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IoT and Digital Engineering
Bringing Together IoT and Digital Engineering to Create Rich Experiences
Highlights
- Cars are becoming smart, software-driven platforms that can be updated and improved over time, changing how we experience mobility.
- Modern vehicle design focuses on three key ideas—flexible software, efficient testing through virtualization, and smooth update management.
- To keep up, automakers must adopt modular designs, use cloud technology, and maintain strong control over software quality and safety.
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Driving the SDV era
Vehicles are evolving into dynamic software platforms, not just machines on wheels.
The automotive industry stands at a defining crossroads. The traditional architecture characterized by numerous electronic control units (ECUs), each dedicated to a specific function, is fast becoming obsolete. Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are increasingly viewing vehicles not as static products sold at dealerships, but as dynamic platforms for continuous innovation, adaptability, and user-centric experiences.
This transformation into software-defined vehicles (SDVs) is underpinned by a next-generation architecture that seamlessly integrates hardware, in-vehicle software, and cloud connectivity. Together, these components reshape how vehicles are developed, operated, and evolved throughout their lifecycle.
Three key components of the SDV architecture:
- Hardware base
A robust hardware foundation comprising high-performance computing units and zonal ECUs, integrated with radars, lidars, cameras, sensors, and actuators, forms the backbone of next-generation vehicles.
- In-vehicle software
The operating system, middleware, and applications define the vehicle’s intelligence, enabling safe, connected, and personalized mobility experiences.
- Cloud and connectivity
With cloud integration, data management and over-the-air capabilities, vehicles can evolve continuously over the vehicle’s lifetime, unlocking post-sale innovation, predictive maintenance, and real-time analytics.
SDV foundations
Scalable, flexible architecture is built on abstraction, virtualization, and orchestration.
Designing a future-ready SDV architecture requires adherence to foundational principles that ensure agility, modularity, and safety compliance.
Abstraction
Decoupling software from hardware enables OEMs to reuse platforms across multiple programs. Hardware abstraction layers (HAL) and frameworks like AUTOSAR drive standardization. At the application level, interface definition language (IDL) empowers middleware-agnostic development.
Virtualization
Virtual ECUs accelerate early-stage testing ("shift-left"), reducing time to market. Onboard, hypervisors, and containerization consolidate functionalities within a single compute while ensuring safety and isolation, delivering modular, updatable software layers.
Orchestration
Managing the lifecycle of software components, especially safety-critical ones like ISO 26262, is essential. Whether through container orchestrators or centralized lifecycle managers, reliable execution and update management hinge on mature CI/CD/DevSecOps pipelines.
Align to drive
Collaboration and governance are critical for SDV maturity and sustained innovation.
To unlock the full potential of SDVs, all stakeholders must align strategy, technology, and execution.
Four recommendations for stakeholders in the architecture definition and deployment areas:
- OEMs should establish internal architectural governance while leveraging external partnerships for agility and innovation.
- OEMs and Tier-1s must adopt modular, scalable platform strategies to keep up with the evolving user demands and regulatory shifts.
- Software architects must design for safety and security from the ground up while also balancing cloud-native principles and real-time needs.
- Extending the cloud-native approach with containers from the cloud domain into the onboard software realization accelerates software development cycles and enhances maintainability. This convergence of cloud and vehicle ecosystems is essential to scale SDV development effectively.
SDV mind shift
The future of automotive is intelligent, adaptive, and unmistakably software-led.
The future of mobility is decisively software-defined. As technologies evolve, user expectations grow, and compliance mandates intensify, the industry manufacturers must shift not only their tools but their mindsets, while gearing up to face economic challenges.
Architecting SDVs demands strategic alignment across objectives, tech stacks, and partnerships. By prioritizing flexibility, scalability, and continuous innovation, vehicles will no longer be static mechanical entities but evolving digital assets delivering lifetime value.
