Similarly, PROFINET, the confusingly named EtherNet/IP (IP here stands for Industrial Protocol not Internet Protocol), POWERLINK, and others - all based on Ethernet but with a custom protocol layer replacing IP. "We need something that is high speed but also supports rapid deterministic communication" is pretty much a solved problem in the industrial space.

I wonder what Tesla's game is here: is it really just reinventing the wheel, or are they perhaps using higher speed Ethernet as industrial Ethernet tends to still be limited to 100Mbit? Or perhaps it's tightly linked with the proposal to communicate over 48V lines?