Early life field failures in modern automotive electronics - An overview; root causes and precautions

Forensic failure analysis of automotive electronics deals in most cases with failures within the guarantee period. Frequently, specific operational conditions, even for a short moment, combine with specific electronic sensitivities - against ESD discharge, switching spikes, humidity ingress, vibration, undefined grounding circuitry. The paper lists impressive, partially curious examples of related failure anamnesis and analysis and tries to draw some important conclusions with respect to prevention and failure anamnesis/failure analysis methodologies.