Interview with Manoj Singh, Forvia Hella
“Zonal architectures can significantly reduce harness complexity”
Before joining Forvia Hella in 2014, Manoj Singh worked as a Controls Software Engineer at Ford.
Courtesy of FORVIA HELLA
Zonal architectures promise leaner wiring, but they also raise the stakes for power distribution and fault handling. Manoj Singh of Forvia Hella explains what fail-operational systems must deliver in future vehicles.
As vehicle architectures become more centralised, ensuring that critical functions remain available after an electrical fault is becoming a key engineering challenge. Manoj Singh is Global Product Line Director at Forvia Hella and works on body controls and next-generation vehicle architectures in North America.
At Automotive Wire Harness & EDS Conference Detroit 2026, he will deliver the keynote “Powering the Software-defined Vehicle: Creating a Fail-operational Zonal Ecosystem”. His session will examine how intelligent power distribution, software-defined functionality and fail-operational concepts can be combined in future E/E architectures.
Ahead of the event, we spoke with Singh about the biggest technical gaps the industry still needs to close and the challenges that will shape wire harness and EDS development over the next five years.
Looking ahead five years, what will be the single biggest challenge for the wire harness and EDS industry in North America, and why?
The biggest challenge will be enabling software-defined vehicles without simply moving complexity from hardware into software. Zonal architectures can significantly reduce harness complexity and hardware footprint, but they create new requirements around power orchestration, diagnostics, software integration, cybersecurity and validation. The industry's success will depend on whether it can make these architectures scalable, safe and economically viable across millions of vehicles.
Where do you see the biggest gap between what next-generation E/E architectures require and what today’s development and manufacturing ecosystem can actually deliver at scale?
The largest gap is in power distribution. Compute platforms are rapidly becoming software-defined, but much of the electrical distribution layer is still based on concepts developed for far less dynamic vehicle architectures. Future vehicles require intelligent power management, real-time diagnostics, software-defined functionality and fail-operational behaviour, which is driving interest in technologies such as configurable eFuse ecosystems like iConF that bring software flexibility into the power domain.
What should “fail-operational” mean at the EDS level in practical terms: which vehicle functions need to remain available, for how long and after which classes of electrical fault?
Fail-operational does not mean every function remains available after a fault. It means the vehicle can maintain a safe and controllable state when faults occur. Critical functions such as steering, braking, stabilisation, exterior lighting and key automated-driving functions must continue operating while the fault is identified and isolated. The focus should be selective fault containment, where only the affected branch is disconnected while safety-relevant functions remain powered.
How do you partition redundancy between the power source, distribution network, zone controller and individual loads without simply duplicating large parts of the electrical system?
The future lies in intelligent redundancy rather than system duplication. Simply doubling components adds cost, weight and complexity. Instead, redundancy should be distributed across the architecture through smart power distribution, load prioritisation, local decision-making within zone controllers and software-defined recovery strategies. The objective is graceful degradation, where the vehicle preserves essential functionality without requiring a complete parallel electrical system.
How far can solid-state and eFuse-based power distribution change traditional assumptions about wire sizing, circuit protection, diagnostics, fault isolation and recovery?
It has the potential to fundamentally change all of them. Traditional protection systems are largely passive, whereas solid-state solutions continuously monitor voltage, current and temperature and can react within microseconds. This enables more precise protection strategies, richer diagnostics, localised fault isolation and automated recovery functions. Technologies such as iConF effectively transform power distribution from a static infrastructure into an intelligent, software-configurable system that actively contributes to vehicle safety, availability and lifecycle flexibility.
Which system-level fault scenarios are hardest to validate convincingly: common-cause failures, brownouts, thermal overload, latent faults, communication loss or configuration changes introduced through software updates?
The most difficult scenarios are common-cause failures where multiple domains are affected simultaneously. Individual component failures are relatively well understood, but validating interactions between power disturbances, communication issues, software behaviour, thermal effects and recovery mechanisms remains extremely challenging. As architectures become more centralised and interconnected, proving resilience under these combined failure modes will become one of the industry's most critical validation tasks.
Finally, what do you personally hope to take away from the Automotive Wire Harness & EDS Conference Detroit 2026?
What makes this event valuable is that it brings together everyone shaping the future E/E architecture ecosystem, from OEMs and harness suppliers to semiconductor and software experts. I am particularly interested in hearing how different players are approaching fail-operational architectures, software-defined power management and the transition to zonal vehicles. The industry is going through a once-in-a-generation transformation, and conferences like this are where many of the most important discussions begin.
