DETROIT—The direction of travel for automotive Ethernet applications is clear: up and to the right. But the growth of the technology’s adoption faces stiff headwinds in large part due to the automotive industry’s traditional caution. That was the assessment from Ian Riches , director of automotive electronics services with Strategy Analytics, who delivered a keynote here during the first day of the IEEE Standards Association’s Ethernet and Automotive IP Day in October 2014. “Automotive Ethernet demand will grow. It's the only realistically proposed solution for high-bandwidth connectivity in vehicles,” Riches told an industry audience at the COBO Center. The event was pinned to the end of the annual SAE Convergence event for the automotive industry (click here for additional blog coverage of that event and here for our video interview playlist ). What’s driving the technology’s embrace is autonomous vehicle technology and automated driver assistance (ADAS) systems. He noted as an aside that despite the media hype around these applications, they’re really just extensions of automotive engineering and safety efforts stretching back to Henry Ford. "The least enjoyable parts of the driving experience have (always) been automated,” Riches said. But the headwinds buffeting adoption are slowing the drive to widespread Ethernet adoption, chiefly the industry’s DNA: “The general automotive industry is conservative by nature, reluctant to adopt technology. Even something relatively simple can go wrong in a car, and particularly in the U.S., if it goes wrong it costs you big time." He noted during his presentation that the number of automotive-industry articles about recalls in a recent period outnumbered the number of stories about autonomous vehicle technology five-to-one. He added: "Very few people don't get fired for making incremental improvement. People do get fired for making transformational change that fails." Riches ( pictured, left ) said a number of things are driving the headwinds buffeting automotive Ethernet, including: IP licensing issues for existing solutions that might be solved at this point People are still concerned about EMC/EMI issues at 100Mbps The move to create an IEEE standard for 100Mbps is good “but has given some reason to delay decision making again.” Some applications and/or customers are still waiting to see how the 1Gbps RTP IEEE standardization progresses before committing Riches emphasized the importance of standardization in kick-starting the momentum for automotive Ethernet adoption. “The prompt and consensual conclusion to IEEE standardization efforts is perhaps the key point at the moment to remove some of these risk factors and increase confidence in the market,” he said. Riches shared his forecast for automotive Ethernet growth, but it came with some caveats and caution: BMW is essentially the only major automotive maker driving the use of automotive Ethernet right now, but worldwide the number of automotive Ethernet sockets will jump from the low millions now to 170-180 million sockets in 2020 60 percent of global production in 2020 will feature an Ethernet diagnostic port 10 percent of rear cameras will use Ethernet in 2020 40 percent of surround-view systems will be Ethernet enabled in five years 25 of front and other cameras will use Ethernet in them as well (a forecast he recently revised upward along with his forecast for Ethernet-enabled radar systems) 20 percent of premium audio and 5 percent of mid-range audio will employ Ethernet in 2020 (another forecast Riches has recently bumped up) He noted that the fast-paced change of technology can easily change many predictions overnight. To speed adoption of automotive Ethernet, Riches recommended: Increasing openness among vendors (“Ethernet is essentially non competitive once you get to the OEM. The consumer doesn't care. You're not going to sell the car based on the Ethernet network.”) Avoiding hype (“All proponents want to talk a market up, yes, but overly optimistic forecasts can backfire. If you need faster than 100 percent compound growth rate to build a business case, you're doing something wrong.”) Empowering the right people to work with IEEE. (“These are not always the strongest technology evangelists,” he noted. IEEE procedures require strong technical grasp, negotiation and compromise—not dogma and politics, he added.) Brian Fuller Related stories : — Functional Safety and ISO 26262: Designing Against the Worst Case — Using Virtuoso Custom Design Platform to Model an Engine Control Unit — Designing Automotive Ethernet Using Allegro, Sigrity Tools![]()
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