Patent ID: 7277783

Claim:
A motor vehicle control system comprising at least first and second separate control devices interconnected via a bus system, each control device controlling an associated individual vehicle component, wherein said first control device has a first processor and at least one first control device program stored in said first control device having at least one function specified in a program code carried out by said first processor that is transferred from said first control device to said second control device and is linked with a program sequence of a second control device program running on the second control device and processed on a second processor of the second control device, said at least one function having input and output variables transmittable between the second control device and the first control device via the bus system; wherein several functions of the first control device program that is stored on the first control device and runs on said first control device are transferred from said first control device to a respective one of a plurality of transferee control devices, each function transferred from said first control device having a respective program code stored in a respective one of the plurality of transferee control devices, each function of the respective transferee control device being linked with a respective control device program that runs on the transferee control device, whereby the functions transferred from said first control device are thereby distributed over the transferee control devices with regard to memory storage in memory and implementation; and wherein the functions transferred out of the first control device are new functions that have been added to existing functions previously stored in the first control device in the course of the development of the first control device and have been isolated from said existing functions.