Software Defined Jungle (SDJ)

Under the flag of the Software Defined Vehicle (SDV) or the Software Defined Car (SDC), many suppliers of sophisticated automotive software solutions take this road that is supposed to get them to places where the – previous development acceleration cycle – software for autonomous cars will not arrive before 2030.

At the end of the 1990s software began to take over mechanical and electronic functions in vehicles. With the proliferation of the CAN-Bus during the 2000s a growing network of distributed ECUs electronic control units became more and more difficult to orchestrate. In the early 2000s the only ECUs with notable amounts of software and an RTOS real time operating system were engine control and infotainment. All other ECUs often used bare-bones schedulers and the development of their software stopped at SOP start of production.

From personal experience: when my family grew, I bought not one but two consecutive Citroen C8, the second with top-trim level including electric sliding doors and Magneti-Marelli navigation system that ran Wind River OS. These european minivans (made by Peugeot / Citroen / Fiat, now Stellantis) were very practical except when driving in light rain at night. A botched rainsensor ECU made the windscreen wipers go wild after a few minutes so you had to switch back to manual. Keeps you awake at night.

This problem was know to both dealers and the Internet, but the supplier could not be bothered to update its software in existing vehicles in the 2010s. I was told to wait for the 2015 face-lift, but my children grew up faster than the ECU software and I then did not need another C8 any more.

Since the late 2010s Tesla tells the traditional automotive industry how to be responsive to such customer headaches.

Today, in the 2020s already many OEMs pursue concepts around the Vehicle-As-A-Service where customers big and small can add capabilities to existing vehicles by one-time-payment or subscription. The later obviously favored by the industry because of recurring revenues. So, if I live in the desert, I would not buy the windscreen wiper automation package?

In order to make such revenue models work .. you need software. Recently I had the opportunity to study the products of a few players that offer complete packages or at least the middleware. Most middleware works on top of an RTOS, and this within an hypervisor. The middleware provides the infrastructure for applications that rely on functionality that is not provided by bare-metal-OS.

In 2023 Industry standardization has not yet taken place as much as the industry would like. Many players do, or support "roll your own" in order that traditional automakers can keep their differentiating advantages.

List not comprehensive, in alphabetical order, please ping me for additions and corrections:

Apex.AI

Married Autoware, AUTOSAR with ROS2, and DDS middleware for safe and secure operation of highly automated vehicles.

Aptiv & Wind River

A new combination in this market, they do not come unarmed, plenty experience in safety and security ranging back into the 90s - RTOS VxWorks, with seasoned IDE and a good standing in the cloud.

AUTOSAR adaptive (several solution providers, for example KPIT, EDAG, IAV, Bertrandt, Elektrobit, Etas ..)

Base and middleware from a variety of solution providers constitutes a rich toolbox of modules that are standardized to interact.

While the “standard”-part of the software modules is kind of solved, the “open source”-part – at least free-to-use code for AR members - would be of interest to be solved. Right now it seems the toolchain Vendor X AAR modules do not speak well with the Vendor Y AAR modules. If both worked on common grounds ..

Blackberry-QNX

Offers POSIX?real-time operating system?(RTOS) and middleware for rapid development of automotive software solutions.

QNX has a rich history in automotive software, complete with safety and security offerings. In the early 2000s owned by Harman International, the QNX software teams transited to wider pastures in 2010 and helped Blackberry phones to withhold their obsolescence for a couple of years. After?phone software, the automotive offering got dominant, including turn-key pre-integrated solutions for Driver Information Systems and Infotainment as well as a versatile toolbox for ADAS developments. QNX today interfaces well into adaptive AUTOSAR and DDS, works as base software on automotive hardware from NXP, NVIDIA and Qualcomm. [Disclaimer: I was the QNX european automotive FAE 2010-2016]

Continental

Has established in close cooperation with AWS its CAedge offering, the infrastructure to get data from and to the cloud.

Eclipse Software Defined Vehicle

After Eclipse this and Eclipse that, a number of incubation projects are put under a common umbrella and many of the ususal suspects already joined here and there, some contributing, others observing. We will see what comes out of this. Whether it will be traditional domain-driven toolkits or a comprehensive specification for common developments more like AUTOSAR? The industry could also do with a common code base instead of re-inventing the wheel at many places. They are aware of matching initiatives COVESA and SOAFEE.

Green Hills Software

Offers POSIX?real-time operating system?(RTOS) and tools for development of embedded software. GHS has a rich history in military grade software, with matching security offerings. They made some advances into automotive, needs to be seen whether this can become their focus industry.

Luxoft

Helps major OEMs and Tier-1s with their roll-your-own automotive OS, has own CoC in the areas of Infotainment & Driver Information, connectivity and automated driving. [Disclaimer: at #CES2020 the Luxoft booth featured a CCA 9010 ViGEM data logger as part of their Robotic Drive offering]

RTI

The RTI Connext Drive product can be used as a reliable and certifiable backbone in zonal architectures, good for cars but also used in medical and aerospace.

Sibros

Safe and secure orchestration framework with updater and soft-logger for the Software Defined Vehicle. Not sure its intended, you can pronounce as "Cyber-OS"?

SOAFEE

Another consortium that yet has to find its place. On the outset very promising I see a lot of actors joining for FOMO. We'll know more in 2023.

Sonatus

Specialist for interfacing automotive network data to cloud solutions. Once integrated, a wide range of additional functionalities becomes available for the development of connected vehicles. Sonatus also offers orchestration software for zonal controllers.

Tier IV

They put early software-defined vehicles onto the road: Autoware is a good starting point that was picked up here and there to put real vehicles onto real roads. Simulation / digital twin also works, though.

Vector

Since the late 90s Vector is well seated in all traditional automotive software supply chains. Vector put one and one together to form solutions for OEMs and Tier-1 that work on their own approaches towards zone controllers and ultimately domain architectures to get the Software-Defined Vehicle onto the road.

ZF

Last not least, a Software-defined Vehicle you can touch: