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In the course of facing environmental issues relating to increasing CO2 emissions and the depletion of fossil fuels, we have been developing the formation of low-carbon and high-efficiency energy society to reduce CO2 emissions for the realization of a sustainable society. As for smart grid, smart house, smart city and so on, "smart" appearing in these words is used as a synonym for the improvement of energy efficiency by IT systems, and its widespread use to various systems has been achieved. In future, these smart systems are to be expected to continue to grow toward high-reliability and high-quality power supply, reduction of power consumption, a connection with renewable energy, and configurations of power management systems. EV (electric vehicle) and PHEV (plug-in hybrid electric vehicle) play an important mission in the high-efficiency energy society in cooperation with external infrastructures of the grid. Electrification of automotive powertrains has been improved for zero emission and low fuel consumption of automobiles. Power supply systems safely and optimally to operate powertrains have been of great importance as infrastructures for automobiles. Power systems also have been being developed toward their large capacity, high efficiency and high reliability. On the basis of the relationship between the cooperation with external infrastructures of power supply systems of automobiles and the society based on smart systems described above, hereafter, further development of electrification and electronic control systems of automobiles is to be inevitable. Domestic and international trends have been investigated by taking account of these situations and focusing onto technologies for integrating these electric power supply systems of automobiles, and issues and their solutions have been organized. These investigation activities were conducted from 2012 to 2013. |
