The CAN standard includes a physical layer and a data-link layer which defines a few different message types, arbitration rules for bus access, and methods for fault detection and fault confinement. The physical layer typically uses differential transmission on a twisted pair wire.
The RS-485 is only a physical layer interface. And even then, there is no specification for connectors. You are on your own with respect to the higher layer protocols ..
The need for additional protocols is clear when you consider that RS-485 allows for multiple nodes to connect to the same wire ..
Every node on the network can generally listen at the same time. However, only one node can talk at any given time. If more than one node attempts to talk at once, the message will be garbled.
So, a higher level protocol, such as MODBUS, for example, is necessary to ensure that every node will get a chance to talk and that its message will get through ungarbled.
Other software protocol, which uses the RS-485 as its hardware platform, however not as popular as the MODBUS, and used mostly in power management, is CBUS ..
Here you can find short description of CBUS: **broken link removed**