The transportation industry is leading a huge change in global decarbonization. Electrification, connected cars, automation, carpooling, and machine learning are paving the way for future mobility scenarios, where vehicles will be seamlessly integrated to achieve climate-driven sustainability priorities and customer performance and personalization needs. Leaders in the transportation industry are critical to the success of the clean energy revolution. Every participant in the industry must use their expertise to jointly create smart, sustainable cars that consumers want to drive and ride. 

Indoor comfort, infotainment and technical functions have become key decision-making factors for the most discerning consumers. People's expectations for more diversified travel modes are getting higher and higher. With the advancement of automation technology, drivers can experience vehicles in a whole new way, and the demand for individualization continues to change the way automakers design vehicles. 

Although the appearance is the queen of the prom, the interior cabin of the vehicle is the farewell speaker. The interior is the rigor of the occupant experience, and every generation of vehicles has become more intelligent. The supply base is working with automakers to design imaginative smart components, which will help drive the entire industry forward. 

In the future of vehicles, the systems around the individual will become the brains of operations, and vendors like Gentherm are committed to ensuring that the occupant experience provides a relaxed and comfortable experience. Gentherm is a company transformed from a Silicon Valley technology start-up to a global automotive supplier. It is at the core of developing innovative solutions that will influence/innovate future automotive interiors. Gentherm develops advanced automotive thermal management solutions, applying its expertise in a broad portfolio of patient temperature solutions used in hospitals. Thermophysiology—the human response to heat input—and Gentherm's leadership in the medical field have enabled the company to adopt a human-centered approach to design intelligent, software-driven thermal comfort systems. 

Gentherm provides heated and cooled seats, steering wheels, heated inner surfaces, neck adjustments, etc. to more than 40 automotive customers worldwide. The company is currently innovating in car interior technology, abandoning the notion of entering the car decades ago and setting the temperature manually. The goal is to improve the comfort of the material in the car, while improving the overall performance and efficiency of the car, which is particularly important in electric vehicles. Gentherm's leading technology, called ClimateSenseTM, is a proprietary micro-climate solution consisting of advanced thermal products, integrated electronics and embedded software to create an ideal and comfortable environment for each occupant. The technology utilizes local convection and conduction heating and cooling solutions to seamlessly integrate into the existing vehicle architecture to create personalized comfort while significantly reducing HVAC energy consumption.

ClimateSense technology is centered on the company's thermal physiology-based control algorithm, which can perfectly customize the microclimate to meet individual thermal comfort requirements. Gentherm's ClimateSense technology targets the heating and cooling areas of the body, including the head, face, neck, torso, thighs, arms, hands and feet to achieve maximum comfort with minimal energy consumption. With the help of our thermophysiology-based software, this method can reduce comfort time by up to 70% in cold weather conditions. Gentherm is working with a global car manufacturer to release ClimateSense on a new 2024 electric car.

Compared with the existing central HVAC system of the first-generation Chevrolet Bolt EV, ClimateSense also optimizes battery life, achieving up to 69% energy savings in cold weather tests and up to 34% in hot weather tests Energy saving. Battery electric vehicles need reliability to offset adoption barriers, and with breakthroughs in HVAC efficiency and peak battery performance, the potential for automakers to provide significant differentiation is within reach. 

Gentherm not only develops innovative solutions for the interior of the vehicle, they are also studying how their technology affects the battery itself. Their battery performance solutions provide enhanced cooling to avoid critical temperature ranges, thereby slowing the aging process of vehicle batteries, thereby further increasing the maximum charging capacity and consistent performance that end consumers can trust.

In addition to the heat treatment of the battery system, Gentherm's engineers also developed advanced battery monitoring equipment into the company's award-winning battery connection system with mechanical structure technology (MSP). This technology enables the measurement of electrochemical impedance to obtain highly accurate independent information about temperature, state of charge, and state of health from inside the battery. In the future, smart data collection like this will be the key to avoiding battery thermal accidents, encouraging improvements in vehicle performance, efficiency and range, and (most importantly) occupant safety.

Events in recent years have once again confirmed that isolated R&D methods are not conducive to the active innovation goals of the automotive industry. Instead, we must strengthen collaboration to ensure that the system is seamlessly integrated with the common end goal. 

As we know, cars, trucks, and SUVs are changing rapidly. As consumers' preferences for enhanced technologies, intelligent systems, and biological comfort continue to escalate, human-centered vehicle design is the key to differentiation in this electric vehicle revolution. For Gentherm, people are the top priority, which in itself will drive the development of the cabin and help enhance the future occupant experience for drivers and passengers.

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