Thanks to revolutionary technology innovation, 15 years ago the cell phone evolved into a mobile computing platform that changed lifestyles, businesses, industries, and societies—and created new marketplace opportunities for manufacturers and third parties based on a data-driven economy. Today, there is a huge appetite to enable a similar revolution in the automotive industry.

Automakers are embarking on a journey of structural reorganization rooted in digital transformation. Continuously updated vehicle content and personalized customer experiences are at the foundation of this shift, and software-defined vehicles (SDVs) will be the enabler to the future of the industry.

“Software-defined” isn’t a new concept. It has been used in telecommunications and cloud infrastructure for years through software-defined networking, storage, and compute design. Adapting software-defined concepts to the automotive space is becoming more common, but like many fast-evolving technologies, there are varying ideas in the industry as to what a software-defined vehicle actually entails.

We subscribe to a straightforward, functional definition: an SDV is one in which vehicle functions are enabled by software and services that run on a shared centralized computing platform—as opposed to being implemented as individual physical electronic control units (ECUs). SDVs are interpreted as a set of data-providing sensors, data-processing application logic, and data-consuming actuators and human-machine interface services that enable specific vehicle functionality. Ideally, these software services are hardware and vendor agnostic.

Even without a standard definition, the SDV is hitting its stride. In-vehicle, cloud, and cloud-to-vehicle services are now used by thousands of automotive manufacturers, mobility providers, suppliers, technology companies, and retailers globally. The SDV is moving from a vision to reality, allowing car manufacturers to reinvent the vehicle development process to accelerate technical development, personalize the in-vehicle customer experience, and extend the vehicle’s lifetime with continuous content updates.

The cloud is playing a critical role in SDV development, enabling OEMs to manage complex vehicle software architectures and consolidate hardware, software, and cloud services into next-generation vehicle platforms in a secure and safe way. Automotive designers, engineers, and marketers realize that they can accelerate innovation, push creativity, optimize processes, and deliver new experiences to their customers by understanding how to harness cloud technologies and services to advance SDV at every point in the value chain.

The cloud-native SDV also supports OEM goals to develop new software-enabled features with the agility and flexibility to deliver vehicle capabilities that are upgradable throughout the vehicle life cycle, with increasing quality and complying with safety, security, and privacy standards. Cloud-native SDV platforms enable this capability, allowing the vehicle to continuously transmit data and receive software updates over the air.

For example, German automotive parts manufacturer Continental’s Automotive Edge (CAEdge) platform features a virtual workbench that allows OEMs to develop, supply, and maintain software-driven system functions across in-vehicle domains (powertrain, cockpit, and other advanced driver assistance technologies). These functions can then be rolled-out to vehicle fleets via over-the-air updates.

Cloud-based infrastructure, tools, and services are democratizing SDV development, allowing non-automotive innovators to develop and run SDV models virtually. A notable example is BlackBerry’s Intelligent Vehicle Data Platform (IVY)—a scalable, cloud-connected software platform that allows automakers to provide a consistent and secure way to read vehicle sensor data, normalize it, and create actionable insights both in the vehicle and in the cloud.

While there is optimism about the promise of the cloud-native SDV, there are a few hurdles we need to overcome. One big challenge is creating a deterministic environment where real-time processing, functional safety, and other critical automotive properties are managed and preserved. This is a major objective of the Scalable Open Architecture for Embedded Edge (SOAFEE) special interest group that AWS (Amazon Web Services) co-founded with Arm Ltd. and other major automotive industry players.

Mobile network Quality of Service (QoS) also presents a challenge to ensure the performance and reliability of critical SDV compute functions at the network edge. The 4G mobile networks do not support that capability, but when 5G networks can, we’ll be able to uplevel SDV capabilities by leveraging the powerful capacity of mobile edge computing (MEC). To introduce the capability to optimize functional processing performance, we need to implement a container-based approach for cross-domain movement of vehicle function execution within the vehicle, to the MEC, and to the cloud.

These are considerable issues to resolve, but the industry will address them through creativity, determination, and a relentless pursuit of the next, better approach. The industry is bullish on the SDV, and it should be. Every automaker, supplier, and mobility provider has the opportunity to reinvent its business and redefine customer value if it can successfully navigate the transition from manufacturer to technology company.

The SDV will create opportunities for both consumers and OEMs, many of which are still to be discovered. This means that OEMs must be able to build and test new software-defined features for vehicles that do not yet exist.

This can be achieved by leveraging data and insights collected from vehicles on the road today to create a simulated cloud-based environment to improve future products and services. By leveraging cloud computing instances that have the same architecture as the physical ECUs in vehicles, auto manufacturers will benefit from the speed of native cloud development practices in what has historically been a very constrained software development process.

Cloud-native SDV platforms will be driving this effort with scalable and cost-optimized services for the software-defined future. For OEMs, the vision is a single SDV platform that goes across different domains, different makes, and different models, allowing them to invest in strategic platforms and use cases, while empowering them to think about pushing the boundaries on experiential customer services.

For consumers, the SDV concept will make our cars smarter, safer, higher performing, easier to diagnose and repair, and a lot more fun to drive.

 

Richard Felton, Senior Practice Manager, Automotive, ProServe, Amazon Web Services, wrote this article for Futurride.