Special requirements for vehicle control such as assurance of message delivery, of non-conflicting messages, of minimum time of delivery, of low cost, and of EMF noise resilience, as well as redundant routing and other characteristics mandate the use of less common networking protocols.
The main driving forces for the development of vehicle network technology have been the advances made in the electronics industry in general and government regulations imposed, especially in the United States, in order to make the automobiles environmentally friendly.
With stringent emission standards for automobiles, it became impossible to attain the required degree of control without the help of on-board computing devices.
On-board electronic devices have also contributed substantially to vehicle performance, occupant comfort, ease of manufacture and cost effectiveness.
Various actuators are used to enforce the actions determined by the module (turn the cooling fan on, change gear, etc.).
Commercial class vehicles have Type-I or Type-II connectors that support CAN based communication per the SAE J1939 protocol.