Cars are forming complex distributed architectures implementing optimized networks. Evidently, the communication plays a central role for the dependability and the performance of the system. This document presents the challenges and vision of the newly started TEODACS research project. Our aim is to consider the communication services as a whole and to study the internal (e.g. configuration) and external (e.g. EMC) effects that influence the network and further the system performances. We discuss how our consortium ideally supports this approach and we introduce the project’s vision based on the close development of a laboratory setup as well as a simulation framework.