Automotive OEMs are disrupting their own supply chains at a record pace, driven by the critical role software development plays in building long-term customer relationships and experiences. Over the air software updates, increasingly abstracted and capable E/E platforms, and cloud/edge solutions are driving new business and customer engagement models that focus on retention and monetization of vehicle services. In recent years, Tesla has highlighted the value of an internally managed software platform that allows for continuous software updates over the lifetime of the vehicle. Such a platform requires years of design and development, yet Tesla has managed to maintain an edge in competitive differentiation through its E/E capabilities, while the rest of the industry began research and development of its own way to compete with such a customer experience.
Figure 1: Software defined car enablers (source: SBD Insight: Software Defined Cars)
In 2017, SBD Automotive released the first edition of its “Automotive Over the Air Updates” report, highlighting how OEMs were beginning to integrate software update technologies in order to address cyber security vulnerabilities and other potential quality issues. While these early implementations were generally limited to connectivity and infotainment applications, automakers used this opportunity to understand how the technology works and identify the risks associated with its usage. Today, almost every global OEM has some level of software update technology in their vehicle. OEMs are now expanding the reach of these capabilities to other elements of their in-vehicle platforms, such as ADAS applications. With update technology implemented, automotive OEMs can now leverage general in-vehicle platforms to build new digital cockpit, infotainment, connected, and driving experiences for vehicles already on the road. To achieve this, most manufacturers are scaling up internal software development teams to manage the vehicle’s software product roadmap, as opposed to outsourced partners or Tier 1s, as these experiences represent a core differentiator for manufacturers.
Figure 2: Supplier relations for IVI ecosystems (source: SBD Report 629: Automotive Operating Systems and Ecosystem) The first frontier for such internal development is in-vehicle infotainment. While Tier 1 suppliers still provide the core infotainment hardware platforms, many OEMs are now either developing the core user experience and human-machine interfaces internally or are leveraging third parties to assist in this development (i.e. Google and Luxoft). Earlier this year, SBD Automotive released the first edition of its “Automotive Operating Systems and Connected Infotainment Services” report. This comprehensive analysis looks at the core technology platforms behind current and next-gen infotainment systems, and the ecosystems being tapped into, in order to provide competitive digital consumer experiences. The report also identifies some of the key internal development areas for OEMs as infotainment becomes an increasingly important differentiator for manufacturers.
Figure 3: Projected evolution of in-vehicle electrical architectures (Source: SBD Report 630: E/E Architectures) To achieve this differentiation, OEMs also need to develop brand new in-vehicle platforms to support software-defined services. For 2020, SBD Automotive released its “Evolution and Technology Drivers for Next Generation E/E Architectures” report, a comprehensive assessment of various OEM E/E architectures and approaches with an eye towards the next-generation platforms. Some of the key takeaways include:
The end goal of all of this is to achieve what many are calling the software defined car. In other words, a vehicle for which the majority of its functionality is built on hardware agnostic software platforms. This concept allows manufacturers to develop software independent of its various hardware configurations while exercising the benefits of updatable vehicle platforms in production. In 2021, SBD Automotive will release the first iteration of its full “Software Defined Car” research report, a comprehensive definition, survey, and assessment of the various technologies that go into extensible vehicle platforms. Some of the core technologies that will be assessed include major in-vehicle middleware and integration patterns such as Adaptive AUTOSAR and Altran CoherenSE, container-driven edge services such as AWS and Azure, standards and alliance-driven development such as SENSOR-IS, and specific OEM platform development activities such as Volkswagen’s vw.OS and GM’s Digital Vehicle platform.