Current trends in vehicular technology reflect an increase in the number of electronic modules, leading to more complicated and expensive wiring. The use of optic fibers offers a low-cost alternative to traditional copper-wire harnesses. This paper presents a bidirectional, alignment-tolerant optoelectronic interconnect for automotive applications. The proposed interconnect offers a low manufacturing potential cost because it uses inexpensive alignment tolerant large core plastic fiber for ease of connector alignment. The optoelectronic interface chip uses time-division multiplexing to combine several information sources into a serial data stream that can be easily decoded by a microcontroller. By using a colocated small emitter in the middle of a large detector, the system achieves both bidirectional communication on a single fiber and alignment tolerant capabilities. Results show that this optoelectronic interconnect is a feasible replacement for wire harnesses in automobiles.