Total Vehicle Integration and Design - Journey to Electrification, Digitization and Connectivity Leading to Autonomy

Total vehicle integration and design is a complex process and deals with interactions of many subsystems. The subsystems in a vehicle not only have to perform their role but interfaces between the subsystems must be well understood to design for all the interactions. The global automotive market is following electrification, digitization and connectivity trends that eventually lead to Autonomy. Therefore, the vehicle integration design process needs to include these new use cases of these trends. The process starts with establishing the top-level vehicle metrics relative to key deliverables of the vehicle ranging from providing comfortable environment to the driver to good performance. The process of establishing vehicle level metrics is not trivial and quite often must be derived from the customer verbatim. Frequently, there are conflicting requirements and priority must be given to one over another. For example, it may not be possible to achieve acceleration performance and fuel economy targets while meeting cost targets. This paper discusses how the traditional metrics and vehicle design philosophy will evolve with vehicle electrification, digitization and connectivity leading to autonomy. Few use new use cases of autonomous vehicles have been provided as examples in the design for autonomous vehicles.