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In the context of high and rising development, validation and certification costs of new components for automotive applications, not only but particularly within the electric and electronic perimeters, the re-use or modularization of components among different car models has become a non-negotiable drive for the car industry in order to increase investments efficiency and foster costs reductions. On another spectrum, it is very salient in the Brazilian market the demand for vehicle-embedded technology, mainly connectivity, surprisingly even more than in other leading automotive markets as the United States. This paper presents a real case study of the complex application of a new multimedia system on a broad range of vehicles produced in two different plants, sold in the Brazilian market under two different brands belonging to the same automotive group.

A frequent situation in the national automobile industry is the each time bigger rapidity that just-launched models are evolved (the so called face-lifts). Within this highly dynamic context, the solutions and technical proposals developed by the local product engineering have two main guidelines. The first one is to work on product evolutions which goal is to make the vehicles far more attractive and differentiated with respect to the competition and also to the previous model. The second one is to constantly search the standardization or the modularization of parts between the different models and versions of vehicles, thus reducing the costs of investments and providing scale profits.