Accelerating time-to-market as cars become software defined

Automakers have always raced to get the latest models to market. The shift to software-defined vehicles (SDVs) has turned that race into a sprint. It’s not a simple shift, however.

Building cars that can evolve constantly demands an overhaul of development practices, tools, and even team culture. From globally distributed engineering teams and cloud-based workflows to virtual testing and continuous integration pipelines, automakers are adopting new approaches to shrink development timelines without compromising safety or quality. These shifts are enabling the industry to move faster.

In older vehicles, after a car leaves the factory, code is rarely changed over its lifetime. In contrast, SDVs are designed for continuous improvement. Manufacturers can push over the-air (OTA) updates to add features, fix bugs, or enhance performance throughout a car’s life.

However, delivering continuous upgrades requires development cycles to speed up dramatically. Instead of a process measured in years for the next model refresh, software updates often need to be developed, tested, and rolled out in a matter of months—sometimes less. The cadence of innovation in automotive is shifting, and time-to-market for each new enhancement has become paramount.

Figure 1 Software-defined vehicles (SDVs) are designed for continuous improvement. Source: NXP

This new pace is a profound change for automakers, and calls for a far more agile, software-centric mindset. Companies that successfully shrink their cycle times can deliver constant improvements; those that cannot risk their vehicles quickly becoming outdated.

Distributed teams, unified development

Managing the massive, distributed development teams behind SDVs is another challenge when it comes to speeding up software delivery. Where a car’s software was previously handled by small in-house teams, today it takes hundreds or thousands of engineers spread around the globe.

This international talent pool enables 24-hour development, but it also introduces fragmentation. Different groups may use different tools or processes, and not everyone can access the same test hardware. Without a coordinated approach, a large, distributed team can prove a bottleneck rather than a benefit.

Automotive manufacturers are tackling the issue by uniting teams in cloud-based development environments. Instead of each engineer working in isolation, everyone accesses a standardized virtual workspace in the cloud pre-configured with every necessary tool. This ensures code runs the same for each developer, eliminating the “works on my machine” syndrome.

It also means updates to the toolchain or libraries can be rolled out to all engineers at once. Onboarding new team members becomes much faster as well—rather than spending days installing software, a new hire can start coding within hours by logging into the cloud environment. With a shared codebase and common infrastructure, a dispersed team can collaborate as one, keeping productivity high and projects on schedule.

Virtual testing: From months to minutes

Rethinking how and when software testing happens is critical to the acceleration of SDV development. In the past, software testing depended heavily on physical prototypes—electronic control units (ECUs) or test vehicles that developers needed to use in person, often creating idle time and long delays that are unacceptable in a fast-moving SDV project. The solution is to virtualize as much of the testing as possible.

Virtual prototypes of automotive hardware enable software development to begin long before physical parts are available. If new hardware won’t arrive until next year, engineers can work with a digital twin today. By the time actual prototypes come in, much of the software will already be validated in simulation, potentially accelerating time to market by months.

Figure 2 Virtual prototypes can be developed in parallel to hardware development. Source: NXP

Even when real hardware testing is required, remote access is speeding things up. Many companies now host “hardware-in-the-cloud” labs—racks of ECUs and other devices accessible online. Instead of waiting their turn or traveling to a test site, developers anywhere can deploy code to these remote rigs and see the results in real time. This approach compresses the validation cycle, catching issues earlier and proving out new features in weeks rather than months.

Embracing CI/CD for rapid releases

Accelerating time-to-market also requires the software release process itself to be reengineered. Modern development teams are increasingly adopting continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines to keep code flowing smoothly from development to deployment. In a CI/CD approach, contributions from all developers are merged and tested continuously rather than in big infrequent batches.

Automated build and test systems catch integration bugs or regressions a lot sooner in the development process, making fixes a lot easier to handle. This reduces last-minute scrambles that often plagued traditional, slower development cycles. With a robust CI/CD pipeline, software is always in a deployable state.

Of course, moving at such speed in a safety-critical industry requires care. CI/CD’s built-in rigor ensures each change passes all quality and safety checks before it ever reaches a car.

Driving into the future, faster

The push to accelerate vehicle software development is reshaping automotive engineering. Building cars that are defined by software forces automakers to adopt the tools, practices, and culture of software companies. Investments in cloud-based development environments, virtual testing frameworks, and CI/CD pipelines are quickly becoming the norm for any automaker that wants to stay competitive.

Ultimately, as cars increasingly resemble computers on wheels, time-to-market for software-driven features has become a make-or-break factor. The race is on for automakers to deliver new capabilities faster than ever, without hitting the brakes on safety or quality.

Those who successfully integrate distributed teams with cloud-first workflows, leverage virtual testing, and adopt continuous delivery practices will be perfectly placed to win over automakers with vehicles that keep improving over time.

Curt Hillier is technical director for automotive solutions at NXP Semiconductors.

Razvan Ionescu is automotive software and tools architect at NXP Semiconductors.

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Accelerating time-to-market as cars become software defined

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