trying to build a high-quality
audio amplifier. To produce
the best sound, you need quick
switching, and the engineer
soon found he was limited by
the familiar problem of switch-
ing loss. Lacking the domain
knowledge of soft-switching,
he began tackling it from an
outsider perspective. That’s how,
decades after soft-switching was
determined to be impractical for
real-world applications, it made
an unexpected comeback.
“[Soft-switching] was the
Holy Grail for power electron-
ics,” Renouard reflected. “But by
the late 1990s people had given
up on it because they couldn’t
control it. And it wasn’t until we
came along that we controlled it.
People are really flabbergasted
that we’ve resurrected what’s
considered old technology.”
The company of the robotics
engineer who initially developed
the technology sold it to Ren-
ouard, who started Pre-Switch
with the engineer as CTO. The
company has been developing
the technology and building
products ever since. In total,
about five million dollars and
six years of development effort
have been invested in develop-
ing Pre-Switch technology.
That effort is starting to pay
off, as last year Pre-Switch
closed a deal with an unnamed
Tier 1 automotive manufacturer
for one of its EV programs. Over
the summer, that manufacturer
will test Pre-Switch in one of its
EVs to validate its performance.
It will be the first field test of the
technology in an EV, though it
has undergone weeks of reli-
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