At Innovation Day organised by the Slovenian Chamber of Commerce Hidria’s innovators were again among the best. They developed the innovative Engine cold start relay for the efficient operation of modern vehicles and received a silver award for it.

This year, a team of 11 experts from Hidria received the silver award as one of the 44 best Slovenian innovations for the new Engine cold start relay. It allows to monitor and control the air heater in internal combustion engines according to the emission standard EURO6.

This award-winning innovation addresses the obsolete MOSFETs in the existing solution, an update of the customer’s requirements regarding the vibration level and EMC, an upgrade of the requirements for a diagnosis function, the meeting of norm ROHS2 for electronics and the product development process in line with the requirements of functional safety according to the ISO 26262 standard.

In addition to these factors, by developing the new relay we presented a product on the market that efficiently resolves the issue of failures (complaints) about existing products that affect as much as 10% of components in the market. With its solution which is based on the duplication of protective functions (such as current measurement) we achieved an extraordinarily high level of functional product safety which is very close to the standards applicable for the highly demanding aircraft industry. This is completely new for Hidria.

In its design our innovative product relies on some known and proven solutions. These have been included into products by our Corporation that are already available to customers. By means of the “design re-use” procedure the development team significantly shortened the product development time and increased the success of its validation.