few steps ahead and going well now i'm going to have this massive battery what's
going to happen to that when the car is done Digi-Key is one of our closest partners in terms
of our digital relationship and even more so in an emerging technology space like eMobility where
together we're really pushing the boundaries and the envelope of what's been possible in the past
Digi-Key we do see a wide range of customers and especially in wireless connectivity it's become so
much of a ubiquitous platforms that developing with wi-fi bluetooth any kind of connectivity
technology is so much easier today than it was you know even five ten years ago i think you have
really two types of connectivity you have they have to be plugged into a wall to charge
and that's a connection point that can be bi-directional the car talking to the home or
using the the home wi-fi as the back hall and and then but there's also the connectivity inside the
car itself it can act as that internet connection but it's also an outlet to send information like
energy storage data information that you can connect to an app on your phone so you can monitor
just about everything about a vehicle ease of use is critical that's the most critical and with
that we've seen lots of ecosystems you know with the apple google they've kind of wrapped a lot
of technology into a very easy to use ecosystem the digikey really enables engineers to innovate
with different technology in the smart home through access to the latest technology content
lots of self-service learning on the site and and that's really an area that we focus in a lot
today's consumers depend on technology throughout the smart home to transform
how they live work and communicate but the experience doesn't stop there
new approaches to renewable energy and eMobility will connect the
dots between the capabilities of today and tomorrow's technology within city digital