Patent ID: 8849504

Claim:
An electronic control apparatus used in a vehicle, comprising: a volatile memory configured to store control data for control necessary to the vehicle, each control data being stored in the volatile memory together with a first unique identifier (ID) that is assigned to a region of the volatile memory where the control data is stored and is associated with a section number, the section number representing a group of data, to which the control data belongs, to be overwritten by previous or initial data simultaneously when an abnormality occurs in the volatile memory; a control component configured to perform the control necessary to the vehicle using the control data stored in the volatile memory; an update component configured to update the control data stored in the volatile memory on the basis of a result of the control performed by the control component; a detecting component configured to detect the abnormality occurring in the volatile memory; a recording component configured to record, into the volatile memory, a history of the abnormality detected by the detecting component, including information indicating a region of the volatile memory in which the abnormality occurs, the history of the abnormality being stored in the volatile memory together with a second unique identifier (ID) that is assigned to a region of the volatile memory where the history of the abnormality is stored and is associated with a section number, the section number representing a group of data, to which the history of the abnormality belongs, to be overwritten by previous or initial data simultaneously when the abnormality occurs in the volatile memory, whereby the history of the abnormality stored in the volatile memory can be correlated with the control data stored in the volatile memory through the first and second unique identifiers that are associated with the same section number; a communication interface communicable with an external device; and a transmitting unit configured to generate a transmission signal indicating the history of the abnormality in the volatile memory on the basis of information indicating the history of the abnormality recorded in the volatile memory by the recording component and transmit the transmission signal to the external device via the communication interface, wherein the volatile memory is configured to powered by a battery mounted in the vehicle and to hold data including the control data and the history of the abnormality by updating the data while the battery is being mounted in the vehicle.