Manufacturers in regulated industries face several challenges in embedded software development, leading to high development costs, budget overruns, constant production delays, and high maintenance & update costs.

This is due to the current stacks used in embedded software development - that is tightly coupled with the hardware:

• Reusing and porting the same services (applications) on different hardware on microcontrollers from different chip vendors/ families - currently using monolithic embedded operating systems - (e.g: NXP S32K, STM Stellar E, Infineon AURIX Tricore);
• Reusing and porting the same services (applications) on domain-ECUs and future-gen centralized ECUs (powerful-processors based), running POSIX-based operating systems (e.g.: QNX, AGL, Android Automotive);
• Opening up their ecosystems for third-party service providers. This implies running applications that are developed by external vendors and giving them access to internal APIs, features, and data. High Cyber-Security, Data privacy and Safety risks.
• Using closed-source solutions for the software platforms inside the ECUs leads to high development and maintenance costs (as they need to rework app implementations for every new generation or major update).

Our team has deep experience in 🚕automotive embedded software development - so we decided to build a solution to address this, starting with the automotive industry.

Regarding the automotive eco-system - while cars have evolved in the last decades from mechanically defined to electrically defined and now to Software Defined Vehicles - the software development process used by automotive manufacturers is lagging and needs an overview.

New rules for automotive product design and development

Software-Defined Vehicles – A Forthcoming Industrial Evolution

Architectural Coupling Killed The Software Defined Vehicle

Automotive manufacturers also acknowledge this problem and the super-scattered automotive software environment. They are thus more open to trying out new approaches and technologies and to working with tech startups.

CEO Jim Farley explains how Ford is learning from Tesla.

The reality of AUTOSAR and the way forward | Volvo Cars Engineering.