Along with Vehicle Electrification
Automotive operating system (OS) development is accelerating along with vehicle electrification. Nowadays, automotive electrical and electronic architectures are becoming increasingly centralized, that is, a small number of electronic control units covering a wide variety of functions. This is more advantageous in terms of weight reduction and space utilization than distributed architectures using 70 to 100 electronic control units.
Integrated OS development for centralized software control is speeding up as well. At present, this development is divided into Android OS utilization and new OS development.
The former group includes Stellantis, GM and the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance and the latter includes Tesla, Daimler AG, Toyota, Volkswagen Group and Hyundai Motor Group. The former approach is characterized by smooth user experience expansion based on consumer familiarity whereas the latter enables the use of a unique operating system. At the same time, the former entails external dependence and limited potential profits related to automotive software and the latter requires the use of more enterprise resources while software ecosystem growth may be limited depending on the number of users.
The importance of an operating system has already been proven in the IT sector, in which Apple and Google took the leading position from Nokia and Microsoft with their smartphone operating systems. The same is likely to be repeated in the future car industry.