Innovations such as advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS), electrification and software-defined vehicle capabilities generate more data than ever. That vehicle data can be tremendously valuable — but only when paired with a cost-effective way to extract insights hidden within the data.
Aptiv Connected Services offers data acquisition and analysis solutions for pre-production and production vehicles. Our technology can help test and validate vehicles in development, reduce warranty and recall costs, lower the total cost of ownership for a fleet, and minimize vehicle downtime.
More than 70 percent of the world’s leading vehicle manufacturers rely on Aptiv for pre-production validation and testing.
Why? Unlike competing products, Aptiv Connect was built by engineers with decades of automotive experience. The result is a turnkey platform that anticipates OEMs’ needs with pre-configured settings and reports.
We’ve saved manufacturers millions of dollars by helping to prevent warranty issues. That same technology now powers second-generation tools that monitor and analyze vehicles in production and post-production.
“Software-defined vehicle” is a term that describes a vehicle whose features and functions are primarily enabled through software, a result of the ongoing transformation of the automobile from a product that is mainly hardware-based to a software-centric electronic device on wheels.
Premium vehicles today can already have up to 150 million lines of software code, distributed among as many as 100 electronic control units (ECUs) and a growing array of sensors, cameras, radar and light detection and ranging (lidar) devices. Mass-market vehicles are not far behind. Three powerful trends — electrification, automation and connectivity — are reshaping customer expectations and driving manufacturers to increasingly turn to software to address them.
In the past, vehicle manufacturers differentiated themselves with mechanical features such as horsepower and torque. Today, consumers are increasingly looking for features defined by software, such as driver assistance features, infotainment innovations and intelligent connectivity solutions. As driver-assistance features grow into more automated driving and toward fully autonomous driving, the need for more software also grows. As consumers expect richer content in their infotainment systems, that also increases the amount of digital content the vehicle must manage. And as vehicles become part of the internet of things (IoT), transmitting large amounts of data to and from the cloud, software will be required to process, manage and distribute all of that data.
Beyond unlocking new safety, comfort and convenience features, the software-defined vehicle has a number of other advantages compared to its hardware-defined predecessor.
Today, software upgrades to vehicle infotainment, telematics or vehicle diagnostic systems require a trip to the dealership. With a software-defined vehicle, customers will be able to receive over-the-air (OTA) updates that cover security patches, infotainment improvements, plus monitoring and tuning of core functional capabilities of the vehicle, such as powertrain and vehicle dynamics.
ECUs will send and receive vast amounts of data to and from sensors and actuators, giving vehicle manufacturers insight into every aspect of a vehicle, its performance and its place in the connected ecosystem. This gives vehicle manufacturers the opportunity to improve life-cycle management and develop revenue-generating features they can offer to customers — all of which will result in deeper, more connected relationships with customers.
A key piece in the evolution of the software-defined vehicle will be the separation of software and hardware development. A good analogy is what happened with cellphones. Originally, the software and hardware in cellphones were tightly coupled, but with the introduction of the smartphone, the phone transformed into a software platform that supports an ecosystem of applications regardless of the underlying hardware. The same is happening with vehicle software, as vehicle manufacturers start to create “walled gardens” of applications they and other approved parties can participate in.
Additionally, the transition to software-defined vehicles means that vehicle manufacturers and their partners will have to make several important shifts:
The software-defined vehicle of the future will provide improved safety and security features, increased levels of autonomy, the ability to accept daily updates of both functional and safety-related features, and will have a software platform for connected services, including infotainment. It will also create new business models and revenue streams such as theft-prevention services, emergency assist alerts, and travel guides. In short, the software-defined vehicle will create opportunities for both consumers and OEMs, many of which haven’t even been conceived yet.
Aptiv’s approach to enabling the software-defined vehicle is Smart Vehicle Architecture™.
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