Explaining software-defined vehicles (SDVs) as “smartphones on wheels” was convenient as it made the concept accessible, unlocked investment, and helped the industry rally around a familiar narrative.
Though most people today already know that this explanation is outdated—but it continues to shape decisions anyway. That gap between knowing and accepting is where many SDV challenges quietly originate. It is time a new analogy in introduced, because analogies do not just explain problems—they define how we try to solve them.
The issue is no longer about understanding software within a mechanical mindset. It is about unlearning the wrong comparison altogether. Resetting this analogy is critical if the industry is to identify the right challenges and meaningfully plan the next phase of evolution.
1. Why the Mobile Comparison Refuses to Die—and Why It Matters
It is obvious that cars are not phones. Vehicles operate under far longer lifecycles, higher safety obligations, and tighter regulatory frameworks. This is common knowledge across OEMs, suppliers, and regulators—yet planning assumptions continue to mirror consumer electronics thinking. This contradiction is widely recognised, but rarely accepted.
A mobile device is built for a two-to-three-year replacement cycle. Software failures are inconvenient, sometimes annoying, but rarely consequential. A vehicle, by contrast, must remain safe, compliant, and usable for 10–15 years. Its software does not merely enable features; it actuates hardware—brakes, steering, sensors, and power systems. When software fails here, the cost is measured not in app ratings, but in trust, liability, and brand credibility.
Persisting with electronic-gadget analogy quietly normalises expectations that are misaligned with automotive reality—particularly around update frequency, performance evolution, and longevity.
A more honest model is to view SDVs as living infrastructure systems. Much like power grids or smart home networks, they are designed for decades, continuously improved without frequent replacement, governed by safety and accountability, and dependent on deep integration between physical assets and digital control.
In this framing, software orchestrates behaviour, but hardware delivers outcomes. The mobile phone fits better as the key or remote—a device that operates the system—rather than the system itself. This distinction may sound semantic, but it fundamentally reshapes how the industry thinks about responsibility, update cadence, and failure tolerance. Infrastructure is expected to evolve quietly and reliably; phones are expected to be replaced.
2. The Challenges We Talk About—and the Ones We Don’t
The industry is quite vocal about SDV challenges: integration complexity, high-compute ECUs and power demands, cybersecurity risks, and the growing number of parties involved in delivering a single vehicle experience. These are real, visible, and well-documented.
What is far less openly discussed is the most destabilising question of all: who actually owns the SDV system?
What is rarely acknowledged is that SDVs fail less often due to technology gaps and more often due to unclear ownership of integration and accountability. Integration is still treated as an engineering task, when it has become a leadership responsibility. Everyone contributes, but no one truly owns the system end-to-end. This is already known within organisations; it is just rarely addressed explicitly.
The question is uncomfortable because it cuts across organisational boundaries. Traditional OEMs approach SDVs from a hardware-first heritage, layering software onto architectures optimised for mechanical longevity. New-age technology players approach mobility from a software-first mindset, assuming hardware can continuously evolve alongside code. Both perspectives are concise—and incomplete.
Among the known challenges, two beliefs further amplify the tension. First, the expectation that over-the-air (OTA) updates can indefinitely keep vehicles “fresh,” an idea borrowed directly from the mobile ecosystem. Second, the ideology that hardware and software can be cleanly decoupled. In reality, this decoupling works only up to a point—and that point is dictated by physics, safety, and cost.
Here lies another uncomfortable truth: software cannot be continuously upgraded if the hardware was never designed to absorb that change. This is quietly accepted in engineering reviews, but seldom reflected in customer-facing promises. The result is predictable—software ambition eventually colliding with physical limits, often surfacing not in showrooms, but in workshops.
3. The Next Direction: Designing for Planned Evolution
The way forward is not to slow down software ambition, but to anchor it firmly in lifecycle reality.
OEMs will need to define SDV capabilities in shorter, planned windows—two to three years—while aligning meaningful hardware evolution with mid-cycle updates. Hardware upgradability, where feasible, should be viewed as value preservation rather than a cost anomaly. Vehicles must evolve from static products into physically evolvable platforms.
Equally important is collaboration. The industry has done this before. Shared benchmarking and data frameworks have previously reduced redundant effort and accelerated collective learning without diluting differentiation. A similar approach is needed for SDV foundations: baseline software standards, shared learnings, and interoperability principles, involving OEMs and technology partners alike.
This is also where governing bodies can play a constructive role—setting guardrails, encouraging standardisation, and enabling ecosystems that benefit not just OEMs, but also independent service providers who will ultimately shoulder much of the lifecycle responsibility.
Closing Thought
Software-defined vehicles will not be judged by how often they update or how many features they unlock post-sale. They will be judged by whether they continue to function safely, predictably, and credibly long after the novelty wears off.
If current SDV thinking continues unchanged, OEMs risk shipping vehicles that age digitally faster than they age mechanically—creating a new kind of obsolescence the industry is not fully prepared to support.
That, perhaps, is a discussion worth continuing.
Parul Pradhan Sharma is a Design-driven strategic leader with over 23 years of experience in the automotive and product innovation space. Views expressed are the authors’ personal.