[unwind]

On that particular car model you had to interact with the touch display every 15 minutes or else the whole car went into power saving mode and the CAN bus stopped sending messages.

Wait, what? I guess that doesn't disturb ordinary operation, i.e. driving? Very easy of course to imagine a scenario when you drive and don't touch the display for 15 minutes.

That would have made sense if the CAN was for non-driving stuff only (like the entertainment system) but your application seems to indicate that not being true.

How does the car still operate if the CAN bus goes dark?

[mschuster91]

I'd assume that the demo car was not having its engine running - it's usual for cars to switch to power-save after 5-10 minutes, mostly to prevent cars from draining their battery if the user forgot to take the key out.

[traverseda]

Presumably you can also have the engine running.