Erlangen, Germany— The CAN in Automation (CiA) international users' and manufacturers' group says of the 24 million Controller Area Network (CAN) chips sold in 1997, about 75% were applied in automotive applications. About 6 million CAN nodes were installed in general automation applications, mainly in industrial control devices, and 80% of the chips sold were used in Europe. This nonprofit group is building support for the CAN serial bus system. CiA's Erlangen headquarters provides technical, marketing intelligence, and product information on CAN technologies. It also supports several CAN-based, higher-layer protocols. CiA's board of directors was recently augmented by the additions of Holger Zeltwanger (PZ Marketing) as md, Christoph Duwe (ESD GmbH) as business director, and Guido Beckmann (TU Braunschweig) as technical director.