DETROIT — The industry has a long way to go on the road toward software-defined vehicles, but new entrants that build and sell only electric vehicles have an edge, panelists said at SAE’s World Congress event here.
Some automakers “had a cleaner sheet to start with. Some are trying to clean sheet on the fly, kind of like threading your sewing machine while it’s running,” said Steve Tengler, vice president of engineering excellence at consulting firm Envorso.
Lucid Motors has the benefit of that clean sheet of paper, said Michael Bell, senior vice president of digital for the automaker. Lucid has new architecture throughout its vehicles and almost all of its modules accept over-the-air updates, he said. The EV maker issued more than 100 software updates in the past two years, mostly to add features rather than fix bugs.
Real-time data allows Lucid to alert customers about potential problems and resolve them before they happen.
“It’s the development practices we used for computers and cell phones 15, 20 years ago,” said Bell, who has worked for Apple and Intel. “They matured, and we’re able to use that … to rapidly develop and scale some of these products.”
In the broader industry, most automotive leaders have never been software coders.
“A lot of the executive management for these major OEMs haven’t launched connected products,” Bell said. “Or maybe they have come in from outside of automotive, and they don’t understand the challenges and the complexity of the code for safety-critical systems. All of that together is a lot to change.”
Automakers have outsourced much of the software work to suppliers, Tengler said. Now they are trying to bring software in-house or co-develop it. Many software-related fixes still require consumers to go to dealerships, he said.
Legacy software systems bring a lot of “baggage” because they are decentralized, said Sripriya Raghunathan, vice president of automotive at Qualcomm.
Every engine control module in the vehicle’s software needs to be reexamined, the electrical architecture needs to be rebuilt and cost should be evaluated, she said.
“We are still in the very early phase of all of this,” Raghunathan said. “It will be evolving for the next few years.”
Automakers are also shifting their mindsets, from considering the individual powertrain or chassis to thinking about the vehicle as a fully integrated system, said Kevin Gilleo, vice president of electronic systems at Toyota. They have to prioritize vehicle technology to meet customer expectations.
“They have their ecosystem outside of their vehicle that they want to bring into their vehicle,” Gilleo said. “It’s about customer expectations and how can we deliver on that in the best way possible that benefits not only the customer, but benefits the OEMs and benefits the supply chain.”