Brussels, Belgium, Mar. 9, 2022: The Eclipse Foundation, one of the world’s largest open source foundations, along with multiple industry leaders, including ETAS, Microsoft, ZF, and others, have announced the formation of the Software-Defined Vehicle (SDV) Working Group, a new formal initiative focused specifically on automotive innovation.
Using a “code first” approach, the working group’s goal is to build one of the industry’s first software stacks and associated tooling for the core functionality of a new class of automobile. These open source solutions will, in turn, be made available to any organization that wishes to leverage them for their own vehicle development. Multiple projects have already been proposed and work on these elements has already begun.
“Just as OSS has enabled rapid innovation and scale in other industries like manufacturing and healthcare, so too will the automotive industry benefit from leveraging the open source model,” said Mike Milinkovich, Executive Director of the Eclipse Foundation, in a written statement. “The industry leaders that have come together for this initial launch of the working group speaks volumes about the demand for this initiative. With the Eclipse Foundation’s deep history within the automotive community, there is no other organization better equipped to lead this transformative shift.”
To achieve this significant change in the design process, the SDV working group will build the foundation of an open ecosystem for deploying, configuring, and monitoring vehicle software in a secure and safe way. Vehicle manufacturers and suppliers may then use this foundation to focus on differentiating customer features, like mobility services and end-user experience improvements. The ultimate goal is that industry players will benefit by being able to focus on innovation, while saving time and cost on the non-differentiating elements, like real-time operating systems, specific parts of the middleware layers or communication protocols.