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Automotive

Building better EV charging stations

Joey Lin | November 2024

The global EV (electric vehicle) charging station market is exploding, and it’s expected to reach $12.1 billion by 2030, with an 8.8% compound annual growth rate.

With rising sales of EVs and the growing demand for zero-emission transport, the EV charging station market will continue to proliferate. With this growth comes the expectation that you can reliably power up anywhere, from a home EV charging station to quick charging while shopping or even on a road trip.

Plus, developments in technologies like portable charging, bidirectional charging, smart charging with load management, use-based analytics and automated payment will create further growth in the EV charging station market.

Another growth driver is government incentives to develop U.S.-built EV charging stations every 50 miles of highway. These include NEVI (National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure) and BABA (Build America, Buy America).

There are three levels of chargers: Level 1 chargers use a standard household outlet. Level 2 chargers are faster, employing a 240-volt outlet. Level 3 chargers offer the quickest charge, converting AC to DC to optimize speed. Most of the EV chargers found in public charging stations are level 3 chargers.

These ultrafast level 3 stations need to convert AC to DC as quickly as possible. That means significantly higher-capacity EV charging stations with more complex storage and memory, plus the processing requirement to optimize power flow accurately.

In these EV charger station control units, more intelligence means more compute. To ensure EV chargers are reliable, control units require automotive-grade or industrial-grade high-capacity e.MMC as well as low-power, high-performance for data storage and processing — everything from the power controller and payment capabilities to use analysis and even kiosk advertising. The newest designs of these control units contain a memory protection unit (MPU) and can leverage DRAM and managed NAND technologies like Micron DDR4/LPDDR4 and e.MMC.

The industrial segment adds an additional level of critical requirements. At Micron, we call this the Industrial Quotient or IQ. This level includes a number of considerations:

  • Longevity: Micron supports a five-plus-year product lifecycle. Automotive applications are built to last and, as such, require extended product support.
  • Ruggedness: Some environments, which involve extremes in temperature, shock, corrosion, humidity and radiation, require improved performance.
  • Reliability: Performance stability is measured with key benchmarks around annual failure rate, failure in time, and mean time between failure endurance.
  • Application optimization: Our product enhancements are designed for app-specific requirements, including auto-scan/auto-refresh, firmware health monitoring and API encryption.
     

At Micron, this industrial mindset is born from our 30-year dedication to industrial memory and storage solutions. As the leader in the industrial and automotive markets, we are uniquely positioned to provide U.S.-made memory and storage solutions with longevity, reliability and ruggedness.

This industry leadership means you can be confident that the EV charger you pull up to on a road trip is equipped with Micron’s rugged, industrial solutions — solutions that will efficiently power your EV and get you on your way.

Sr. Segment Marketing Manager

Joey Lin

Joey Lin is senior marketing manager for the industrial segment of Micron’s Embedded Business Unit. He is a 20-plus-year professional in the transportation and video security industries, holding various positions in application engineering, product development, sales, business development, strategic planning and marketing.