As the electronic architecture of vehicles enters an upgrade cycle, various levels of supporting software have become the focus of competition among suppliers. Among them, in the underlying RTOS part, BlackBerry QNX currently occupies a major market share, while companies like Huawei, Zhaoma, Wind River (acquired by Aptiv), and Horizon are also vying for market share.
For example, last year, Horizon launched a real-time vehicle operating system (TogetherOS) based on a safety microkernel architecture, and built an ecosystem for China’s automotive-grade real-time safety operating system through open-source development, thus helping partners enhance system reusability and portability.
In other foundational software segments, including traditional AutoSAR, communication middleware, and corresponding toolchains, the competition is also intensifying. At the same time, market strategies are increasingly tending towards collaboration.
For instance, among several global foundational software giants, Elektrobit, a software subsidiary of Continental, has taken the lead and has established multiple partnerships over the past two years.
At the end of 2020, Elektrobit announced that its EB corbos AdaptiveCore 2 software supports the BlackBerry QNX software development platform 7.1®, used to build automotive foundational software architecture based on high-performance computing (HPC), seamlessly integrating with the AUTOSAR Adaptive Platform and ISO 26262 ASIL D certified Neutrino® RTOS and Hypervisor, providing a complete pre-integrated foundational software safety framework.
In July this year, Elektrobit announced a partnership with Qt, based on the Qt Device Creation framework and NXP’s i.MX 8 series processors, along with Elektrobit’s EB tresos software, for AUTOSAR development and user interface engineering services for the next generation of digital cockpits.
According to the information provided by both parties, the Qt-Elektrobit solution is the first commercial solution to enable high-performance HMI (Human-Machine Interface) on the AUTOSAR architecture, capable of running on single-core and multi-core processors, helping customers quickly address information security, functional safety, and accelerate the time-to-market for advanced HMI.
In the Chinese market, Elektrobit is also in the rapid construction phase of its cooperative ecosystem.
Earlier this year, Black Sesame Intelligence announced a partnership with Elektrobit to use EB tresos for AUTOSAR Classic Platform software development on its autonomous driving computing platform. The subsequent products will be applied in the fields of autonomous driving and smart cockpits, creating safe and reliable, cost-effective solutions.
Moreover, Elektrobit’s EB corbos AdaptiveCore foundational software solution has also integrated with Huayu Tongsoft’s “Swift” communication middleware (SWIFT DDS), becoming the first commercial solution in China to fully integrate self-developed DDS into the AUTOSAR AP ara::com module.
At the same time, to strengthen localized service support in the Chinese market, Elektrobit established a partnership with Chengmai Technology last year, with the latter becoming its value-added distributor in China, representing a series of vehicle foundational software products, including mass production solutions for classical and adaptive AUTOSAR—EB tresos and EB corbos, as well as providing engineering and customer support services for EB’s Chinese clients.
On the Linux operating system level, Elektrobit also announced a partnership with SUSE last year to provide automotive-grade Linux for Chinese automakers and Tier 1 suppliers. Its EB corbos Linux is an operating system designed for high-performance CPUs, based on SUSE Linux Enterprise, along with the latest AUTOSAR standards to help downstream customers accelerate the software development of the next generation E/E architecture.
In fact, on the supply chain side, the proactive layout of software companies is due to the “mess” left by many automakers seeking to imitate Tesla’s software self-development strategy over the past few years. “Software-centric self-development sounds easy, but it is difficult to implement. For car manufacturers, without sufficient financial support, building internal software teams is both time-consuming and labor-intensive.”
Many software companies believe that automakers should focus on creating differentiated application software rather than investing resources in foundational software (which is a non-differentiated framework platform for most manufacturers). According to data previously provided by Elektrobit, non-differentiated software components installed in vehicles account for about 60% of the software.
In this regard, Elektrobit provided a similar example: chip design has always been about how to utilize reusable IP blocks to build complex SoCs, and today’s automotive foundational software is similar to software IP modules, along with a series of development tools and engineering validation services.
In the eyes of some enterprises, as competition among automakers for intelligent features in new vehicles becomes increasingly fierce, the rapid growth of software complexity, especially the continuously integrated domain controller architecture, has widened the gap between the industry’s demand for developing complex software and its capabilities. “Only through software reuse and a unified software platform can safety and efficiency be achieved.”
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According to the High-tech Intelligent Automotive Research Institute, “Ultimately, we must return to the starting point; automakers must rethink their business layout in terms of input-output.” At the same time, new industrial chain relationships are also being restructured. “In the past, the model of purchasing software from Tier 1 is being broken, just like chips, automakers specifying operating systems and middleware modules will become a trend.”
This means that for software suppliers, it is crucial to establish their own ecosystem of partners, such as adapting to all mainstream computing platforms in the market, and facilitating horizontal and vertical integration among different module component suppliers like RTOS, OS, middleware, AutoSAR, etc.
Of course, many companies also propose that in the future, chips may integrate more software IP modules, which means that the standardized module product portfolio of software suppliers will be more competitive in the market than customized software from OEMs.
This is also the output path that many automakers sought from software self-development, hoping to sell customized software to other peers. “From another perspective, if both suppliers and OEMs have similar software products, the former is more likely to be accepted by other OEMs.”
For example, in the application software system track, in fact, whether it’s Zhaoma Intelligent, Wutong Car Union, Yikatong, or Xiandou Intelligent, there are similar dilemmas. To this end, Zhaoma Intelligent has begun to focus on the operating system, while Wutong Car Union has transformed into a soft and hardware integrated system solution provider.
Today, whether it is strengthening the industrial chain ecosystem to expand customer base or actively seeking transformation to enlarge the customer group, it is a “race” for software suppliers in the smart automotive field.
