E-Mobility Engineering 014 l InoBat Auto dossier l In Conversation: Brandon Fisher l Battery monitoring focus l Supercapacitor applications insight l Green-G ecarry digest l Lithium-sulphur batteries insight l Cell-to-pack batteries focus

Eaton’s head of HV safety systems talks to Rory Jackson about his career so far and the company’s work in the EV sector Safe pair of hands A s electric powertrains move from 400 V architectures up to 800-1000 V and higher still, innovations around ensuring the safety of power distribution systems are critical to protecting drivers and passengers, and instilling long-term faith in the viability of e-mobility en masse around the world. Brandon Fisher knows this well. As engineering product line manager for HV power distribution and protection systems at Eaton, he wields considerable resources in devising novel solutions to ensuring the safety of the countless potentially hazardous connections in the most advanced electric powertrains across the EV industry. Early life and university “My father was an engineer, and when I was 5 he bought a ‘basket case’ motorbike for us to put together, and for the rest of my youth I’d get really excited about anything to do with the anatomy of vehicles and machinery,” he says. “He and I would work on cars together a lot, and at one point my mother got us one of those Teddy Ruxpin animatronic bears. Within a week my brother and I had taken it apart and identified every aspect of how its electrical and mechanical parts worked.” Following his youth and early education in Oregon, he moved to California to study in the Mechanical Engineering programme at the California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. Known colloquially as Cal Poly, it combined a strong educational philosophy of ‘learning by doing’, with a practical, lab-based focus on mechatronics that drew Fisher’s particular interest. “I’m a kinaesthetic learner – I’ve always picked things up by working with my hands and experiencing new forms of engineering directly,” he says. “And I had a tight budget there – I was the first in my family to go to university – so I was really motivated to get my money’s worth of education. Cal Poly’s programmes were a perfect fit.” His mechatronics focus guided him into a number of automotive and robotics projects, from FEA simulations to vehicular assembly work, culminating in a robotics competition in 2004 which he entered as part of a team composed largely of fellow mechanical engineers. “For that, we were given a microprocessor and the objective of making a robotic solution that could speed around a table tennis board, picking up balls around a white line and dropping them into a box at the end of the room,” he recalls. “We had to define the batteries, the frame, the chassis, how to collect and deliver the balls, all the electrical and mechanical connections between everything, and so on. We focused on making a robot that performed well, ran quickly and looked good. Our entry broke the school record and the instructor asked to buy the robot to use as the demonstrator for future competitions.” Saleen and MillenWorks The success of this competition, along with other projects in electromechanics and engines across Cal Poly’s courses, caught the eye of high-performance sportscar and automotive components producer Saleen, which brought Fisher in as an intern in 2004. Its aim was to put his mind to a supercharger being developed by its powertrain group. Brandon Fisher’s career in automotive engineering has paid dividends for innovating power distribution and protection systems such as this (Images courtesy of Eaton) 16 Summer 2022 | E-Mobility Engineering