eFuses: Use Cases, Benefits, And Design In The System Context

ADAS makes it necessary to adopt new approaches to overcurrent protection:
In recent years, the automotive industry has been one of the drivers of innovation in the field of electrical and electronic system safety. This is primarily due to the rapid uptake and, in some cases, already mandatory use of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) as well as to the first steps toward (partially) autonomous vehicles.
In conventional safety systems, the off state can be assumed to be safe. With ADAS, this is no longer automatically the case. This makes it necessary to adopt new approaches to fuse protection, which will subsequently spread to other industries.
One recent innovation is the electronic fuse, or eFuse. Traditionally, the vehicle electrical system was protected by sacrificial fuses. These reliably disconnect the power supply in the event of overcurrents, but in the process, they switch off individual components or, depending on their position, even whole sections of the vehicle electrical system. The eFuse offers various options for maintaining functionality in the event of a fault.