The demands on future mobility concepts for private transport will be determined by three major trends: climate change, urbanization and demographic change. These trends also provide the basis for three main development goals: “zero emissions”, “intelligent mobility” and “zero accidents”. In combination with intelligent traffic concepts and driver assistance functions, electric mobility will make a vital contribution to implementing these goals.
To nevertheless keep individual mobility affordable and safe, the complexity of the electrical/electronic architecture (E/E architecture) of today's vehicles must be significantly reduced. It must advance along the steps that avionics and industrial automation already took more than 20 years ago, i.e. it must adopt the structures and methods of modern information and communication technologies (ICT).
The text below describes the motivation and idea for future E/E architectures and the potential which arises from changing them significantly. The RACE research project (Robust and Reliant Automotive Computing Environment), which was started in January 2012, is also introduced. Its goal is to develop a first prototype for such an E/E architecture.