A Low Cost Concept for Central Electronic Body Control Modules for the Chinese Market

摘要

China is one of the fastest-growing automobile markets worldwide. Especially the passenger car branch grew in the last five years at an average of 30% per year. Chinese automobile production will increase in the following years by at least 10% annually and at the end of this decade more than 5,8 million passenger cars will be produced per year. Today, China is already the second largest automobile market after USA [1]. It can be assumed that in the automotive-electronics field, a similar growth will take place and this is expected especially for Body Electronics. Central control units do have a special importance in this field because they are used in nearly all types of vehicles and control a multitude of electronic functions. However, functional standardization has not been achieved so far across OEM platforms and a high variety of solutions is existing on the market. It is a significant challenge for automotive engineers to develop a low-cost and competitive concept for a relatively small production volume per vehicle model and/or -platform. A standardized and modular BCM design was created by Continental Automotive Systems, allowing a functional scaling which meets the requirements of the Chinese growth market. This concept is called "Platform BCM (Body Control Module)" and is described with emphasis on its technical characteristics.