Liability Discussed as Autosar Launch Nears
By Tom Murphy Ward's AutoWorld, May 1, 2007 12:00 PM

The first vehicles employing the Automotive Open System Architecture (Autosar) will be on the road next year, and the new approach will be used first for body electronics, says a supplier executive actively involved in rolling out the new electronic standard.

In 2009, Autosar will be used to produce electronic control units for automotive powertrain applications, followed in 2010 with chassis applications and in 2011 with the first safety-related ECUs, says Helmut Fennel, vice president-strategic projects, electronic brakes and safety systems for Continental Automotive Systems.

More than 100 companies (including Continental) in the Autosar consortium are collaborating on a standard electronic foundation that can be used to produce ECUs that are interchangeable and reusable in other parts of the vehicle.

“Electronics dominate the car, and that will only accelerate,” Fennel says on an SAE World Congress panel. “All of us in the auto industry must focus our engineering, our quality resources and our talents to creating a standard architecture.”

Also on the panel were three other Autosar advocates, Richard Burns of Yazaki North America, Frank Homann of Siemens VDO Automotive and Martin Thomas of Robert Bosch GmbH.

Thomas, director-electronic control units for Bosch, says the Autosar standard raises tricky legal questions pertaining to product liability in the event of a failure: Is the supplier of the component responsible, or the auto maker that produced the vehicle, or even the entire Autosar consortium?

In a Q&A session, Thomas says he believes liability questions will be settled through “bilateral discussions” between the supplier and its auto maker customer.

Fennel agrees, saying the Autosar specification cannot be held responsible in matters of product reliability. “It needs to be worked out by the supplier and the OEM,” he says.

Despite issues of liability, Thomas supports Autosar “as a common framework for innovation” that all electronics suppliers can follow. The framework is open-ended to allow for specific components to differentiate from others in the marketplace.

Autosar should slash development costs and enable the consolidation of ECUs, as software that functions in one part of the vehicle now can take on a new task elsewhere.

Autosar should allow OEMs to cut in half the number of ECUs necessary in a vehicle (the average vehicle has about 50), while accommodating faster integration of new vehicle electronic devices many consumers are demanding, Fennel says.

The average vehicle has about 600 electrical devices. Yazaki's Burns, chief engineer of research and development for the wiring harness supplier, says Autosar will simplify many wiring challenges by allowing engineers developing new vehicle programs to plug in ECUs that previously have been validated.

“Why spend money to reinvent the wheel?” Burns asks.