TABLE OF CONTENTS Vehicles are now computerized machines. This fact has had an enormous effect on the possibilities for functionality of vehicles, which together with needs and requirements from customers and from society have created vigorous activities in development.
The overall demands on a vehicle are that it should provide safe and comfortable transportation together with good environmental protection and good fuel economy. This means that there are three main objectives for automotive control systems:
Efficiency, which leads to lower fuel consumption.
Emissions should be low to protect the environment.
Safety is of course a key issue.
There are a number of additional objectives like comfort, driveability, low wear, availability, and long term functionality.
Many of the technologies that today are considered advanced, sometimes even new, have been around for a long time. It is therefore interesting to ask ourselves why these technologies are surfacing now as commercial products. Direct injection of gasoline engines is one example. These concepts are not new, even if sometimes presented so, but the novelty is instead that they now with proper control can achieve competitive functionality and performance.
It is thus the breakthrough of computer control that is a driving factor. A good example is ABS (Anti-lock Braking Systems) which is an old idea, but it was not functional enough using mechanical solutions or analog electronics. Now these systems are readily available and widely spread.
Looking at the future, the three overall objectives above will be in focus.
