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Co-location of radio equipment using different frequency bands in a vehicle requires meticulous planning of antennas and radios to avoid interference and other physical phenomena.
Radio equipment has a lifetime of up to 30 years from cradle to grave in the automotive industry. The initial planning for updating or installing a new piece of radio equipment takes three to five years (mostly it takes five years) before the radio is installed during manufacture of the vehicle. Then it is installed for five to 10 years in production.
After the radio equipment goes out of production, it must be provided for 15 years as a spare part. Radio equipment suppliers to automakers commit to long-term contracts. The up-to-five-years’ planning and development upfront is because the radio equipment is developed from scratch to fit into the vehicle’s architecture and to ensure the quality of the radio component over the lifetime of the vehicle. Vehicles are not scrapped after two to three years; this would never be acceptable by customers and consumers. A vehicle is expected to “live” for at least 13 years.
Full Article: IEEE Vehicular Technology Magazine, Volume 21, Number 1, April 2026
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