Download our report CAN XL in the Automotive Industry: History, Technical Capabilities, and Market Outlook (PDF)…
As a provider of embedded system solutions for Controller Area Network technologies—including Classical CAN and CAN FD—we closely monitor emerging developments in the field. One such advancement is CAN XL. To better understand its potential impact, we have compiled a comprehensive report exploring its history, technical capabilities, and current market outlook.
From both a personal standpoint and as supported by the findings in this report, I have never been a strong proponent of CAN XL, and I remain skeptical that it will achieve widespread adoption in embedded systems in the way Classical CAN or even CAN FD have.
I view the transition to CAN FD as a significant disruption in the embedded systems market—particularly for smaller businesses and suppliers within the automotive industry. To be clear, I welcome technological advancements when they offer meaningful performance improvements. However, the rollout of CAN FD placed a considerable burden on many suppliers, who were compelled to upgrade existing products or develop compatibility solutions from scratch. These adjustments often required substantial investments in both time and resources—investments that not every company is in a position to make.
This perspective is further supported by the practical drawbacks of CAN FD—most notably its incompatibility with Classical CAN and its impact on wiring harness design. These issues have posed significant challenges for engineers in the embedded systems market, often complicating integration efforts and increasing development complexity.
But coming back to CAN XL: Fundamentally, CAN XL emerged in response to pressure from German automakers—entities that, as recent developments have shown, are no longer at the forefront of innovation in the electric vehicle (EV) space.
The report also confirms that CAN technologies—whether Classical CAN, CAN FD, or CAN XL—are increasingly viewed as supplementary to Automotive Ethernet, not as primary in-vehicle networking solutions. This is consistent with the modest industry uptake of CAN FD, which has fallen short of early expectations. In many low-level control applications, I believe Classical CAN remains not only viable but also the most efficient and cost-effective choice.
Moreover, the notion that transitioning to Automotive Ethernet represents a radical or disruptive change is overstated. A telling example is the National Marine Electronics Association (NMEA), which opted to skip the incremental shift to CAN FD altogether and moved directly to OneNet, the IPv6-based Ethernet standard tailored for marine applications. This decisive move underscores a broader industry sentiment: the time and cost required to adopt CAN XL may not be justified when Ethernet-based solutions already offer superior scalability, bandwidth, and integration with modern software-defined vehicle architectures.
In my view, by the time CAN XL is truly ready for mainstream implementation, most global automakers—except perhaps those in Germany—will have already standardized around Automotive Ethernet.
– Wilfried Voss, President & Owner of Copperhill Technologies.
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