Variant-rich new energy vehicle powertrain functional safety engineering

New energy vehicles (NEVs) are a success story that has led to the continuous introduction of manifold vehicle models and variants. Due to the fact that NEV powertrains are controlled by electrical and/or electronic (E/E) systems, faults and failures of these systems can lead to hazards. In order to prevent such hazards, functional safety engineering aims at avoiding or mitigating safety-critical E/E system faults and failures on the system, hardware and software level. Accordingly, numerous functional safety activities need to be executed and many workproducts are required. Variability of NEVs, high requirements as to achieve functional safety, short development cycles and resource constraints impose challenges for automotive companies. Motivated by an industrial case study we identify variation points of NEV powertrains and analyse their dependencies on the functional safety lifecycle. Based on that, we identify organisational and technical measures which support variant-rich new energy vehicle powertrain functional safety engineering.