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Electronic systems in vehicles characteristically consist of several distributed electronic control units (ECUs) from different suppliers. This situation hinders the integration of automotive systems and increases the overall costs due to individual solutions coming from each supplier. In order to get rid of these disadvantages, the French-German project OSEK/VDX was founded and is now drawing attention worldwide. OSEK/VDX worked out a respective specification to standardize services and protocols of communication, network management and a real-time operating system. An overview of the current state of OSEK/VDX including specifications and harmonization process with ISO is given. Furthermore a description of the Modistarc project working on methodologies and tools for conformance testing of commercial OSEK/VDX implementations is contained.

For the development of future safety-relevant automotive electronic systems a thorough adaptation of the existing design process is necessary to consider safety and reliability in a more systematic way. In this paper an approach for a new design methodology is presented. It is based on the V-Model which is the established process model for the development of electronic and software systems in the automotive domain. For an advanced consideration of safety and reliability the existing process is extended by a second V (with process elements that have a special focus on safety and reliability) to a “Double V”. The new elements are interconnected with the existing ones at several points of time during the development process. By a defined information exchange between the two Vs continuity in the methodology is guaranteed. Basis for the extension are experiences of the aerospace domain that were adopted to automotive conditions.