To join forces in order to make a technology successful requires a neutral and independent nonprofit association. This is well known since many years, in particular in Germany. CiA, established in 1992, has introduced CAN in many different markets. Members have developed jointly the CANopen higher-layer protocol and profiles. In the last yeas, CiA members have introduced CAN FD as the next generation CAN data link layer protocol.

Of course, you can look like a Scotsman to the financial benefits (e.g. free-of-charge CANopen vendor-ID and free-of-charge CANopen Conformance Test Tool). However, the not countable benefits are more important: As part of the community, you are co-operating with other members, you are always a step ahead, and you do not miss some important trend in CAN technology. CiA is strictly committed to develop only things, which are not competition-relevant.

The next party is scheduled: CAN 2020! This includes CAN FD, CANopen FD, and J1939 on CAN FD as well as CAN in IoT and Industry 4.0 environments. We expect that the number of annually installed CAN nodes still increases in the future: 2 billion will be reached before 2020.

Look to the list of CiA members. Most of them are headquartered in Germany. There are significant numbers of members from Switzerland and Italy, too. Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden) are also well represented. Industries from other regions and countries are underrepresented.