F2008-05-059
Cooperation between European and Japanese Standard Setting Consortia in Automotive High-Speed Safety Bus System: The Analysis between FRC and JasPar
To develop vehicles that fulfill the criteria of `environment-friendliness´ `advanced safety´ and `riding comfort´, coordination between ECUs (electronic control units) is indispensable. For instance, in Toyota´s development of the `environment-friendly´ vehicle "Prius", coordination of the engine control unit with the braking control unit and the motor control unit was essential. Since one or a number of functions is carried by the coordination of separate ECUs, it becomes important to standardize the electronic platform and bus system which securely connect the different ECUs. The purpose of this paper is to consider the standardization process and the convergence process of the conformance-test specification of `FlexRay´, which has been developed by German origin consortium called `FlexRay Consortium´ founded in 2000 by BMW, Mercedes Benz, Philips and Motorola and Japan origin consortium called `JasPar´ respectively. FlexRay bus system has been already launching to the market by BMW in his X5 SUV, it is expected to be de facto standard status in the automotive high-speed safety protocols market. By means of turning our attention toward the standardization activities at the standard setting consortia ― FlexRay Consortium and JasPar (Japan Automotive Software Platform and Architecture set up in 2004 to promote standardization in software platform for automotive electronic control systems and its bus system)－, I firstly view the reason why the automotive bus system is planned to be standardized amongst automobile industry, before investigate into the standardization and convergence process of its conformance-test specification between /inside these consortia by invoking the `Consumption Decision Model´ which is normally employed in a basic micro economics as the analytical tool for consumption decision making under some budget constraint, and then trace the characteristics of standardization process of the conformance-test specification at JasPar by means of focusing one of its working groups called `Automotive LAN Working Group´. On analysis it proved that there would be no ex ante optimal solution for the international standard which was installed beforehand, however, specific strategic intent of some entities have a strong effect on the standardization process, thus every solution which had gone through the process is, more or less, the result of compromise.
Poster presentation: Electronics