Method for activating de-activated control units of a vehicle and vehicle network and node of said vehicle network

Disclosed is a method for activating de-activated control units of a vehicle in a vehicle network (1), in which method the control units (2) of the vehicle that form the nodes of the vehicle network can communicate with one another and a group of control units (2) of the vehicle that are to be activated and are interlinked in communication with one another are combined to form a sub-network to be activated. According to the invention, each node (2) has at least one network interface to a neighbouring node (2) that can be directly addressed via said network interface and a sub-network management system which specifies with which sub-network and via which network interface the node (2) of the vehicle network can communicate. If an activation command exists for the control units of a sub-network, a node (2) identifies in the sub-network management system the network interface via which it can communicate with the sub-network to be activated and said node (2) then transmits the activation command to the neighbouring node (2) via the identified network interface. The neighbouring node (2) is activated by the sending of the activation command provided that said node (2) was de-activated before the sending of the activation command.