Market and Technology Trends

Automotive E/E Architectures 2026

Jul 2026

In-vehicle network ICs will reach around $8B by 2031, as Ethernet eats into CAN and LIN to serve the zonal and domains architecture evolution.

YINTR26593

This new Yole Group report covers the fast-evolving automotive E/E architectures, with a focus on the electrical architectures as well as key enabling semiconductors, such as SoC, MCU, and communication chips (Ethernet, PCIe, proprietary video/audio network, CAN/LIN, etc.). The transition to 48V electrical architecture is also addressed, together with an overview of vehicle powernet, key power management IC and discrete devices.

SCOPE

Depth analysis:

System
IC/Device

Technology:

Interface IC
Ethernet
CAN
SerDes
GMSL
HSMT
And more

MARKET

E/E architectures are shifting from distributed to domain- and zonal-based designs, paired with 12V-to-48V transition, driving new demand across processors, MCUs, network ICs, and 48V PMICs as ECUs shift to domain/zonal controllers.

2021-2026-2031 Timeframe

Device units
Business news

PLAYERS

Conventional Tier-1s still dominate E/EA supply, but OEMs (Tesla, BYD) are vertically integrating controllers/MCUs, JVs like Stellantis-Foxconn emerge, and a growing local Chinese Tier-2 chip ecosystem (NOVOSENSE, 3PEAK, Silan Microelectronics) is challenging incumbents.

Market shares
Ecosystem / Supply chain
Business news

TECHNOLOGY

Ethernet becomes the zonal backbone as MOST/FlexRay retire and legacy buses persist at the edge. SerDes (MIPI A-PHY vs GMSL) displaces LVDS and 48V rolls out with zonal architecture, eFuses, and redundant power for ADAS.

Technology status
Technology Roadmap

PRODUCT'S OBJECTIVES

To track the evolution of automotive E/E architectures, from distributed to centralized.
- Assess the architecture evolution from distributed to centralized (zonal and domain controllers) and its impact on suppliers
- Cover the shift toward Software-Defined Vehicles (SDV) and its implications for E/E architecture design
- Provide reference architectures, one-board and one-chip solutions, for zonal/domain consolidation and power distribution
- Map the semiconductor content spanning controllers, processors, MCUs, communication chips, and power management ICs
To provide a complete overview of the semiconductor and component landscape enabling next-generation E/E architectures:
- Cover the full chip landscape: automotive processors (including the RISC-V ecosystem), MCUs, in-vehicle communication chips, and power management ICs
- Provide the competitive landscape and supplier positioning across each chip category, including Tier-1 controller suppliers and Chinese SerDes players
- Detail the electrical architecture shift, including 48V powernet adoption, power supply redundancy, and eFuse
To provide guidance for E/E architecture transition and supply chain synchronization:
- Forecast the global and regional adoption of zonal/centralized architectures, 48V powernet, and key chip categories
- Provide the architecture and sourcing plans of global light-vehicle OEMs and Tier-1 suppliers

Automotive E/EA is experiencing a paradigm shift, creating needs of new chips

The automotive industry is undergoing a profound transformation in its electrical/electronic architectures: legacy distributed architectures are steadily giving way to domain-based architectures, which are themselves being rapidly challenged by the emergence of zonal architectures - a shift pioneered by an early EV disruptor and now gaining broader traction across the industry.

This shift is accompanied by a parallel evolution in vehicle power networks, with a gradual transition from 12V to 48V, led initially by battery electric vehicles before extending to other powertrain types in the coming years.

This dual transition is fundamentally reshaping the automotive semiconductor landscape:

Advanced processors, the core of centralized computing for autonomous driving and next-generation infotainment, are seeing particularly strong growth.
Automotive MCUs are undergoing a structural shift toward more powerful components, purpose-built for domain and zonal controllers.
In-vehicle network ICs are progressively moving from traditional CAN/LIN toward CAN FD and Ethernet, driven by rising ADAS requirements.
A new category of components is emerging around power management for 48V networks - still nascent today, but poised for dramatic expansion.

Each of these segments shows sharply contrasting growth trajectories - some in structural decline, others accelerating fast - signaling a major redistribution of value across the automotive semiconductor supply chain.

Conventional players dominate the game, while increasing new ones in China

Rather different from distributed E/E architecture, more centralized ones greatly increase the investments of OEMs to E/EA development, which basically determines the competitiveness of platforms. OEMs are cooperating with multiple tier suppliers (key semiconductors, controller hardware, software stacks, and sometimes critical algorithms) at the same time to define clearly and coordinate the suppliers.

This explains the increasing direct investment and cooperation of OEMs:

Some OEMs are working vertically:
- Tesla and BYD are designing their own zonal and domain controllers;
- BYD, Dongfeng, Great Wall Motor, SGMW are working on their own MCUs, sometimes with the help of suppliers;
Some OEMs are making joint ventures: Stellantis and Foxconn co-create SiliconAuto for MCUs;

Chinese OEMs are both growing their global market share and adopting new E/EA.

Although in the E/EA transition, most suppliers, except for key processors in central computers, are conventional automotive suppliers, the local ecosystem in China incubates many local players throughout the supply chain. This shift is more evident in Tier-2 semiconductor players, which is jointed pushed by cost advantages, and concerns on supply chain resilience.

The chip shortage in COVID-19 leads to a high number of MCU players in China;
New in-vehicle network ICs see a large batch of new names in SerDes from China, who are also pushing to a local protocol (HSMT);
PMICs for 48V powernet are largely under development, jointly by conventional global players and Chinese ones.

Electronic architectures are moving to zonal ones, combined with 12V to 48V upgrade

On the network side:

Legacy buses aren't disappearing - they're being pushed to the edges. Zonal gateways now translate a high-speed Ethernet backbone down to simpler, cost-effective buses for less demanding nodes, rather than ripping them out entirely.

Older high-bandwidth protocols are being phased out, as major OEMs standardize on automotive Ethernet as the common thread linking cockpit and ADAS domains.

Ethernet isn't fighting alone at the top either - it shares the stage with another high-throughput interconnect, each handling a distinct job: one for the backbone, one for chip-to-chip compute links.

A standards war is quietly unfolding around the interconnect that's replacing older point-to-point links - one camp pushing an open specification, another defending its proprietary ecosystem with a rival "open" counter-standard.

Meanwhile, a lesser-discussed audio/data bus is proving surprisingly resilient - already deployed at massive scale across dozens of OEMs, with a next-generation version poised to bridge directly into the new software-defined backbone.

On the power side:

The move to a higher-voltage powernet is underway, driven less by fashion than by simple necessity: vehicles need more power, plain and simple.

But it's never just a voltage upgrade - the real story is how it's married to the zonal shift. A hybrid approach is emerging as the pragmatic answer, blending the new backbone with familiar, low-voltage power delivery at the edge.

A once-obscure protection component is becoming central to next-gen power architectures, quietly essential across both the old and new voltage worlds.

And as autonomy climbs toward the highest levels, power design itself becomes a safety architecture problem - redundancy is no longer optional, it's existential.