ES3: High-speed communications on 4 wheels: What's in your next car?

Communications inside vehicles is experiencing a growing demand due to emerging applications, like infotainment, driver assistance, safety systems and diagnostics, requiring data-rates per channel beyond what is offered by current solutions. The number of network nodes per car has steeply increased, and the number of communication ports per year shipped for the automotive market has reached the 650-million level (Sources: IMS, SA, Gartner). Considering that cabling is the third highest cost factor and the third heaviest component in the car (Source: IEEE), there is a clear need to go beyond the current low data-rate solutions and converge to a high data-rate backbone network. Several solutions, both electrical and optical, are being discussed and proposed by car makers and silicon manufacturers. What are the future solutions going to look like, and what challenges will they pose to the solid-state circuits community?