As almost every major automotive and technology player races to develop advanced SDVs that enhance the convenience, connectivity, and safety of vehicles, Indian automakers are developing scalable and cost-effective architectures, tells Dr Anshu Gupta, Director at German autoparts giant, Continental. Dr Gupta, who is the global product head for imaging radar sensors for ADAS and autonomous driving, says a lot of work is going on in India on developing small and mid-tier SDVs. Edited Excerpts.
What is the role played by SDVs in today’s automotive industry and what role is software playing within SDVs?
SDVs, today, are the key technology boosters within the automotive industry, and we are seeing a very serious intent across OEMs to go towards the SDV architecture. SDVs unlock a lot of potential, particularly around Level-2+ and Level-3 autonomous driving, which is very distributed in its nature, by virtue of the myriad sensors placed all around the vehicle and streaming data to a central processor. This can realistically be made possible only with an SDV architecture.
It cannot be overstated how important and transformative writing smart software code in an SDV is, because now it is not about controlling just one sensor or function, it is about controlling the entire car. If we see the evolution of software in vehicles, in the past it was very minimal, only in a few areas such as the display unit. Then we saw greater percolation to the extent that most cars today are run by ECUs. There are easily around 40-50 ECUs in a modern-day car.
Now, what we are seeing is the consolidation of ECUs in one or multiple powerful units, and that is where the challenge and the opportunity lie. It is about how we can write an efficient piece of software that can control and drive these multiple systems together, and at the same time, get centralised within a few highcompute boxes.
What challenges do you foresee with SDVs and how are they being addressed?
The key parameter is not just about writing a piece of code, it is also about making sure that the SDV architecture itself is future proof. It must be scalable, as well as power efficient because most of the SDVs would be electric. Furthermore, software integration and cybersecurity too, are key aspects of the software driving an SDV. While it is a huge opportunity, it is yet to be seen how to make a scalable SDV architecture. This is because an architecture with an expensive central processor is not scalable, especially for price-sensitive entry-level models. From an OEM perspective, one would not want to make different architectures for different vehicles within the portfolio. Therefore, we need to see how it evolves, and each OEM might have a different way of addressing this problem. OEMs want a very power efficient and robust system, and that can only happen if one understands how software integrates in the car, and how it plays out in the vehicle. Hence, SDVs require a different way of thinking, developing software, testing, as well as the way software is integrated into vehicles.
That is where a Tier I player automatically has an advantage and is a step ahead of other technology vendors due to an understanding of software integration. At Continental, while we offer imaging sensors that are scalable through the architecture, we also offer software as a product that can be hosted on an ECU. We see this trend emerging as a big gamechanger going forward.
What role is India playing in this entire SDV transformation?
It is globally accepted that India is a software powerhouse, and Continental has made big investments in software, wherein, at our Tech Centre India (TCI) in Bengaluru, we employ over 2,500 software engineers. This is how we are transforming software, and at TCI, we are making sure that this end-to-end development of software for SDVs is successful. Indian OEMs are very innovative and are focusing on how to make sure that they have an SDV architecture which is scalable, yet cost effective. In India, OEMs work on scalable entry-level, and mid-size platforms, and this is where we see very innovative SDV architectures being developed with the modularity of the central highcompute unit as a key element. Indian OEMs are strongly moving towards SDVs. So, it is not a trend which is not yet touched by India, rather, India is innovating like it always does — in its very own unique way.
This feature was first published in Autocar Professional’s July 15, 2024 issue.