Lessons from CESA 2012

This second edition of CESA congress has been successful, with a large audience and top experts coming from BMW, PSA, Volkswagen, Bosch, Continental, NXP, Valeo and so many others. Through technical sessions, no less than eight round tables and an attractive exhibition, the congress has kept its promises.
But, what did we learn so far, after such intense discussions ?
First, electrication of the powertrain is really launched. In the future, we should see more mild hybrid, full hybrid and plug in hybrids, and later on pure EVs.
The second point is linked to the first one. Many OEMS and tier 1 suppliers converge on 48 volt, and not only in Germany.
Third, the architecture of the future will be for sure mainly based on Ethenet. It's not the only solution, however, and the automotive industry should find ways to simplify E/E architecture, instead of adding more and more embedded networks.
Fourth, if the connected car is on the way with apps and cloud-based services, nobody knows who will win at the end, between the OEMs, third party players, telecom carriers and giants such as Apple and Google.
Fifth, the automotive industry should work with new partners. The success of Autolib' in Paris, which celebrates its first birthday and which is the largest EV car sharing experience in the world, with nearly 2000 cars running in the streets, is there to show that it's possible to adress customers, even when you're outside of  this business.

Automotive Ethernet, a holistic approach to a next generation In-Vehicle Networking Standard

CESA 2012 abstract

For the next generation In-Vehicle Networking infrastructure beyond CAN and FlexRay, the automotive industry has identified Ethernet as a very promising candidate.
Being a standard and commonly used in consumer and industry domains it provides a high re-use factor for components, software and tools. In addition, Ethernet has the required bandwidth capabilities needed for e.g. new driver assistance systems and infotainment.
However, to become a success story, solutions for automotive have to be further optimized in terms of scalability, low cost, low power and robustness. First optimization steps on Physical Layer level have been already made but more innovations are needed and streamlined for automotive use cases.
This paper discusses new topologies and components and describes an evolutionary path starting from available technology made for consumer domains to advanced systems for automotive applications.

By Steffen Müller, NXP Semiconductors Germany GmbH

Ethernet on wheels

CESA 2012 Partner 





Ethernet on wheels … is not really groundbreaking news, some may say. No argument here, since 100Mbps Ethernet has been around for a while as an on-board diagnostics (OBD) port and access point to the vehicle for re-programming or flashing modules at the OEM dealership. The news is that the automotive industry is making strong efforts to standardize Ethernet as in-vehicle network for high bandwidth applications such as cameras and multimedia. Up to now, high bandwidth meant proprietary network architectures with cumbersome cabling, expensive physical interface devices, custom tools and limited supplier base.

Recently, Broadcom, BMW, NXP, Freescale, Hyundai Motor Company and Harman announced the formation of the OPEN Alliance SIG* (One-Pair Ether-Net Special Interest Group). The alliance’s goal is to enable wide scale adoption of Ethernet in automotive, establish industry standards for Ethernet connectivity over a single pair unshielded cable and enable migration from closed application to open, scalable Ethernet-based network.

©By Axel Streicher

Read the full story here : http://blogs.freescale.com/2011/12/07/ethernet-on-wheels/

*Link : http://www.opensig.org/