With the support of the VDA (German Association of the Automotive Industry), 11 companies in the automotive industry have agreed on pre-competitive cooperation in open-source software development. Earlier this week, the partners—including BMW Group, Robert Bosch, Continental, ETAS, Forvia’s Hella, Mercedes-Benz Group, Qorix, Valeo, Vector Informatik, Volkswagen Group, and ZF Friedrichshafen—signed a memorandum of understanding at the Automotive Electronics Congress in Ludwigsburg, Germany, announcing and solidifying the cooperation.

As the VDA explains, with the increasing importance and complexity of vehicle software, it is becoming critical for the industry to increase speed and efficiency in development while ensuring high quality and safety. A significant portion of the vehicle software does not directly touch the user and is undifferentiating, enabling the corresponding software modules to be developed jointly in an open and collaborative ecosystem.

To achieve the necessary functional safety for automotive software, a groundbreaking development process for open source was developed in preparation for certification according to the relevant standards from organizations like AUTOSAR and COVESA. By providing executable software modules instead of detailed specifications, standardization and increased development speed are achieved through the code-first approach.

“Together we are building a future-proof and powerful software ecosystem—open, transparent, and secure,” said Dr. Marcus Bollig, VDA’s Managing Director.

The software development is taking place in a transparent and vendor-independent environment of the Eclipse Foundation as part of the S-CORE project.

“Collaboration in the development of secure and open-source automotive platforms is a critical factor for the automotive industry,” said Mike Milinkovich, Executive Director for the Eclipse Foundation. “The Eclipse Foundation’s governance model enables open collaboration between OEMs, tiers, and tech players within the Eclipse SDV Working Group. We recognize the trust placed in us as the stewards of such a strategic initiative and embrace the challenge of making it a success.”

The ecosystem is open, both through software interoperability with relevant industry standards and for contributions and collaboration from other European and international companies. The initiative’s timeline envisages that the software scope for the series development of a platform for autonomous driving will be available in 2026.

The modular software scope can be adapted or expanded and then made available to the industry as a customized distribution for series development. This allows manufacturers and suppliers to focus on differentiating features while maintaining core components, and it is intended to create a strong foundation for innovation and the freedom to focus on what makes the difference for the customer.

 

Roadmap and milestones

Key milestones have already been achieved. At the end of 2024, the project set up S-CORE in the Eclipse SDV framework with the initial toolchain, infrastructure, and definition of a minimum viable software stack. In the beginning of 2025, the process for safe software development in open source was defined and externally audited for ISO 26262 suitability.

The immediate future roadmap calls for the definition of a reference architecture and feature requirements by mid-2025, the first public implementation of key modules of the software stack by the end of 2025, and the first complete software release ready for series projects in 2026.

By 2030 at the latest, the collaboration hopes for the first SOP with an open-source software stack, and for the software stack to be integrated into a series project.

 

The S-CORE Project

Earlier in June, the Eclipse Foundation announced the launch of the S-CORE (Safety Open Vehicle Core) Project, what it calls the automotive industry’s first open source core stack for SDVs (software-defined vehicles). The upcoming 0.5 release targeting embedded high-performance ECUs (electronic control units) is said to represent a significant milestone in the automotive industry’s transition toward open, community-driven software platforms.

With support from a growing group of industry leaders, including BMW Group, Mercedes-Benz, Bosch, ETAS, QNX, Qorix, and Accenture, the S-CORE project is building an open source foundation that allows automakers and suppliers to accelerate the development of next-generation automotive software while allowing them to concentrate on building their own differentiated features and applications.

“With S-CORE, we’re providing developers with a reliable, safety-grade runtime environment that allows the industry to focus on innovation while reducing duplication of effort,” said Milinkovich. “This project offers the entire sector a jumpstart in building the custom solutions that will define the future of mobility.”

Often described as middleware, S-CORE sits between the operating system and application layer, delivering core, non-differentiating services that all SDVs require. By providing a common set of baseline functions, such as application orchestration, inter-process communication, logging, and data persistence, it aims to streamline development, lower costs, and accelerate time-to-market for companies building software-defined vehicles.

Targeted for availability in October 2025, the 0.5 release will mark the project’s first public milestone, providing an initial set of functional building blocks for industry adoption and feedback. The reference platform for this release will run on QNX SDP 8.0, which is available for non-commercial prototyping and experimentation via the company’s recently launched QNX Everywhere program.

Additional operating system support, including Linux, is planned for future releases.