Continental AG, the international automotive supplier, will in 2014 start producing the enhanced SPEED S variant of its scalable Safety Platform for Efficient and Economical Design (SPEED) in China.

At the same time, Continental will begin supplying a Chinese vehicle manufacturer with a SPEED S control unit, which will be developed and produced locally in Changchun, Jilin Province. And the vehicle dynamics sensors, which supply data to the Electronic Stability Control (ESC) system, will also be integrated into this Safety Control Unit (SCU).

This greater degree of integration simplifies the E/E architecture, prevents the need for a separate sensor cluster while retaining the same housing dimensions, and reduces system costs.

At present, ESC control units often receive their vehicle dynamics data from a separate sensor cluster equipped with an interface for supplying the ESC and the airbag control unit with the vehicle's longitudinal and lateral acceleration and the yaw rate about its vertical axis. In contrast, the 3D sensor cluster, based on micro mechanical silicon sensors, was already integrated into the SPEED S safety control unit.

Launched on the global market in 2009, its five variants - from XS and S to M, L and XL - have been developed to fit the requirements for different levels of active and passive safety complexity. The basic variant (SPEED XS) includes activation of the restraint systems in the event of front and side impacts. Continental has been producing this SPEED XS airbag control unit in China since mid-2012. 2014 should see the first SPEED S safety control units with integrated driving dynamics sensor being produced in China itself.

The larger SPEED variants (M, L and XL) can include not just vehicle dynamics sensors, but a rollover sensor, a crash impact sound sensor and interfaces to numerous external sensors (camera, radar, lidar). This means that in premium vehicles with high-performance environmental sensors the role played by the SPEED control unit can be expanded to that of a comprehensive safety domain controller, i.e. a central control unit for coordinating safety functions.