Fujitsu says that its two 200mm wafer fabs in Iwate and Aizu Wakamatsu are back up to full production following damage during the Japanese earthquakes. The Iwate fab lost its water supply and power during the March quake and the power at Aizu was reduced to a level too low to run the plant. Emergency vehicles were also given priority on a struggling road infrastructure, so goods that were in stock could not initially be moved. Both plants suffered minor damage to walls and ventilation ducts but the biggest problems were the wrecked quartz ovens. More >>

Automotive technicians and R&D engineers are going to have to wait until the end of the year at the earliest to get their hands on Panasonic’s Toughbook diagnostic tablet as Volkswagen has snapped up all the early production run. It plans to role out the product to its dealers in September. And the supply situation could be worsened as Fiat Auto has asked for the testing versions for its dealers that Panasonic was hoping to keep customers happy while they waited for the Volkswagen order to be completed. More >>

Registration is open for this year's Advanced Automotive Electronics (AAE) conference and exhibition, the UK's only event focussed on the design and development of vehicle electronic systems. Under the theme of the connected car, the event will be held at the Heritage Motor Centre & Museum in Gaydon, Warwickshire, on Tuesday 27 September 2011. More >>

Austria Microsystems has developed a sensor IC that can detect whether the front passenger seat in a car is occupied by a rear-facing infant or an adult passenger. This is to stop an airbag deploying if a child is in the passenger seat, which is becoming a legal requirement in some countries. “It is ready and it will go into production with an American and Japanese tier one manufacturer,” said Thomas Müller, product manager for automotive. “We are ramping up volumes now and it will first appear in some cars in 2012 but not in high volume until 2013.” More >>

Renesas has praised automotive OEMs for their patience and understanding as it tries to recover from the effects of the earthquake in Japan in March. The earthquake hit a number of facilities, the most serious being the 200 and 300mm wafer fabs in Naka. About 15% of the company’s output came from Naka. “Most of the automotive OEMs have come to Japan to talk at the highest level to get an understanding of the events,” said Rob Green, CEO for Renesas in Europe. More >>

Road and rail users will be able to share information about their journey and update each other about delays thanks to a £1.6m research project at Lancaster University. Our Travel is a travel information system based on social networking and direct information from transport workers. The aim is to reduce congestion and improve the transport system as users find more efficient ways to travel. It will be available as an app for mobile devices such as the IPhone, providing up-to-the-minute information so people can decide how and when they will travel. More >>

Arm is hoping to build on the success of its Cortex-R4 processor, launched in 2004, in the automotive space with the first two major additions to the family – the Cortex-R5 and R7 MPCore processors. The R4 was a hit for automotive braking systems though it has since moved on into consumer products and notably hard disk drives. The new products though have been driven by the needs of the mobile world, especially LTE and LTE-Advanced.” More >>

Tektronix believes that it has the answer for engineers struggling to get cars with multiple RF signals through conformance tests. The company has launched a mid-range analyser that can detect spurious signals that last for as little as 5.8µs. “In the automotive industry,” said Tektronix technical marketing manager Dean Miles, “there are two challenges – embedding RF into automotive and the potential for any of the RF signals to fail the EMI regulations for that country that it is in.” More >>

An electric town car with the latest in electronic motor control technology went into production in June on an initial 10,000 vehicles. The three seat Mia, which has been designed by former Volkswagen chief Murat Günak, has been under development since 2007. The car is powered by a Leroy Somer asynchronous motor controlled by Sevcon’s Gen4 size-four 80V 350A motor control. More >>