Straight to the goal

For automakers, the road to the future, amid component shortages and rising energy source prices, is not without its obstacles, but the goal to be reached is well defined: implementing electronics and software to produce smart vehicles, connected to the surrounding environment and capable of guiding us, safely, toward shared mobility

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EAV Automotive Dossier

By Virna Bottarelli |

Electrification, autonomous driving and shared mobility are the megatrends that are driving the evolution of the automotive industry. This was also reiterated by the organizers of the Automotive Conference, being held this month as part of electronica 2022: the electrification of the powertrain, the rise of autonomous driving capabilities, and the idea of alternative mobility, untethered from the idea of vehicle ownership and much closer to that of fruition of a service, are prompting automakers to change their "profile" from mere car manufacturers to mobility service providers. Indeed, digital platforms, which enable individual consumer mobility without the need for a personal car, risk excluding manufacturers from direct access to customers. If automakers do not want to reduce themselves to suppliers to multinational mobility corporations, they must offer mobility services themselves. How? By implementing more and more technology - semiconductors and software - in their vehicles and making cars true smart devices.

On the road to innovation 

TheAutonomous Vehicle Computing Consortium is a global nonprofit organization of automotive and technology players with the goal of accelerating the mass production of safe vehicles with assisted driving and autonomous computing technology. In recent weeks, the consortium signed a partnership with Semi, with the intent of driving innovation in the autonomous vehicle industry and working to promote the development of technology standards. The partnership will focus on the Semi Global Automotive Advisory Council (Gaac), a global platform within the Smart Mobility initiative, which Semi launched in 2017 and encourages members and stakeholders to collaborate on industry innovation. According to Bettina Weiss, Semi's Chief of Staff and Corporate Strategy and Global Smart Mobility Lead, the partnership "will bring new capabilities to Semi members participating in the Smart Mobility initiative." Along with names such as NXP, Renesas and Nvidia, Qualcomm, which in the Emea area is led by Enrico Salvatori, is also part of the consortium. The California-based company has been working with the automotive industry for more than 20 years, and more than 150 million vehicles use its solutions. "The smart, connected, software-defined car of the future requires next-generation technology that is scalable and customizable and allows adaptable flexibility for the dynamic automotive industry," says Salvatori. "From our perspective, working closely with the automotive ecosystem includes cloud-connected services for real-time in-vehicle updates, Advanced Driver Assistance Systems for enhanced safety, and personalized infotainment systems for unique and immersive in-vehicle experiences." Qualcomm's automotive offering goes by the name Snapdragon Digital Chassis, a comprehensive set of open, scalable, cloud-connected platforms for automotive telematics and connectivity, cockpit, driver assistance and vehicle autonomy.

"These platforms are customizable to all types of vehicles, continuously upgradable via the cloud, and allow the configuration of on-demand features and services to create more personalized experiences that continue to evolve even after the sale," Salvatori further explains. The goal of electronics and semiconductor suppliers is thus to make automotive OEMs produce ever smarter vehicles at ever lower costs. "By connecting multiple subsystems that have common hardware and an open software support architecture, automakers can easily select individual modules or complete sets of packaged technologies to deliver the functionality customers want: the Snapdragon Ride platform, for example, is a complete cloud-connected platform for creating modular, customizable ADAS solutions that incorporate low-power, high-performance SoCs and accelerators; or, again, Snapdragon Car-to-Cloud services support device management with on-demand over-the-air (OTA) feature updates for personalized user experiences."


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