A System Integrator Perspective for Navigating the Future of Mobility Through Software Driven Vehicles

Software based differentiation and transformation has been permeating across industries over the last few decades. In the automotive industry, Software-Defined Vehicles are abstracting the hardware from software, and intelligently distributing the compute across in-vehicle and cloud. In this paper, we explore Software-Defined Vehicles from a System Integrator's perspective across three axes of market, technology, and customer life cycle. The market view indicates that customers will pay for the additional value delivered throughout the ownership lifetime. Technically, the shift to software-based differentiation will mean more control through software on standard hardware platforms and finally there will be a multitude of services that the Original Equipment Manufacturer and others in the ecosystem will be able to deliver through constant association with the vehicle. The shift to Software-Defined Vehicles would mean that automakers and other players in the ecosystem must transform themselves to build and deepen their software capabilities. There is clearly promise in the software driven world given the successes that other industries have gained, the auto industry must collaborate and learn to deliver on the promise. The system integrator's view is unique since there is an unbiased view, and an ability to look at industries that have gone through similar technology adoption, and then compare how Software-Defined Vehicles will be adopted.