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The development times and costs of control strategy software have been under intense scrutiny by automotive manufacturers and suppliers. The time required to produce, optimize, calibrate, and verify a vehicle's control software has become an inhibiting process to deploying proof of concept vehicles. To eliminate this bottleneck the vehicle manufacturers and suppliers are turning to sophisticated graphical modeling and code generation tools to accelerate control software development programs. In addition, vehicle manufacturers are also increasing the use of distributed controllers which, in addition to their numerous other benefits, can also allow simultaneous development of various control systems and thereby reduce the total control system development time.

The complexity of designing and implementing a vehicle electrical control system for ultra fuel-efficient hybrid vehicles is significantly greater than that of a conventional vehicle. To quickly demonstrate and iterate capabilities of these vehicles, an efficient and rapid means for developing requirements, mapping these into an electrical control and communications architecture, and developing prototype systems is needed. The General Motors Precept concept vehicle is an example of an energy- efficient vehicular control system developed using a "requirements to software'' development process and electronic controller infrastructure that demonstrates these attributes. The Precept is General Motors Corporation's technology demonstration concept vehicle developed to address General Motors Corporation's commitment to the Partnership for a New Generation (PNGV) program.