Interview on Software Defined Vehicles & Cybersecurity: E/E architecture needs to be rethought

With Software Defined Vehicles (SDVs) relying on computer programmes for day-to-day operations, the entire electrical/electronic architecture must be redesigned to make cars safe to drive. SDV expert Christian Koehler explains what the approaches are.

What makes software so important in cars today?

Alongside electrification and autonomous driving, this is the third major wave of change to hit the automotive industry. The increasing importance of software is strongly driven by consumer needs. There are around 5.5 billion adults on the planet, and statistics show that 3.5 billion of them spend many hours online every day. And they increasingly expect to be able to take their digital world with them into the car. They want a digital experience while driving that is comparable to downloading a new game from Google’s Play Store or from Tencent in China. In China, a car’s software features are already the number one reason people buy a car. This puts pressure on the industry to make cars data-secure.

How is the automotive industry adapting?

In order to fund some of the development and security costs, the companies are hoping that their software-defined vehicles will open up additional sources of business – in other words, that they will be able to earn money over the course of the vehicle being used with its corresponding digital functions. Until now, the revenue has been channelled through the service to the dealer. Now vehicle manufacturers have the opportunity to sell certain functions or additional features directly to the customer. Today, we are dealing with scalable software platforms that are really hardware agnostic. The publications on the future strategy of Stellantis, BMW, and Volkswagen show that the necessary sales potential is already available today.

However, the transformation of cars into ‘computers on wheels’ with their own operating systems will only be successful if it is also safe …

To make the electrical/electronic (E/E) architecture safe, it needs to be rethought, as we show in our study. We come from a world where software in cars always ran on specific control units. There were separate control units for the engine, the brake controller, the air conditioning, the power windows, etc. In a complex car of the previous generation, we had up to 100 control units. However, the ability to receive updates while driving or to exchange data online and in real time was not yet technically feasible. Also, it is just not possible to integrate a manageable safety architecture into this number of components. We are now confronted with the need to adapt the entire electrical architecture of the vehicle to the needs of the customer and the promise of a truly software-defined vehicle.

Continue reading the interview on Gateway to Automotive.