Abstract Mechatronic systems for vehicles have received increased importance for improving automotive safety and comfort. These systems are designed to aid the driver by preventing unstable or unpredictable vehicle behavior and to stabilize the horizontal and vertical motion of the vehicle. This is achieved by the integration of actuators, sensors and data processing. However, the attained benefits are paralleled by an increase in the complexity of the system requiring enhanced methods for fault detection and diagnosis. Therefore, concepts for model-based fault detection and diagnosis along with sensor fault tolerance are presented and realized for both a vehicle lateral dynamics system and an active suspension system.