The LIN (local interconnect networks) open communication architecture enables fast and cost efficient system design. Car industry is implementing an increasing number of functions in software. The industry is under pressure to reduce cost and lead time while still providing more customer functionality. To reduce development time while maintaining quality, a reduction in lead time must occur in a coordinated fashion for all major subsystems of a car such as body, electrical, chassis and engine. With improved tools and practices for other subsystems and increasing complexity of the electrical system more focus must be placed on the electrical development process, as it may determine the total lead time and quality of the car. These two challenges will put growing pressure on the industry to handle development of electrical architectures in a more purposeful manner. The LIN Consortium, started in late 1998, focused on specification of an open standard for low-cost local interconnect networks (LIN) in vehicles where the bandwidth and versatility of CAN is not required. The LIN standard includes the specification of the transmission protocol, the transmission medium, the interface between development tools, and the interface for application software programming. A LIN network comprises of one master and one or more slave nodes. The author describes the LIN physical layer, LIN protocol, and design process and workflow. The holistic concept of LIN supports the entire development, configuration and validation of a network by the definition of interfaces not only between network nodes but also between automated tools and software modules. Workflow, system definition and debugging are described. The LIN Network Architect (LNA) is the top level design tool supporting a robust variant handling. The LIN Target Package (LTP) represents the embedded software portion of the Volcano tool chain for LIN. LIN-Spector is a highly flexible analysis and emulation tool used for testing and validation of LIN communication systems. It is divided into an external hardware and a PC-based software portion.