This is what your car’s network will look like in 2050

Consider the differences between that cherry 1990 Fox body Ford Mustang GT that you lusted after as a teenager and today’s equivalent. The latter is larger, heavier and far more powerful. But, as any gearhead will tell you, the biggest difference is that the current Mustang, like all modern cars, is highly computerized.

That third-generation Mustang from 1990 did have an engine control unit (ECU), which is a computer that manages the engine. It takes data from sensors, such as the O2 sensors in the exhaust system, and uses that information to tweak the engine idle speed, ignition timing, air-fuel mixture and more. But the rest of the car’s systems operated mechanically or via simple relays.

The Mustang on the dealer’s showroom floor today is different. Most of the car’s systems are interconnected and computerized. Various systems communicate with each other through the controller area network (CAN) bus. Locking the doors will, for instance, send a message through the CAN bus that is accessible by the rest of the car’s systems.

CAN buses worked well throughout the 1990s and 2000s, but that technology is becoming outdated as manufacturers introduce more technology in their cars. Part of the problem is volume. Technology like advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) require a lot of data and a conventional CAN bus lacks the bandwidth to keep up. The weight and complexity of the wiring harness is also a problem.

Next-generation IVNs

Companies like NXP are already working with automotive manufacturers to usher in the next generation of in-vehicle networking (IVN), which will require rethinking the logical and physical architecture of networks. It will take advantage of high-speed Ethernet communication. But let’s look even further forward to what your car’s network will look like in 2050.

The 2050 Mustang will likely have less in common with the current Mustang than the current Mustang does with that 1990 Mustang. It will be electric, which is a move Ford already made with the controversial Mustang Mach-E. There is a good chance that it will also be self-driving.

Radical changes to IVN will be necessary to support that technology and everything else that comes along over the next three decades, say experts at NXP, including Andy Birnie, solutions and application engineering manager, and Francesco Sindaco, director of strategy and business development, IVN. NXP is exactly the company that would know. It designs and manufactures IVN products for the auto industry, so its business relies on forecasting future technology.

The “flat” architecture of IVN today, in which all systems have a physical connection to a central computer, is already on its way out. Around 2025, domain-based architectures will take over. Domain vehicles will group systems by function and manage them via domain controllers. Domain controllers can then share data through a service-oriented gateway when necessary.

Such a vehicle will have separate domains for the powertrain, the infotainment system, the ADAS and so on. If the ADAS needs to display a warning on the infotainment system screen, it can post a message to a service through the gateway. Domains simplify software and the logical architecture of IVN, but they end up making the wiring harness even heavier and more complex.

Zonal IVNs

To reduce the cost and complexity of wiring harnesses while maintaining sensible logic, automakers will move to zonal IVNs sometime around 2035. Instead of grouping systems by their function, designers will group systems according to their physical location. If an ADAS parking sensor and a taillight are both located in the rear bumper, then they would both be part of the same zone.

All the hardware in a zone would transmit its data through a zonal module. The zonal modules translate local data and send it across a vehicle-wide Ethernet network as a service. If a system needs specific information, like the current engine rpm, it would be able to subscribe to the corresponding service.

This kind of full zonal architecture provides additional benefits beyond logical and physical simplification. It would also make vehicles far more modular. Imagine a world in which an automaker could share firmware and software between models in the same way that they currently share physical parts. Or if customers could subscribe to over-the-air updates that dramatically upgrade a sub-system’s functionality.

Looking even further into the future, NXP envisions distributed zonal architecture around 2050. Sindaco refers to vehicles equipped with distributed zonal architecture as “cloud computing cars.” That doesn’t mean that our hypothetical 2050 Ford Mustang will need to connect to an internet service every time you want to roll down a window. Rather, it means many systems will provide processing on the edge, operating all on their own and only sharing data with other systems as needed.

Distributed zonal architecture is still a long way off, but NXP is already developing hardware solutions for that and the more immediate future.

We invite you to watch a free webinar replay to learn more about the future of IVNs.

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