Warum Software und Elektronik im Fahrzeug, insbesondere bei onlinefähigen Fahrzeugen, immer wichtiger wird, zeigen beeindruckend diese Zahlen:
2010 10 Mio. Codezeilen in Autosoftware, 2016 schon 150 Mio. Zeilen!
As the car continues its transition from a hardware-driven machine to a software-driven electronics device, the auto industry’s competitive rules are being rewritten.
The engine was the technology and engineering core of the 20th-century automobile. Today, software, large computing power, and advanced sensors increasingly step into that role; they enable most modern innovations, from efficiency to connectivity to autonomous driving to electrification and new mobility solutions.
However, as the importance of electronics and software has grown, so has complexity. Take the exploding number of software lines of code (SLOC) contained in modern cars as an example. In 2010, some vehicles had about ten million SLOC; by 2016, this expanded by a factor of 15, to roughly 150 million lines. Snowballing complexity is causing significant software-related quality issues, as evidenced by millions of recent vehicle recalls.
With cars positioned to offer increasing levels of autonomy, automotive players see the quality and security of vehicle software and electronics as key requirements to guarantee safety. And this is requiring the industry to rethink today’s approaches to vehicle software and electrical and electronic architecture.
Addressing an urgent industry concern
As the automotive industry is transitioning from hardware- to software-defined vehicles, the average software and electronics content per vehicle is rapidly increasing. Software represents 10 percent of overall vehicle content today for a D-segment, or large, car (approximately $1,220), and the average share of software is expected to grow at a compound annual rate of 11 percent, to reach 30 percent of overall vehicle content (around $5,200) in 2030. Not surprisingly, players across the digital automotive value chain are attempting to capitalize on innovations enabled through software and electronics (Exhibit 1). Software companies and other digital-technology players are leaving their current tier-two and tier-three positions to engage automakers as tier-one suppliers. They’re expanding their participation in the automotive technology “stack” by moving beyond features and apps into operating systems. At the same time, traditional tier-one electronic system players are boldly entering the tech giants’ original feature-and-app turf, and premium automakers are moving into areas further down the stack such as operating systems, hardware abstractions, and signal processing in order to protect the essence of their technical distinction and differentiation.
