Can you imagine manually QA'ing a system that looks like this?

We certainly cannot. And based on the recent Automotive Software Survey conducted by Strategy Analytics, neither can most industry developers:

The advent of technological advancements into vehicles represented by complex, interoperable and interconnected in-vehicle software systems present not only development challenges, but drastically increase the complexity of quality control.

As car makers and Tier-1 suppliers gear up to solve and support new quality control measures, we'd like to shine the light into some opportunities that rise from the growing complexities.

Opportunity: Implement continuous QA for vehicles that are on the road

As the automotive software industry follows software development trends, the pace is escalating using rapid development methodologies. The shift from the longer and phase-oriented development process to continued development is necessary to keep pace with the exponential growth of in-vehicle software to support electronic and software-led vehicles. The maturing software development methodologies from 'v development to CI/CD create opportunities for ongoing and continuous quality control that will in turn increase customer satisfaction and prolong the value of the vehicle. Survey respondents also reaffirm this notion looking at upcoming new model development.

Opportunity: Conduct proactive QA to alleviate costly recalls

As car makers implement continuous monitoring and tracking of 'on the road' vehicles, they gain the power to be proactive about threats, software friction or new bugs. This can present a huge opportunity for a major paradigm shift in the automotive industry: vehicles can detect problems before they cause system failures and remotely fix them OTA in-lieu of lengthy and costly recalls and garage base visits.

The importance of proactive actions is strongly resonating within our survey respondents as well with 93% agree with this notion:

Opportunity: Accelerate the implementation of AI-powered Vehicle Software Intelligence

As outlined in the example above, ECUs and system capabilities within a vehicle are interrelated and have direct effects on each other - necessitating a deep and current understanding of their relationships and dependencies. Utilitrends in the Automotive Software industryzing AI and dynamic monitoring, Vehicle Software Intelligence technologies will be a must-have for developing, monitoring and testing connected vehicles. These technologies will not replace existing development and QA processes and tools, but rather be an additional intelligent layer to bring static data to life and give insights at the line-of-code resolution. At Aurora Labs, we strongly believe that Vehicle Software Intelligence is the key to solving development challenges and the early onset of these technologies will help the OEMs innovate and iterate faster.

To see additional , read the full Automotive Software Survey report.

A global chip shortage, prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic, is continuing to affect automakers around the world. As a result, many OEMs have had to delay new models and slow down production. However, there are positives to this challenge as it could force the industry to innovate in new ways.

Software could be one such solution and this isn't the first time manufacturers have looked to developers to solve a hardware problem. In 2014, Tesla announced a recall of 29,000 of its charging adapters over fire concerns. This wasn't a recall in the traditional sense, though, and Tesla was able to fix a problem with the charger's electrical resistance heating by rolling out an over-the-air (OTA) update to its vehicles.

Can an update solve a chip shortage?

Software-defined vehicle manufacturers are well placed to look for ways to solve the current chip shortage and, once again, Tesla is leading the charge. It's already exploring alternative chips and is rewriting its vehicle software to support that.

"We were able to substitute alternative chips, and then write the firmware in a matter of weeks," Musk said during an earnings call in July last year. "It's not just a matter of swapping out a chip; you also have to rewrite the software."

A new way of delivering OTA updates

Tesla's software mindset allows it to weather the challenges facing the automotive industry but all OEMs have the chance to learn from this. The level of technology in a car requires millions of lines of code and each OTA update needs additional storage on top of this. Reducing the memory needed for each update could reduce the pain of the current chip crisis for automakers.

This can be achieved with Line-of-Code OTA updates.

Legacy update solutions such as full-image updates or binary diff updates require creating dual partitions in the endpoint memory while also doubling the storage available. Using these methods, manufacturers update the software to the second partition so that, if it fails, it can revert to the previous version that's still stored on the chipset.

This not only requires double the amount of NAND chip memory to accommodate these updates but if an update fails, it could have a knock-on effect across other ECUs in a vehicle that may need to roll back two or three versions - something that's not possible using full-image or binary updates.

Line-of-Code updates, however, don't require this extra memory to ensure that the ECU is both updatable and fully fail-safe. Using this technology could ease some of the problems OEMs are facing from the current chip shortage - by requiring fewer flash memory banks while still balancing the need for safety and user experience.

This method writes the fully executable update file to the next free space on the flash memory without deleting previous versions. Not only does this method take up much less space than legacy updates but it means there's zero downtime for the user and, should an update fail, it's easy to revert back to a previous version.

It's clear that software has the chance to solve hardware problems but challenges such as the current chip shortage present new opportunities for innovation. Vehicle Software Intelligence and Line-of-Code updates may help ease the pain of a short-term issue but can also support OEMs in revenue generation, help them create an improved user experience, reduce costs, and offer full visibility into the co-dependencies present in a modern vehicle.

If you're interested in finding out more about Line-of-Code updates, take a look at our cost consideration guide for OTA updates.

While doing a bit of research to write this blog, I came across an interesting thought, "In a nutshell, being proactive is the same thing as being reactive. The only difference is: you do the reacting ahead of time."

Auto manufacturers have raised OTA update solutions to the top rung of the technology ladder bringing the deployment of OTA update technology from a reactive afterthought to a proactive strategic play in the development of automotive software.

OTA - Proactive, not Reactive - Be Strategic

Strategically integrating a new generation of AI-based over-the-air (OTA) update technology into the software development toolchain enables the OTA solution to be proactive - and react ahead of time - by learning software behavior during the development process. This means, when the vehicle leaves the production line, the software is already being understood and anomalies can be acted on proactively based on data and learnings done early in the process.

OTA - Expanded Functionality

This leads to the second point about the strategic nature of OTA technology. Not only is the application of the technology "shifting left," and finding itself in the development toolchain, OTA technology solutions have also matured beyond their original intent. In addition to creating and deploying the update file, today's solutions can monitor, detect, understand and validate software behavior. Today's OTA solutions need to be more intelligent than the solutions that came into the automotive industry as a spinoff technology from the mobile phone industry. Today's solutions need to be developed for the vehicle - because the vehicle is a heck of a lot more complicated than a mobile phone and there is human life relying on the vehicle software intelligence embedded in today's cars.

OTA - Cost Consideration and Frequency

Putting detailed costs of delivering OTA updates has never been discussed in the aisles or on stage at MWC, ELIV, CES or the Detroit Auto Show. Mainly, because of the reasons discussed above -OTA updates were done infrequently, only as bug fixes, and only to the head unit and TCU. This is changing and the cost of OTA updates need to be looked at under a microscope. According to a recent Automotive Software Survey, with 140 respondents from the automotive industry - it is expected that moving forward, there will be, at least one update per quarter - updating features and functionalities in the entire car.

Costs to consider include:

- Cloud-to-vehicle communications and data transmission costs

- Endpoint update technology integration costs

- Endpoint update memory costs

- Cloud storage costs

(To learn more, download the Cost Consideration Guide with Simulator.)

OTA - Money Maker

Here is where it gets really interesting and where it becomes blatantly clear that auto OEMs need strategic and proactive over-the-air update plans. Not only is OTA update technology shifting left, delivering more functionality and being leveraged more often for more ECUs - it is also on the path of becoming a major revenue stream for auto manufacturers. Based on the survey mentioned above, more than one-fifth of industry experts expect software sales to account for at least ten percent of carmakers' sales as early as 2027