China will pass the United States as the world's top automotive market in five to 10 years—circa 2015, according to McGraw-Hill analysts at J.D. Power and Associates (Westlake Village, Calif.) Freescale Inc. (Austin, Texas) and STMicroelectronics NV (ST; Paris) plan to be serving that market, starting with their first jointly developed automotive microcontroller, which they announced today at the China International Automotive Electronics Products & Technologies Show (Shanghai). The jointly developed 32-bit engine microcontroller includes special on-chip hardware for managing greenhouse emissions, for easy implementation of electronic "paddle-flap" manual-shift transmissions, and for running in very fuel-efficient modes near, but not knocking. Freescale recently opened a joint development effort with Chery Automobile Co. Ltd., the largest automobile maker in China, to modernize its vehicles with electronic controllers and to give Freescale a foot in the door of the Chinese automotive supplier market.
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