Patent ID: 7047117

Claim:
An integrated vehicle control system comprising a plurality of electronic control apparatuses connected via at least one communication line in a first network to communicate with each other for controlling specific functions of a vehicle, wherein one of said plurality of electronic control apparatuses functions as an overall control apparatus for transmitting operation directives to the other electronic control apparatuses, each functioning as an individual control apparatus, to cause respective individual control apparatuses to operate according to said operation directives, thereby realizing a collective control of said specific functions, said overall control apparatus determines said operation directives supplied to said individual control apparatuses based on information obtained via said communication line from said individual control apparatuses, and executes abnormality detection processing for detecting an abnormality occurring in the integrated vehicle control system, and said overall control apparatus executes gateway processing to select information necessary for a second network from information received via said communication line and to transmit the selected information via a host network to an overall control apparatus of the second network, thereby allowing mutual exchange of information between individual control apparatuses of differently functionalized networks.