Author: Ramin Shirani, CEO and Co-Founder, Ethernovia
Few industries witness more innovative futurecasting than the automotive industry. Since the development of the first passenger car in the late 19th century, automakers have promised the creation of a “future car” that is ever faster, safer and smarter than previous models.
In 1918, a writer for Scientific American predicted cars would be akin to drawing rooms on wheels by the year 2000. General Motors’ presentation from the 1956 Motorama auto show featured a jet-powered car complete with on-tap drinks to be enjoyed after engaging autopilot by the 1990s. And technologists today continue to predict personal vehicles with advanced capabilities in the near future.
In 2021, for example, technology experts in the Forbes Technology Council predicted that vehicles will soon become 5G-enabled, fully functioning office spaces with machine learning and artificial intelligence-powered preference personalization—wrapped in multiple layers of cybersecurity solutions.
Drink dispensers aside, what these predictions over the past century share is a reliance on enormous data sets. However, they often implicitly assume that vehicular processing capabilities will match ever-growing data demand.
These predictions often fail to recognize the current limitations of traditional vehicular networking systems, which are based on multiple network standards like CAN and LIN. These legacy networks, while standardized for specific purposes, are increasingly being outpaced by the exponential growth in data demands.
Fortunately, the hypothetical future car that consumers demand and automotive engineers work to supply is largely achievable, but only by accepting that innovation is almost always incremental and that even the most high-tech solutions to our most modern problems may be built upon the technologies of our past.
The Role Of Ethernet In Automotive Innovation
Ethernet was first invented at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in 1973 to streamline the centralized connection of employee computers without creating what inventor Bob Metcalfe called a “rat’s nest” of wires.
Today, most have heard of Ethernet as the plugged-in alternative to Wi-Fi in the home or office that offers a faster, more secure internet connection. It is also commonly understood in the context of data centers, where hyperscalers and cloud providers are using high-bandwidth Ethernet to improve their network capabilities to scale with the new data demands being driven by AI, machine learning and other data-intensive applications.
Ethernet works similarly in an automotive context. The complex networking system of a typical, newer vehicle on the road today can be significantly simplified and optimized by Ethernet cabling supplemented by advanced semiconductor solutions. The result is a single-pair networking system that enables a smarter, safer and more cost-efficient vehicle for both consumers and commercial fleets.
Unlike the multiple pairs of wires used in a standard wired router, automotive Ethernet relies on single pairs, which not only provide the necessary speed but also contribute to weight reduction—leading to extended battery life in electric vehicles.
Increasing Data Demands
However, automotive Ethernet engineers have had to innovate beyond standard Ethernet systems to adapt to the needs of automotive manufacturers.
To further highlight that increase in data usage: Vehicle architectures today and in the future must be able to meet the exponentiating bandwidth demands of applications like advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS), autonomous driving (AD) and vehicle software updates delivered over the air (OTA). The network enabling those features must simultaneously be reliable and secure.
Ethernet’s multi-point connections, high bandwidth and low latency are proving to be an ideal solution for the future of automotive networking. These features enable manufacturers to support the growing data demands of modern vehicle architectures, from ADAS to full autonomy, all while maintaining network security and reliability.
For example, consider the bandwidth demands of autonomous driving alone. According to Ethernovia, fully autonomous driving, in which all passengers can fully disengage from driving responsibilities, is estimated to require up to 200 Gbps of total data across the vehicle’s network—a massive increase from the 2 Gbps required for driver assistance capabilities in vehicles on the road today.
Fifty years ago, Bob Metcalfe and his team invented Ethernet to centrally connect one building full of personal computers. Today, iterations of Metcalfe’s technology allow enhanced safety features, sensing systems, personalized displays and more. And over the next 50 years, it is very likely Ethernet technology will have evolved through the determination of innovative engineers to enable features like full autonomy, mobile office spaces and AI-powered vehicle learning.
Ethernet is an extremely poignant example of how innovation works on a technical level and can teach engineers or executives across industries the valuable lesson of looking to the past to solve a future problem.
Perhaps, if automotive networking systems advance significantly, General Motors will one day even be able to build functional drink dispensers into the car of the future.