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Connectivity and systems integration together with weight and production cost reduction are among the main objectives of the automotive industry in electric vehicles development in particular, when concerns with smart grids integration and interoperability increases. At the same time vehicle systems reliability plays an important role as a decisive factor for market acceptance. Conventional automotive electrical systems comprehend a central ECU, with radial wiring harness architecture with power and signal cables. A different architecture is proposed with the aim of vehicle cable mass and cost reduction, simplification and increased reliability of the whole electrical control system. With this architecture there's also the aim to provide computing and communications capability to each electric component in a distributed way, in order to enable its integration with external systems like smart phones, networking services and smart grids.

The automotive industry paradigm shift from convention internal combustion engine vehicles to electric vehicles brought new technical challenges for automotive OEMs. During this shifting period, electric vehicles are expected to be produced on small volumes, requiring new design and production processes. In order to have a more flexible and efficient production system, OEMs and suppliers are working on modularity as a design tool to reduce the time to market, reduce the complexity of supply chains and reduce the total vehicle production cost. One of these modular components will be the chassis, which was introduced as a skate by GM on the Sequel concept. On this concept all the crashworthy components were included in the skate, over which an autobody was assembled. This skate-chassis included all the powertrain components, batteries, power electronics and motors, as well as braking and suspension systems.