There is massive transformation that automobiles are undergoing today – from being a hardware-based product to a software-centric electronic device on wheels. Software is fast becoming the critical tipping point in the mobility sector, even as OEMs and Tier-1 suppliers look to capture business in this software-driven value chain.
It is in this backdrop that Mobility Outlook organised a daylong conference on “Software-Driven Vehicles: Architectures, Strategies & Solutions” on August 29 in New Delhi, with participation from all relevant industry stakeholders from India and abroad. While there was a general consensus that SDVs will continue to build more capabilities in the coming times, there were concerns expressed as well with potential cyber-attacks.
Addressing the inaugural session, Dr Tapan Sahoo, Executive Director (Engineering), Maruti Suzuki India, said new features and updates on demand would be the key for SDVs along with middleware. According to him, SDVs are vehicles whose features and functions are primarily enabled through software.
This, in turn, is a result of the ongoing transformation of the automobile from a largely hardware-based product to a software-centric electronic device on wheels. Dr Sahoo said while the entry of SDVs in mass market was still a few years away, the journey had already begun with connectivity.
The automobile industry was changing with newer user experience and expectations, with software now emerging as a critical part in automobiles, said Anand Bhange, Director, FEV.io. “Upgradability and updatability will be the key to Software-Defined Vehicles,” he said.
In his special address, Tarun Garg, COO (Sales, Marketing, Service & Product Strategy), Hyundai Motor India said with software playing a pivoting role in every sphere of life, SDVs have the capability to transform not just the automotive industry, but the transportation industry as a whole with V2X capability and the emergence of smart cities. Garg predicted the landscape of the automobile industry will completely change in the next decade with SDVs.
Participating in a fireside chat later in the day, Dr Karsten Michels, Head of Product Line HPC, Continental Automotive said with the increase in software content OEMs are no longer able to pre-describe all the ECU requirements, as they need to change development requests. The architecture codes are now decided later, so the cooperation between software suppliers & OEMs need to be efficient. Software complexity still is a challenge, especially in terms of cybersecurity, Dr Michels said.
With SDVs, he said mechanicals of a vehicle will remain the same, but the look and feel of a vehicle will be defined by software. “We cannot term future vehicles as ‘smartphone on wheels’ because the cyber threat in vehicles will be life threatening unlike in consumer electronic space,” he said.
Mitigating Challenges, De-risking Dependencies
Kaushik Madhavan, VP & Global Head – Consulting, Automotive & Transportation, MarketsandMarkets moderated a discussion on “Risk of Software Dependency on System Architecture and Safety – Ways Forward” with panellists including Bhupesh Tekade, Deputy Vice President – Software Factory, Renault Nissan Technology & Business Centre India (RNTBCI); Srinivas Aravapalli, CEO, BlueBinaries Engineering & Solutions; Ashok Kumar Jha, Engineering Director, Active Safety Engineering, ZF Group; Kapil Sirohi, Sales Director, ETAS India; Vikrant Bhangay, Head of Cockpit Systems, FEV.io and Sachin Dhiman, Principal Field Application Engineer, BlackBerry QNX.
The panel agreed that adding cost effectiveness and customisation will be the key to developing modularity for software systems. Further, SDV architecture has to be designed considering software decisions may have to be made on the cloud, or the central computer of the vehicle, or even down to the leaf nodes of sub-systems.
Earlier, in his presentation on how SDVs are redefining the value chain, Madhavan said the expected software bill of materials (SBOM) cost is likely to increase to 60% in the next 10-12 years, while R&D costs for SDVs will range from $1,000-3,000 per vehicle sold.
The second panel discussion of the conference focussed on “Mitigating Emerging Cybersecurity Risks in Software-Defined Vehicles”. Moderated by Rohit Das, Partner Cyber & IT Risk, Grant Thornton Bharat, the panellists said security by design has to become mainstream, with even competitor OEMs cooperating to enhance security. Moreover, a well-trained AI-enabled monitoring system will be beneficial to enhance security, but these need to be clearly defined under regulations, while not breaching any privacy parameters.
The second panel had participation of Dr Shashwat Raizada, Director, Cybersecurity, Marelli; Khushwant Pawar, Senior Director, SecureThings; Vikash Chaudhary, Founder & CEO, HackersEra and Dr Karsten Michels, Head of Product Line HPC, Continental Automotive.
Dr Raizada called for more trust within the manufacturing ecosystem, even though the supply chain is a key cyber threat for SDVs. Responding to that, Pawar said while cyber threats within a vehicle is a key issue, “the main threat for an SDV comes from external factors in the form of infrastructure, among others.”
An ethical hacker, Chaudhary highlighted that the most common open point to enter an SDV is the ‘passive keyless active system’. Once that is bypassed, one can easily take control of the vehicle through wireless USBs, he said.
Technical Presentations
In addition to the addresses and discussion, the conference saw technical presentations being made by experts on subjects of relevance.
Satish Sundaresan, Managing Director – Elektrobit India and Vice President – Global Strategy spoke on “Demystifying the software lifecycle in an SDV”. He said middleware is where an OEM wants to differentiate its product experience for the end consumer. “Coming from the consumer electronics industry, the automotive industry is still enhancing its capabilities to better monetise this framework,” he said.
In his presentation on “How to realise vehicle functions in next-gen SDV architecture”, Akshay Bujone, Sr. Solution Architect, FEV.io India said it is critical to distribute functions across computational options, like between high performance and real-time.
Divyakanth Mullangi, Business Development Manager, Vector Informatik India, said to cope with increasing software complexity in HPCs & zonal ECUs, Vehicle OS will act as a development & operations platform. “We also foresee OEM specific stores on the app at the user level,” Mullangi said.
Presenting on the changing paradigm of SDV cybersecurity, Khushwant Pawar, Senior Director, SecureThings.ai pointed out that cybersecurity must evolve across the value chain with a re-evaluation of security concept, adapt security by design, relevant changes to the development processes and think beyond regulations, IDPS & traditional VMS.
Omkar Damodare, Head – Cybersecurity Security Field, ETAS India spoke on “securing software-defined vehicles in the age of hyper-connected world”. Cloud server is the new focus area from a cybersecurity point of view, he said. “Measures like strengthening basic security to static level security to penetration tests to registry security starts from the cloud service provider infrastructure, where most vulnerabilities are observed,” Damodare said.
Offering the cloud perspective in the conference was Sitanshu Das, Head of Strategy & Business Development – Automotive, Amazon Web Services. He said SDVs will be able to provide better experience to all consumers when the right set of cloud-native industry tools are utilised. Cloud service providers are already providing efficient virtual engineering workbenches, software lifecycle management and vehicle data management tools to the automotive industry, he said.
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