Automakers are established experts in powertrain, chassis, and body, but there's a fourth engineering discipline demanding OEM attention: electronics.

For certain vehicle models, electronics content can represent close to 40% of an automobile's value. "That's a lot, so electronics have got to be one of the big four core competency areas," said Cary Wilson, Director of E/ES Engineering for Ford Motor Co., during a Convergence 2000 panel discussion on 'The Automotive Electronics/Information Revolution: What It Will Take To Make It Happen.'

When a supplier provides in-vehicle electronics, the OEM needs to know more than the purchase price. "You have to understand the entire vehicle electronics architecture as well as the processes. If you're not understanding the 'dirty details,' you're not understanding the functionality and you won't get the architecture right," said Karl-Thomas Neumann, Director of Electronics Research for Volkswagen AG.

Peter Thoma, former Vice President of E/E Development for BMW AG, agreed: "We need clear vision -- clear architecture -- so that tomorrow we can build plug-and play."

The plug-and-play enabler is standardization. The Automotive Multimedia Interface Collaboration (AMI-C), a global organization of vehicle manufacturers created to foster development, promotion, and standardization of multimedia interfaces to vehicle communications networks, generated opinions from the panelists. "AMI-C is approaching the right vision. The problem my company has is that it's progressing too slowly," said Neumann, noting that 12 companies need to agree on protocols.

David Wohleen, Executive Vice President of Delphi Automotive Systems, shared the sentiment that putting protocol guidelines on the fast track is a good idea. "I think AMI-C needs to be on a tighter time schedule, a tighter cadence."

As for which protocols OEMs favor, panelist responses show that Toyota, BMW, and VW like multimedia buses; Ford likes IDB^TM; VW and BMW like the Class A bus; VW and BMW like FlexRay time-triggered protocols, and VW likes time-triggered protocols.

Discussion about a 42-volt architecture wrapped the session's topic list. Wilson ventured a prediction that it would be at least 2008 before a 42-volt architecture gained acceptance. "It's a huge move, but there will be lots of introductions way ahead of that."

Offering a tongue-in-cheek dissenting opinion, James Mitchell, Vice President of Sun Laboratories (part of Sun Microsystems), said: "If you hold off long enough, maybe we'll get the electronics voltage down low enough that it will be a moot point."