The global Siemens research department Corporate Technology is working with partners to develop an integrated software architecture for future electric cars.

In vehicles built with this new technology, the driver assistance, safety, and infotainment features will mostly be installed as software instead of being managed in control units. This will reduce the current complexity of the architecture and at the same time increase its power. The partners intend to demonstrate the benefits of a centralized data and communication architecture with two electric car prototypes.

The ICT that has grown up in vehicles over many years is becoming increasingly complex. This is making the introduction of new features increasingly labor-intensive and expensive. The individual components are connected with many different data transmission systems, for example. It is hardly possible to upgrade cars with new functions that weren’t built in to the vehicles during the initial manufacturing process.

The team wants to bring together all the functions in a few central computers with a single bus system. The advantage here is that new systems would be installed via Plug&Play technology like on a PC —- extra control units and wiring would no longer be necessary.

The new architecture should also enable the vehicle to communicate with a future intelligent power grid and transport system and allow the development of completely new functions, such as an “autopilot” that could steer the vehicle autonomously in the distant future.