The modern automobile

Automobiles must always continue to be safer, more comfortable, less polluting and more reliable. And additionally, driving should be comfortable and enjoyable. And finally, such an automobile should also be as economically priced as possible.

In order to achieve this range of functions automobiles today are equipped with a large number of control devices (e.g. ABS, ESP or engine management system). These analyse numerous sensors and control the corresponding actuators.

A modern luxury class automobile has for example:

• 11,136 electrical and electronic parts;
• a vehicle electrical system with a maximum of 2119 individual lines totalling 3860 m;
• a total of 61 networked control units;
• 31 control units with diagnostics using the K-line;
• an optical bus for powerful data flow for Information and Entertainment (Infotainment);
• 35 control units on CAN bus systems with a data exchange of approx. 2500 signals in 250 CAN messages.