According to Jan Becker, CEO and co-founder of Apex.AI, the emergence of automobiles, whose features and capabilities change and improve over time thanks to over-the-air software updates, can be compared to the smartphone market. .
“Fifteen years ago, everything was hardwired. There was a simple browser and some software,” Becker points out. Nowadays, smartphones are obviously personalized with applications and settings that users prefer, personalizing devices to suit individual needs and adding features with each software update.
“If you apply that to the auto industry, we had a well-defined vehicle,” he said. “With them, almost nothing changes for the life of the vehicle. Then came the Tesla Model S with over-the-air software updates.”
Wassym Bensaid, senior vice president of software development at Rivian, said: “No longer an afterthought. Software is now at the heart of the experience moving forward with advanced technology content.”
The smartphone analogy is useful, but Bensaid says it has limitations when applied to cars. “Cars are much more complicated than smartphones,” he said. A vehicle that has nothing to do with mobile phones, he has dynamics and safety in mind.
According to Becker, the move to software-defined offers automakers two key benefits. One is the ability to add functions and correct mistakes after delivery. The second is that software developers can write code for their software platform rather than a specific hardware device.
This is comparable to how the availability of the Apple iOS and Google Android mobile operating system platforms has fostered an ecosystem of apps that are independent of the specific hardware on which they run.
These benefits will drive the growth of software-defined vehicles, which will swell from $34.2 billion in 2022 to $81.6 billion by 2027 at a compound annual growth rate of 19.0%, according to MarketsandMarkets Inc.’s report, Software-Defined Vehicles Market. contribute to the market.
Günther Heling, Director of Embedded Software and Systems at Vector Consulting Services, says the software itself will consume €1 billion by 2030. By then, the car will have 300 million lines of code, and self-driving cars will run on his 1 billion lines of code, he reported in his discussion.
This change means that automakers must become software companies while maintaining sheet metal design, stamping and assembly capabilities. This will be difficult, said Becker. “They are experts in car design and manufacturing and historically have not focused on software development,” he said.
According to Becker, there are two reasons for this. First, car companies don’t have the developers needed to write all this code. He cites Toyota and Volkswagen as examples of companies working to overcome this shortage, which have launched dedicated software divisions.
A second obstacle is the need to change the way automakers work with their suppliers on software for the components they offer. He said that because the automaker and suppliers each have their own software repositories for his code, development is cumbersome as developers at each location make changes and then coordinate the changes. The solution is to have a single repository that both groups can work on. “OEMs can do nightly builds, and suppliers always have access to the latest state of their software,” he said Becker.
Rivian has improved the R1T’s performance in sand with a new sand-specific driving mode.
“We need really strong software developers,” declared Bensaid. “OEMs need to be able to attract such strong talent in order to compete in this space. Few companies today are able to attract this strong developer base.” Rivian has decided to move its headquarters from Michigan to Palo Alto, California, where it has a development center, and to open a second development center in Irvine, California. Bensaid reports.
The cost of such efforts is the price of entering the current automotive market, but the move to software-defined systems creates new potential revenue streams to help pay for that work, said Arm’s head of North American Automotive Partnerships. Director Robert Day said. Ongoing “What?” A series of technical briefings.
“Part of the move to software-defined is to meet the needs of our generation of technology users, who expect software to be upgraded over the life of the hardware on which it runs, but automakers themselves It’s also something that makes it easier for us to manage: delivering future features for our vehicles, upselling features to our existing customers, and offering the same features and capabilities across our entire vehicle range,” said Day. increase.
“Purchasing the vehicle was a buying transaction,” Rivian’s Bensaid said. “It is the beginning of a journey to improve performance, efficiency and capabilities.
In addition to selling features that customers didn’t select or weren’t yet available at the time of purchase, OTA updates can increase customer satisfaction by retroactively addressing issues. After launch, we got feedback that the vehicle was struggling in the sand,” Bensaid recalls. “We defined a new strategy for sand and released sand mode last summer.”
Similarly, the “Welcome” feature, like the Rivian R1T’s lights automatically turning on when someone approaches, is obviously a no-brainer if the owner is camping in the deepest forest they go to to escape the glaring lights. Not welcome. Camp mode prevents trucks from automatically lighting up or making unwanted noises.
The ideal frequency of updates is debatable, but Rivian has settled on monthly releases. Bensaid explains: “It’s the right balance of speed and quality control that provides very quick feedback.”
To avoid cumbersome updates, Rivian staggers new software pushes to vehicles rather than sending them all at once. And before that, new releases are tested internally and through a small number of customers before being approved for general release. Additionally, the company is launching a beta program that customers can choose to participate in to help scrutinize changes and upgrades.
The main challenge is managing the complexity of doing everything in software. This is outlined in a primer written by middleware specialists ETAS, founded by Bosch in 1994.
The company said:
“Software complexity must be managed to increase scalability across vehicle generations, even as the underlying hardware or operating system changes. Primarily the work of middleware and virtualization technologies that enable software modularity, hardware abstraction and standardization, and provide a safe and secure backbone across platforms.”
Apex.AI’s Becker says that failing to manage this complexity will drive up costs and delay the delivery of features to customers. “The direct impact is that production start-ups are delayed today due to software integration.
“The next big step is for these different software functions to actually coexist on a large central computer, like the brain of the vehicle,” said Arm’s Day. “Again, the analogy is with a computer or smart phone with the performance to run multiple applications simultaneously. We’re going to see a move to zone architectures that are placed in each region,” he continued.
Becker predicts this will start to be seen in 2024 and the approach will be ubiquitous by 2030. The change is proving to be more difficult than automakers expected, he notes. “Volkswagen has postponed the debut of this approach,” he said. “The higher the volume, the longer it takes.”
To help navigate this transition, interested companies are joining industry groups that promote the development and understanding of standards. The Eclipse Foundation is such a leading organization. Founded in 2004 as an independent, non-profit organization, it enables the establishment of a vendor-neutral, open and transparent community around the Eclipse integrated development environment.
Eclipse Foundation member companies include Apex.AI, Arm, Blackberry QNX, BMW, Bosch, Continental, Denso, Electrobit Automotive GmbH, ETAS GmbH, IAR Systems Group, Intel, Mercedes-Benz, NXP, Siemens AG, Toyota Motor Europe , Valeo, Volkswagen and ZF Group.
