Q: What will be the biggest difference between a software-defined vehicle in 2023 and a software-defined vehicle in 2030?
Milavec: In today’s vehicles, a driver’s experience is still primarily defined by hardware, but this is quickly shifting to software. With OTA updates, an SDV can stay in contact with its environment, the vehicle owner and the manufacturer to drive continuous innovation over the vehicle’s lifetime. This means that introducing new content and features doesn’t have to stop at the end of the production line – they can be introduced to vehicles already on the road, helping automakers strengthen brand loyalty, enhance the driver experience and leverage real-world, anonymized data to improve quality.
In addition, the SDV opens the door for increased safety, performance and convenience for drivers. For example, today’s electric power steering (EPS) systems use software tuned for the “feel of the road” to give road drivers feedback through the steering wheel. Leveraging advanced steering software – such as our Road Surface Detection software with Tactile Mobility – can take this a step further by also enabling the vehicle itself to feel the road by converting road-surface information into data that it uses to adjust steering to road conditions ( ie, wet, icy, etc.).
Cesa: In 2023, we will not see a true software-defined vehicle. The industry has taken steps forward, but the transition will take time. In the next decade, it’s hard to focus on one significant change because everything – features, functionality, security, operating systems, connectivity and communication – will evolve with technology, regulations, user experiences, etc. What we know today won’t necessarily be relevant in 2030. Looking just at communication, we talk about vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V), vehicle-to-pedestrian (V2P), vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) and vehicle- to-network (V2N) communication. And that’s just today; each one of them can and will evolve over time.
And as mentioned earlier, we cannot guarantee safety without security. As we add more software and increase connectivity, we increase the number of potential points of exploitation that hackers can access.