The decision on the overall functionality to provide with a car is first of all a marketing decision and independent of the in-car networking technologies used and available. However, as soon as decisions have to be made on how to enable the functionality, in-car networking becomes important. Aspects like flexibility, scalability, or how to distribute functions are severely impacted by the properties of in-car networking. This chapter thus discusses the opportunities and changes Automotive Ethernet brings to system development.

A brief overview of the system development process

The development process in automotive follows the V-cycle. While Section 2.3.1 used the V-cycle to explain the responsibilities shared between car manufacturer and Tier 1 supplier, in this section the model is used to explain the changes the introduction of Ethernet-based communication brings to the development process. The important idea of the V-cycle is to follow a top-down approach on the development side and a bottom-up approach on the test side. On both sides, each new step requires the conclusion of the previous. During the development, the later need for testing is directly supported with the provision of test cases. This ensures stringent test coverage.