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20 The PCB Magazine • September 2015 by Dan Feinberg feinline associates inc. Many of us have lived through a series of electronic industry growth spurts: from radios to TV and then to high-definition home the- ater; from vinyl records to cassettes to DVDs; from simple four-function calculators to today's powerful PCs; from Pong and Atari games to to- day's X-Box, PlayStation and monster gaming computers. Each of these and other segments rely on advances in electronic technology de- sign and manufacture and each of them spurs growth in the industry. One other such seg- ment has also added to the scope of the indus- try and that segment is automotive electronics. We started with AM and then FM radios, then full stereo systems complete with tape, then disk, then SSD storage; we added speed control Automotive Technology: the Next Driving Force in Electronic Manufacturing then GPS, and then mapping. The higher-end vehicles now have collision and obstruction warning, back-up cameras, driver fatigue warn- ing, maintenance and component failure warn- ing and some have self-parking that actually works—well. But in the automotive segment, as the man once said, "You ain't seen nothing yet." First of all, the devices we have come to expect in luxury and high-end vehicles are now becoming available and even common in lower priced ones. That alone will significantly increase automotive electronic device manufacture volume. The next wave, however, will dwarf what we have experienced to date. Soon, we will be considering the self-driving, fully- connected and self-learning vehicle that is part of a network that teaches and learns from its peers. Controlling your own car in a traffic jam FEAturE