TROY, Mich. — Ever seen a car come apart really fast? Check out our time-lapse video of the Chevy Volt teardown we did several weeks ago here. More design resources It took three days, but the video shortens it to a few crazy minutes and makes Munro & Associates Al Steier look like he's working on barrels of coffee! I

HACKETTSTOWN, N.J.–Electric vehicles (EVs) are takers not givers, when it comes to the grid, which, incidentally, isn't really set up yet to take power from EVs. That reality is beginning to change as more EVs hit the market and innovators re-examine the grid to understand what needs to be done to use EVs as power suppliers in the future. DesignNews Senior

“The earlier we’re involved, the more useful we can be,” Charles Hulcher, Avnet field application engineer (FAE), said of his fellow FAEs. One customer learned the benefits of involving Hulcher and his team early in the design process, as he helped them design in a solution to a complex issue. The customer, which makes multi-service gateways with three-month design cycles,

What’s more fun than driving a Chevy Volt? Tearing one apart! That’s what we’re going to do next week in Michigan as we build toward another new phase of the Drive for Innovation: analyzing the Volt’s inside down to the pc-board level. (Here's a link to the YouTube page where we're posting outtakes from the teardown). We’re gathering in Troy,

When one of Tom Tranter’s contacts said that his company, an Avnet customer, was having problems getting a microprocessor’s tools up and running, he thought the fix would be routine. Tranter, a Field Application Engineer at Avnet, soon learned that things weren’t so simple. “I thought it was easy,” he said. “It wasn’t.” It turned out that the customer had

By Jon Gabay Fame, fun and (small) fortune await!  Welcome to the first in a series of articles for design engineers, students, inventors, and hobbyists with electronic, electro-mechanical, and electro-optic systems. It teaches, demonstrates, and makes available electronic modules that can be used to perform functions. We invite you to dive into the technology, implement the designs and share your

(Odometer: 12,289 miles) RALEIGH, N.C.–The Volt's all about the battery, but we rarely pay attention to the traditional 12V battery, because its main battery is so interesting. We got a chance to focus on that last week when we helped a stranded motorist at North Carolina State, and, in the process, just busted an old-school move, as they say:

GM Chairman Daniel Akerson came out today, amid the controversy and federal investigation into Chevy Volt battery fires, to say the battery may be redesigned. "…We're just gonna take a timeout if you will in terms of redesigning the battery possibly," Akerson said in an interview with Reuters (see full video interview below). If you've followed us and the issue,

Jeff Weintraub is a risk taker. Well, the Avnet field application engineer (FAE) may not see himself that way, but the up-front investment of his time and knowledge in engineer-to-engineer customer support could all go out the window with a design change or project cancellation. “We’re working with the customer on the front end from concept stage to choosing components