Cars and vehicles contain some of the most complex electronic systems used by most of us daily.  Car body and convenience applications are constantly evolving to increase the comfort of drivers and passengers.

Data buses and intelligent modules are located throughout the car body to control the various loads, lamps, motors, solenoids in applications such as:

• Dome and door zone controls for mirrors, windows, locks
• Automatic climate control systems with control for stepper motors, and solenoids for air and water valves
• Wiper and seat controls
• Increasingly complex lighting controls with the rapid uptake of HID Xenon and LED lamps

ST's broad range of mixed analog digital technologies with power driving capability, and system-on-chip (SoC) devices allow innovative and integrated solutions to the highly automated systems found in cars.

ST’s key products for body and convenience applications are:

• Dedicated Smart Power devices for door modules and mirror driving
• Standard low-side, high-side and bridge Smart Power devices for driving lamps, valves, DC motors and stepper motors
• 8 and 32-bit automotive microcontrollers based on proprietary and Power Architecture® cores
• One of the industry’s broadest ranges of power MOSFETs and IGBTs
• Automotive Ultrafast and Schottky rectifiers
• Automotive EEPROM memories
• Automotive protection devices
• Automotive voltage regulators and power management system ICs

Those functions can be also implemented stand alone or integrated with other applications. Regardless the implementation ST, with a broad portfolio of BCD, CMOS and power technologies, can provide complete BCM and gateway solutions, including bus transceivers, regulators and high performance microcontrollers with network protocol handlers’ on-chip. A sampling of ST products that are applicable to the integration of those systems can be found in the following block diagram.