Bag Air with Freescale's New Accelerometers

Car airbags deploy when the vehicle crashes or is crashed into by something else, but the circuitry is, in the end, the factor that determines how reliable and fast the airbags are.

Freescale wants to make sure car drivers and passengers are as safe as possible, so it made the Xtrinsic MMA65xxKW family of accelerometers.

Featuring technologies that pick up on front and side car detection, they can easily be integrated into vehicle airbag systems.

The chips rely on the high-aspect-ratio micro-electromechanical systems (HARMEMS) technology and have a high efficiency as well.

The new line is composed of the MMA6519KW, MMA6525KW, MMA6527KW, MMA6555KW and MMA6556KW, all of them meant to be integrated in vehicles' main electronic control unit (ECU).

Mass production will start in the second quarter of next year, 2012. the starting price will be of $3.69 or 2.67 Euro.