Coming generations of vehicles are increasingly characterized by software-enabled functions. Decoupling software from hardware enables rapid and continuous development and implementation of new functions and software updates throughout the vehicle's lifetime. Modern vehicles can contain more than 100 control units for driving safety, assistance, or comfort – also a variety of actuators and sensors such as cameras, radar, and lidar devices. To manage such complex systems, current vehicles already contain up to 150 million lines of code.
A look into the future shows clearly: the importance of software for vehicles will increase significantly. Modern driver assistance systems will soon enable automated and fully autonomous driving. Data processing with artificial intelligence plays a central role in this development. As vehicles become part of the Internet of Things (IoT) and transfer large amounts of data to and from the cloud, the software is needed to process, manage and distribute all this data. As drivers increasingly see the vehicle as an extension of their digital living space, the ever more extensive content in the infotainment of the vehicle cockpit must be implemented and managed.
With its Continental Automotive Edge (CAEdge) framework, Continental is providing a modular solution for this and, together with Amazon Web Services (AWS), is establishing a new approach for the efficient development of software for service-oriented vehicle architectures in the automotive industry. Thanks to this architecture, the software-based vehicle of the future will make it possible, among other things, to simply add some functions later as an update (Function as a Product). Furthermore, Continental is also offering the full integration of function applications. The vehicle manufacturer can choose from a full range of solutions from Continental’s functions catalog like Window Lifter, Software-Defined Radio, Motion Package for automated driving, or Remote Parking. With this Continental enables vehicle manufacturers to bring solutions faster to the market and to develop the software-defined vehicle in a more cost-efficient way. With the CAEdge framework, Continental is building a decisive cornerstone for this development. CAEdge is the ideal development environment for the software-centric and software-intensive vehicle of the future, providing a virtual workbench with flexible options for development, provision, and maintaining software-intensive system functions.