The Future of Automotive Ethernet at BMW
The fulfillment of technical requirements is generally not sufficient for deciding on a technology. For example, the technology also needs to be affordable, for which a promising business case always provides a strong argument. Nevertheless, in an environment with limited resources like the engineering workforce of a company, these have to be used wisely. Even if there is money to be saved in one case, maybe it is (even) better for a company to use the same resources in another project. Thus, also the long-term implications of the decision have to be taken into account. In the case of Automotive Ethernet it provides technical solutions for an otherwise unsustainable situation. Also the suppliers showed commitment to the automotive market. Despite all this, it additionally needs to be possible that a market can develop around the technology. The related aspects – multisourcing, future developments, Tier 1 suppliers and other car manufacturers, etc. – were essential for the BMW internal
decision, too.
The first EMC measurements with the BroadR-Reach technology were performed at BMW at the beginning of 2008, the decision to use the technology for the pilot application was taken in March 2010 and the SOP of the respective Surround View System (SVS) was in September 2013 . This means that BMW decided to investigate the technology thoroughly during the world economic crisis of 2008 and 2009, in order to be able to decide on series production in March 2010. At a time when many predevelopment projects in the industry were stalled for lack of funding, BMW allocated money and engineering power to Automotive Ethernet, which was thought technically undoable at the time even by many players in the Ethernet industry.
The obvious explanation is that Automotive Ethernet had a strong case, technically as well as financially. In the authors’ opinion this is not sufficient though. In the authors’ opinion the spirit, which makes BMW one of the most innovative car manufacturers, has its share; not only because a powerful in-vehicle networking system is an enabler for innovations. It is part of being an innovation leader to dare to go into unknown terrain while at the same time being able to assess the risk correctly and being able to handle the challenges. No innovation leader would be innovation leader without this being part of the company's culture. It implies motivated engineers and a capable management, too.
During the preparation of the pilot project decision and in the first year after, many important technical questions and challenges were addressed. From the nucleus of the project group the knowledge on the achievements was passed onto larger groups within the company . Personal networks and selected partners in, e.g., qualification or research, who generally have a good
exposure to management, helped spreading the knowledge to a critical mass. It is the car manufacturer who is responsible for the in-vehicle network. Decisions as consequential as using Automotive Ethernet as the basis for a large-scale network inside
the car, require a strong base for acceptance; over all involved departments and hierarchy levels. When taking decisions of this scale, not everything can be expected to run smoothly. When problems arise, the engineers need to want to overcome the hurdles and the management needs to want to back them up. After all, there is a social component in all technical developments.
The results of these efforts were successful. In March 2011, BMW took the decision to migrate the infotainment domain from MOST 25 to 100BASE-T1 Ethernet instead of to MOST 150, with target SOP in 2015. It was a goal of BMW to digitize all video streams inside the car. The existing MOST 25 system did not provide sufficient bandwidth for this, so a migration to a new system was necessary. BroadR-Reach/100BASE-T1 Ethernet was the more cost-efficient solution. In October 2011 the decision followed to migrate part of the driver assist domain, also starting in 2015. In this case more bandwidth was needed for new
innovations and the integration of Ethernet seemed more future-proof than to add yet another CAN or FlexRay or two of them.
本文节选自《Automotive Ethernet》
作者Thomas Konigseder 2017年从BMW离职，加入Technica Engineering担任CTO；
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