CITROËN AUSTRALIA

The quantity and quality of electrical components in cars has hugely increased over the last 40 years, yet, since cars switched from six to 12 volts, the basic design of automotive electrical systems has not changed. Essentially all cars have a central power source from which power is sent to individual items around the car. This has lead to extremely complex wiring looms that are Byzantine and expensive to maintain and difficult to service and fault find.

The new Citroën Xsara does away completely with the conventional wiring system and replaces it with a computer based multiplex system. This means that instead of hundreds, if not thousands of wires running through a car, there are at its most basic form, two wires. One is a power supply, like a ring main in a house, the other is a cable carrying instructions from the central computer (the Built in Systems Interface or BSI) to switches around the car that turn electrical items on and off.

The advantages of the system are manifold. Firstly the new Xsara has, despite having more electrical equipment in it, more than 30 per cent less wiring, cutting cost and weight. As a computer based system with all the components 'talking' to each other, rather than being a passive system, servicing and faulting find times are slashed. It is possible for the Citroën service computer to check the health of every electrical component on the car in seconds and inform the technician of any work that is required.

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