I'm not actually sure 10base-T1S (which is the closest equivalent to CAN) uses more power than CAN. The maximum current rating for some random T1S PHYs is actually lower than that of some random CAN PHYs, but actual power consumption depends on bus usage patterns…
Regarding being expensive and complicated… I'd say that's a question of proliferation. And the non-multidrop SPE variants are actually simpler than CAN in some regards I'd argue.
Okay, interesting! Thanks for enlightening me. I’ll look into SPE.
W.r.t. my point with “complicated and expensive”. Most IP-stacks require low double digit kilobytes of memory, where CAN can be much cheaper (can also be much heavier depending on the “CAN stack”), which rules out the cheapest MCUs.
When I was in embedded, most cheaper MCUs (32bit <100MHz single core, 16kb SRAM etc.) didn’t support Ethernet as a native peripheral. I.e. required a jump from a Cortex M3 to M4 for instance. I haven’t followed things for around a decade though..
Regarding being expensive and complicated… I'd say that's a question of proliferation. And the non-multidrop SPE variants are actually simpler than CAN in some regards I'd argue.