A REFERENCE MODEL FOR THE NEXT GENERATION OF IN-VEHICLE ELECTRONICS
Allan Kirson, Shane Scott · Intelligent Transportation: Realizing the Future. Abstracts of the Third World Congress on Intelligent Transport SystemsITS America · 1996
Today, if a consumer would like to buy a car equipped with 1998 consumer electronics, he or she will have to wait for model year 2001. Due to the differences in the design cycles of automobiles (3-5 years) and electronics (9-15 months) a car bought today is, inevitable, equipped with old technology. New technology can be retrofitted, but at great cost, and with little systems integration. Dealer-installed or aftermarket electronics cannot take advantage of systems or devices already built into the vehicle at the factory, since there is no safe and secure way to tap into these resources. This paper presents a reference model for the next generation of in-vehicle electronics for ITS (Intelligent Transportation Systems) that will allow manufacturers, dealers, and vehicle buyers to reliably and safely install a wide range of electronics equipment in their vehicles at any time during its life cycle, with little or no expert assistance required. The work is being led by the Society of Automotive Engineers' ITS Data Bus Committee. A workshop on In-vehicle Electronics for IVHS was held in November, 1995, at the Chrysler Technology Center in Auburn Hills, MI, at which broad consensus was reached on the technical aspects of the architectural model. Important to its success will be the degree to which manufacturers see this architecture as an opportunity to provide better service to their customers, gain competitive advantage, and ultimately, sell more vehicles. A second workshop on this topic, held on July 9-10, 1996, at Honda in Torrance, CA, provided additional input from other industry participants, and will help to accelerate development of the relevant standards.