The highly intelligent, networked car of the future will hit a milestone this week as 10 Japanese automakers are poised to announce they are developing their own operating system to help set a standard platform to build controls for everything from the engine to the entertainment system.

The common operating system could foster savings in development time and reduce needed coding (engine control systems can have a million lines of code), but more important usher in the multi-year transition to the industry’s elusive “domain” model.

In that model, a set of domains with a central 32-bit operating system and a legion of surrounding 16-bit and 8-bit micro-processors govern systems such as the drive train, safety systems and entertainment.

“These are the things you read about in research papers and see at auto conferences,” says Egil Juliussen, principal analyst at Telematics Research Group. “[Car makers] are thinking about it. In five or 10 years you will see this.”

That is also the time frame in which the 10 Japanese automakers, including Toyota, Honda, and Nissan, hope to release their common operating system for automotive electronics, according to a report by Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun news agency.

It reported that Japan’s Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry will commission the task of developing the OS to the Japan Automotive Software Platform and Architecture (JasPar) standards group, which also includes auto-parts makers and electronics firms such as Denso and Toshiba. The ministry plans to seek more than 1 billion yen in funding for the project during fiscal 2008.

On average today, a car includes 70 microprocessors, according the Telematics Research Group.

Juliussen says it is a good thing that the Japanese automakers are aiming at one OS, whereas today they have to reinvent the wheel nearly every time they use another micro-processor.

“Just like IT, they want one or two platforms,” he says.

Toyota’s separate plan

Last June, the Japanese magazine Nikkei Electronics Asia reported that Toyota and Nagoya University’s Center for Embedded Computing Systems were developing an OS for automotive terminals to handle such functions as navigation, telematics and driving support. The OS is for automobile information systems, and includes functions to tie it to a car’s control systems OS and allow the two to share microprocessor resources, according to the magazine.