Capability of single hardware channel for automotive safety applications according to ISO 26262

There is no doubt that electromobility will be the future. All-electric vehicles were already available on the market in 2011 and 14 new vehicles will be commercially available in 2012. Due to the fact that automotive applications are influenced by the safety requirements of the ISO 26262, nowadays the use of new technologies requires more and more understanding for fail-safe and fault-tolerant systems due to increasingly complex systems. The safety of electric vehicles has the highest priority because it helps contribute to customer confidence and thereby ensures further growth of the electromobility market. Therefore in series production redundant hardware concepts like dual core microcontrollers running in lock-step-mode are used to reach ASIL D requirements given from the ISO 26262. In this paper redundant hardware concepts and the coded processing will be taken into account, which are listed in the current standard ISO 26262 as recommended safety measures.