ETAS ES58x USB CAN and CAN-FD bus interfaces
USB-attached CAN and CAN-FD bus interface adapters from ETAS, covering the ES581.4, ES582.1, and ES584.1 models. They are used by automotive and industrial engineers to connect a PC to vehicle or machinery CAN buses for diagnostics, ECU development, and data logging, and ETAS still sells the ES582 and ES584 as current products.
recommendation
It should stay in the kernel because the hardware is still sold new by ETAS in 2025 and the driver is actively maintained, with around 42 substantive commits over the last five years and fixes still being backported as recently as early 2026. No alternative driver covers these vendor-specific USB CAN adapters, so removal would strand current customers in automotive and industrial tooling.
repository signals
sources
- lore.kernel.org
lore_activity for drivers/net/can/usb/etas_es58x/es58x_core.c shows the driver was still being touched and backported in March 2026, indicating ongoing upstream maintenance rather than abandonment.
- etas.com
ETAS still markets the ES582 USB CAN FD interface as a current product, supporting new-hardware availability for the ES58X family in 2025/2026.
- etas.com
ETAS still markets the ES584 USB CAN FD/LIN interface as a current product, further supporting that the ES58X family remains in active commercial use.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Local source inspection (exec_command on es58x_core.c/Makefile) shows this directory is the ETAS ES58X USB adapter driver covering ES581.4, ES582.1, and ES584.1. Phase-1 metadata already shows 42 substantive commits in 5 years with a most recent touch on 2026-03-02, and lore_activity(file=drivers/net/can/usb/etas_es58x/es58x_core.c,since=5y) returned 2026 stable/lkml hits, so this is actively maintained; no removal signal surfaced in the sampled lore evidence. web.search_query found live ETAS product pages for ES582 and ES584, so the family is still sold new and remains relevant in automotive/industrial CAN tooling, albeit niche rather than mass-market. There is no obvious upstream replacement driver for the same vendor-specific USB devices, so removal or deprecation is not justified.