More than ever, microcontroller performance in cars has a direct impact on the driving experience, on compliance with improved safety, ever-stricter emissions regulations, and on fuel economy. The simple microcontrollers formerly used in automobiles are now being replaced by powerful number-crunchers with incredible levels of peripheral integration. As a result, performance can no longer be measured in MIPS (Millions of Instructions Per Second). A microcontroller's effectiveness is based on coherent partitioning between analog and digital, hardware and software, tools and methodology. To make an informed choice among the available devices, the designer needs benchmarks that are specific to automotive applications, and which provide a realistic representation of how the device will perform in the automotive environment. This presentation will provide an overview of the challenges of developing such benchmarks, the hardware required for their implementation, and the process by which a new suite of benchmarks that addresses these concerns is being implemented by the EEMBC (Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium). The goal of this suite is to take every factor into consideration to create an accurate measurement of a system's true performance. This will allow the development of a benchmark recognized by worldwide automotive vendors for its efficacy in measuring the performance of every component in automotive applications, including μC cores, buses, peripherals, memory, compilers, profilers, operating systems, software drivers, and auto-code generators. This new benchmark is also targeted to be a tool to define performance requirements for the members of the automotive chain: OEMs, Tier1s, silicon suppliers, and tool vendors.