Three fundamental changes are driving the software-defined vehicle.
The automotive industry is experiencing a seismic shift with the advent of software-defined everything. This revolution is driven by the growing complexity of developing, integrating, and managing multiple software systems in vehicles. This opens the door for innovation, collaboration, and profitability, not just for the original equipment manufacturer (OEM), but for the entire ecosystem of players who will bring it all together. As we move toward an even more connected and autonomous future, designing a vehicle is about creating quality experiences and customer-desired outcomes, and software is at the epicenter of enabling this reality.
The need for software expertise
The rise of megatrends in connectivity, electrification, autonomy, and shared mobility is pushing automakers to prioritize connected features, infotainment, digital services, and over-the-air software updates as integral parts of the vehicle ownership experience.
Software innovation will be at the heart of this transformation, and building software expertise becomes a crucial need for automotive OEMs and other ecosystem players.
Enabling the SDV
Looking ahead, much of the transformation and consumer value will hinge on software innovation by virtue of software-defined vehicles (SDVs). Automotive companies will increasingly need control over software so that they can improve the vehicle over time and provide differentiated features while reducing time-to-market, decreasing engineering costs, and improving the quality of the software in the vehicle over its lifecycle.
The development, deployment, operation, and servicing of mission-critical intelligent systems will be key for auto manufacturers. Software and tools that support safety-critical applications requiring real-time, deterministic performance will allow auto manufacturers to address a mixed-criticality environment as the industry builds and maintains the software systems of next-generation connected vehicles across the lifecycle. As the industry builds its software expertise, a key need will be to enable a cloud-native edge-to-cloud software platform.
Fundamental changes
Automotive OEMs have been building function-specific electronic control units (ECUs) and function-specific software for years. Typically, they have had big teams and multiple suppliers per program or vehicle platform to cover vehicle software for braking, steering, windshield wipers, automatic windows, and infotainment systems. Automotive companies have been building and integrating software for a long time.
What is new is the agile way of developing software, developing it in the cloud at cloud speed, and then deploying it into the vehicle in real time over the air. Additionally, three fundamental changes are currently driving the software-defined vehicle: in-vehicle architecture, the move from function-specific ECUs to centralized compute, and cloud-driven development with over-the-air updates.
Supporting the software-defined era
In the past, automotive OEMs and their suppliers had teams of hundreds of software engineers working on software projects. Going forward, they’re building teams of thousands of software engineers. They are investing billions of dollars towards hiring these software engineers and building the infrastructure required to support the software development and operations effort.
The challenge, when you look at the development tools required for those thousands of engineers, is to determine how they will collaborate, how they will build software, how they will bring it together. That is going to be enormously difficult.
Automotive OEMs will need tools to make those thousands of engineers work well together and work faster to get their software to market. The industry will need software that allows those engineers to be collaborative and productive.
Trusted partners
Some OEMs are building software competency, capability, and platforms themselves. However, the software-defined automobile is complex and has many aspects to consider—hardware, platform, applications, services. Given increasingly software complexity, OEMs should also look to the ecosystem for trusted software partners who have proven expertise and products built using modern cloud-native technologies that can help them accelerate their development and build out the vision of their software journey.