Automotive Engineering - September 2023 - 34

Q&
A
Defining the software of 'software-defined' vehicles
Elektrobit CEO discusses the landscape of automotive software development and
explains why a lot of software doesn't have to be all that transformational.
The phrase " software-defined vehicle " has embedded in the
vehicle-development lexicon as the catchall for a new era of
digitally driven products. But there is persistent disagreement
about even the phrase's definition, much less the engineering
scope required to transition from the industry's hardwareintensive
history to a software-driven environment.
Leading into SAE's WCX 2023 conference earlier this year,
editorial director Bill Visnic spoke with
Maria Anhalt, CEO at Elektrobit, the
35-year-old developer of software products
and services for the auto industry
that is an independently operated but
wholly owned subsidiary of global supplier
Continental. Elektrobit had just announced
that Jaguar Land Rover would
contract for the company's software
platform and Automotive OS (operating
system) to build JLR's next-generation
electrical architecture. And in early
August Elektrobit added a collaboration
with NXP in which Elektrobit's software
for developing automotive ECUs will
support NXP's S32G3-series vehicle network
processors.
There is a lot of maneuvering in this space
with operating systems (OSs) and who's
really going to be in charge of that. You
clearly want to be involved in the development
of vehicle OSs, but some automakers
say they want to do it themselves.
Help us understand this landscape.
I'll start with who we are: Elektrobit is a
pure-play company - systems and software
- we don't do hardware. We do
have hardware engineers, however.
The software-defined vehicle starts
from the software and the systems side
- and I'll explain it in a bit. Being a software
company, we earn money with commercial
software: software products and
software services. What's the difference?
A software product is something that
solves a problem that is a pattern, you
buy it again and again. Think of Microsoft
Office, something that you purchase a
perpetual license, software as a product,
software as a service, and multiple customers
can use it, this is the product.
34 September 2023
Elektrobit CEO Maria Anhalt said automakers
and software suppliers should develop based
on the premise that some 60% of software
is foundational and doesn't need to be
perpetually reinvented.
" The Sony car is one
of the very first true
software-defined cars;
what Tesla is doing is a
software-defined car. "
A software service is - and this is where the automotive
industry is coming from - there is an OEM, there is a car maker
who comes and says, 'Hey, I need A, B, C, D, here's my book
of requirements, 400 pages, you write it for me.' This is a service.
You write software for somebody, this is differentiating
for them, the IP is with the person or the company who orders
it; we write the software.
A service then, a customer comes to
you essentially with an RFQ to say, 'Can
you do this for us?'
When you sit in a modern vehicle, there
is a ton of software inside. We have
done investigation and studies and interviews
with carmakers and we estimate
that approximately 60 percent of
the software that is in the car is something
that you're not seeing - you as an
end user. You're not seeing and you're
not experiencing it.
A lot of software is essential. It's important,
but it's not something that the
end user, the end customer, is seeing.
We refer to this as non-differentiating,
meaning it's non-differentiating for the
carmaker, it's non-differentiating for the
end user. But around 40 percent is differentiating.
Think of the software
where the 'trademark' is visible: entertainment,
the cockpit, automated-driving
functions, where you sit in a BMW or
in a Tesla and you don't even see the
logo, but you know it's a different car.
Where does an automotive operating
system fit into all this?
When we say automotive OS - I studied
computer science, so the operating
system per se is something that you
don't see, it's in the vehicle. But when
OEMs speak about automotive OS, it's
not an OS in the computer-science terminology,
this is why it's so confusing.
When Volkswagen CARIAD, for example,
speaks about automotive OS,
they mean the entire vertical stack. You
have hardware, then you have some
software that is very hardware-specific,
then we have the more standard
AUTOMOTIVE ENGINEERING
ELEKTROBIT
Automotive Engineering - September 2023

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