Shift Magazine - April 2020 - 18

ARC ENEMY

Yazaki suppression
system tackles a
potential EV hazard
BY ALEXA ST. JOHN

ith the rise in alternative powertrains comes a greater need for
high-voltage electrical systems.
But higher voltages can pose safety challenges, including the potential for dangerous arcing events.
Yazaki North America, a family-owned
global wiring harness supplier based in
suburban Detroit, has been developing
new products and technologies for electric and hybrid vehicles as electrification
moves forward.
One such technology is DC arc suppression for 48-volt and other high-voltage systems.
As voltage and current increase in

electrified powertrains, and the energy
released in an arcing event increases,
so does the potential damage to system
components.
Yazaki's arc suppression protection
device is a solid-state circuit that absorbs
arc energy, preventing it from damaging
wires or igniting flammable materials.
"Arcing is going to be an issue, and it's

also going to be something that either has
to be worked around or something that
has to be taken on head-on," said Michael
Boyd, Yazaki senior manager. "This technology gives us more options for switching
functions that we may not have already."
The device is integrated into the vehicle's
electrical system and consumes no power
until an arc event is detected. It then reacts
in less than 100 microseconds to prevent
the arc and any damage from the event.
Yazaki's arc suppression aims to improve
the reliability of the vehicle, said Eric Varton,
Yazaki North America's chief engineer of
advanced development engineering.
There are other ways to address arcing,
such as using digital signal processing
and various types of hardware and software. But according to Varton, these
often are less effective, more costly and
have a longer response time.
Yazaki said it is ready to go to market
with its arc suppression technology and
is actively pursuing a variety of customers for possible applications. n

A MATTER OF ZERO TRUST
StealthPath aims to shield connected cars
BY SEBASTIAN BLANCO

tealthPath believes you can't be too
careful. The Virginia-based cybersecurity company's technology is
literally called a zero-trust platform, which
brings a "never trust, always verify" attitude to the devices StealthPath protects.
The zero-trust mantra, used throughout
the telecommunications industry, is to
verify a device's trustworthiness each
time it wants to gain access to an asset.
StealthPath's zero-trust technology
was designed to use one of two primary operating modes: passive or active.
Nothing needs to be installed on endpoint devices in passive mode, whereas
active mode requires some software to
be installed.
In passive mode, StealthPath can

shift * april 2020

monitor a network and then create digital
files that represent the communication patterns of that network. This information can
then be analyzed by IBM Watson artificial
intelligence. IBM is a StealthPath partner.
The approach holds promise as a way
to protect connected cars from hackers.
StealthPath's Clif Triplett, chairman of
the technology advisory board, said passive mode could be used to monitor each
car an automaker has access to and then
compare an individual car's behavior with
that of other cars to "provide early detection of an entity who is attempting to gain
access to a vehicle's internal systems or
if it is suspected that a compromise has
already been successful in manipulating
the car's behavior."

Active mode would allow an automaker
to have more direct control over the communication interactions by creating an
encrypted path (similar to a virtual private
network) that only permits preauthorized
connection routes. Cars could be built to
only allow specific traffic on specific operating system ports. StealthPath can also
be configured to inspect any data that's
about to enter a StealthPath active-protected endpoint to meet the company's
operating philosophy of closing all doors
for device interaction unless those doors
are specifically authorized and trusted.
StealthPath says its zero-trust technology is applicable to a number of other
industries, as well, including manufacturing, medical and defense.n

Shift Magazine - April 2020

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