NXP Semiconductors N.V. has made available its GreenBox vehicle electrification development platform. GreenBox allows automakers and suppliers to begin early development of next-generation hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) and electric vehicle (EV) applications based on NXP's S32 automotive processing multicore platform based on Arm Cortex technology.

With increasing regulatory restrictions on emissions and stricter fuel economy targets around the world, both traditional automakers and new market entrants are under pressure to roll out electric and hybrid vehicles to consumers quickly. GreenBox provides a high-performance processing platform to design and test new control algorithms and energy management tasks critical for next-generation hybrid and fully-electric vehicles.

GreenBox is one of the development platforms for NXP's next generation S32 electrification MCUs, which are part of the S32 automotive processing platform that is built around a safe, secure and fault-tolerant configuration. The S32 electrification MCUs will address the increasingly intensive computation and memory requirements for future HEV/EV applications.

Using the GreenBox development environment, developers can also tap into the mix of high-performance and highly optimized peripherals, including advanced timers, motor control peripherals and analog sub-systems to interface with their own development hardware.

GreenBox is available in two configurations. The first is for development of fully-electric vehicles and supports motor control and battery management capabilities. The second is for development of hybrid applications, which supports both electric vehicle features as well as traditional engine control capabilities.

Recently, China, India, France, several states within the United States and other countries have either passed laws on internal combustion engine production termination or have signaled legislative intentions. Furthermore, the compounded annual growth rate for internal combustion engines is in decline as hybrid and electric are growing. "The combination of regulatory and market indicators as well as long automotive development cycles require automakers to begin the development of HEV/EV systems now -- before the next wave of processors for electrification are available," said Ray Cornyn, Vice President of Vehicle Dynamics and Safety at NXP.