SAE Automotive Podcast: Software Defined Vehicles

[Music] Welcome to the SAE Automotive Engineering Podcast for February 2026. I'm Chris Klotz, Senior Editor of Automotive Engineering Magazine. In each episode we talk to people in the automotive industry about what's happening right now and what's coming next. You'll hear from automakers, suppliers, regulators, and anyone working in this complex and exciting field. This month we hear from experts on how software-defined vehicles are changing electrical architecture and how engineers work to integrate all software efficiently. First up, Editor-in-chief Sebastian Blanco speaks with Philip May, Aero Electronics Vice President of Engineering in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Aero helps distribute and develop tech that are somewhere between individual components and complete systems. Mai says his company's role is changing, including adding new software capabilities. [Music] Hello everyone, welcome once again to the SAE Automotive Engineering Podcast. We are here today with Philip May of Aero. Aero was founded almost 90 years ago now in New York City, but today has over 22,000 employees serving more than 85 countries. It does a lot of things, but primarily works in transportation, industrial, medical, aerospace, and defense, consumer electronics and data centers. Today we're here to talk about SDBs, with as I said, Philip May, whose Vice President of Engineering in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa for Aero Electronics. Philip, welcome to the show. Well, thank you Sebastian for having me here. What an honor. Yeah, thanks. What we're looking forward to this conversation, because SVDs, as we know, are everywhere, but you're focused in a regional, you know, a particular region. So can you tell me a little bit about what it means to be Vice President of Engineering in EMEA, anything interesting or unusual that's happening in this region when it comes to SDBs? Yeah, well, as I said, I'm personally honored to be in any kind of automotive and transportation show, because before I actually had that role in Aero, I spent 11 years in the automotive business and leading the practice from an engineering perspective. So every time somebody chumps on me with an automotive topic, I get excited. And particularly what what excites me about SDBs and about the shift towards them is the underlying, the underlying, you know, hardware changes, which are required to make SDBs reality. When I think about this, especially in my reach, and I think the SDB is more kind of a North Star term, something you shoot for, something you aspire to make a reality, well, then you need to have a lot of things falling into places. It requires a whole new E-architecture, most of our cars, besides very few in Europe, which are still on a more distributed kind of architecture, a lot on a sonar architecture. And by then, you have a lot of wire complexity, a lot of easy use to answer on and so on and so on. And that actually gives a lot of things to improve across tier ones, across the supply chain. And, you know, there's so much excitement going on about these hardware changes and you know, how they will enable them, a SDB here in Europe. So it's some super excited about this market. Yeah. Well, seems like the company is too, because Errol recently launched a new research hub. Excuse me, to support various customer work on these next generation E-architectures, like you said. What can you tell me about this hub and its mission? Yeah, a quick question. So for me, this is really a fast to educate around this topic. Yeah. As I said, predominantly what excites me is it excites me how the hardware is changing in terms of the E-architecture to enable the SDB. And I just give you a couple of examples. What I wear this trend is shifting towards and why it's so important to educate. Yeah. We talked about the 48 volts, which I think it's very interesting technology, which will enable also the SDBs in terms of how you would then make a sonar architecture more efficient. We talked a lot about Ethernet. In this information hub, we want to emphasize that Ethernet has a really great end-to-end capability, not just replacing it, but giving a lot more functions also in the low bandwidth stuff than the historic protocols. And then when we look into this very widespread European automotive market, we actually see a big need because there's a lot of smaller companies engaged, tier 2, tier 3s, which are craving for getting educated. How do I fit into this new SDB? What will be my role? Will I deliver like a solution? Will I deliver only a component into the future? Will I be an IP company? So it's a lot about education about what the SDB has implications for our very, very broad transportation customer base. Yeah. And one thing which is in particular, exciting is for us, it's a single pair Ethernet and everything which comes as a benefit by implementing it into the car and then enabling SDB. And when those various tier 3 or area level suppliers come to you or different smaller players in the industry, what would you say are some of the defining factors that help you sort of understand what their role might be in the new SDB future? Like what kind of technologies do you say? Well, this will be working more directly with an OEM and this one you'll just be more responsible for producing these components or so. Yeah, it's a very, very good question and a very tough indeed one because that very is from car platform to car platform. And basically the SDB has great advantages from a hard wear perspective to save cost for the OEM. Okay, that's very, you know, it's fundamentally you can save cost and you can enable more productivity because you have this opportunity to upsell your car throughout the lifetime to software updates which you can even sell to the end customers. That's great. That's why I call it the North Star. When you look down then the chain of the suppliers and the T1s in that level is how do you fit in and then you will also think about two things. Can you derive a cost saving on the hardware for your OEM? It's one where you can fit in or you get into a product which is actually the updateable full features and you can make a design which then the OEM, the car maker can update for the lifetime of the week and then upscale the weekly performance for the end customer for us the user. So I think that's the two two fundamentals of how our customers can think about this and how this actually can help them both ways save cost and get more features and getting paid for those features. In the recent press release I read the mentions that Arrow works as an aggregator for EAR architecture. I know what aggregation means in the writing world but what does it mean in the in the world that Arrow is playing in? That term is an interesting one because that just means you're really working as the like you talked about with the information hub sort of helping people understand things. It's more information or all. It's probably a long answer to your question that goes always a very diversified business and we are proud of that and we offer not just a component service for this for the automotive and transportation industry. We offer very very complex supply chain solution for the automotive industry which is actually very relevant if you think about the sheer amount of parts of electronics parts which are now used but also which will exponentially grow in the future. So that's very important. Then when you look at also the services around what we offer around software in terms of engineering service this is another thing where you can think as an aggregator. So it's not just one motion we have, one offering to the market actually we have quite a bit to offer and that's why we call it we are an aggregator to that market. And I think we hinted at this a little bit but can you talk more about the ways that the shift to SDVs or the promise of new SDV technologies is really changing the way that you interact with companies around you. Yes so it is very very complex to answer because SDVs predominantly change. I don't want to say everything but they are quite disruptive. They are quite disruptive if you think about the way a car from an E-architecture perspective has been built for the last 15 years. The last 15 years was always an evolution. You add more devices, you add more complexity and then you put in a bus protocol which you gradually upscale to handle the complexity. Right now what you see is that actually the approach comes more from a blank sheet of paper where historic relationships and historic business motions also get disrupted. And I think that's why this answering this question is sometimes a little bit different because also on the one side there's very very interesting new players coming in which gives immensely growth potential on the other side you have companies which are more moving from left to right or trying to focus themselves about where they really expert it. So it's a little bit tough to answer that question for me to be honest. No that's fine I think it's a tough it's a difficult thing to fully understand all the changes that SDVs are going to bring to the industry you know both to consumers but also as we're talking today more on the backside and so it's understandable that we don't quite know how all those things work. Let's talk about something that probably makes it a little bit easier to answer. In 2024 Aero acquired two software companies I'm not even sure that pronounced IQ mine and AV labs or AV labs. How do those fit into Aero's SDV work? Yeah so basically look at this for perspective you know predominant we are component hardware company and you know you've heard me already speaking a lot about hardware and how these excites me well you know when the the term SDV has to work software in it so it is something we always had a strong engineering services arm of our business we call it the input chip but we always wanted to double down on our automotive practice especially around all those are our complex device driver development because there's a big need in the market and that's why Aero has invested and by food acquisitions we actually we are very proud members of the auto out so consortium through AV labs since 2012 we're actively contributing to their events and to the consortium so outdoor size something between really our embrace and we are delivering many services around around our other operations systems. Was there anything specific that these two companies brought to the table or that you can talk about like a specific feature or ability that it gave Aero that it didn't have before? Yeah I mean the ability which is really really broad in is adaptive and classic auto-sign configuration ability developing complex device drivers in under AC constraints that means up to ACD levels it brought in ability around cybersecurity and how we can implement it into the software stack of our our customers and it it it brought us also great ability especially around the diagnostics of the vehicles yeah so there's a lot of capability within those acquisitions we added to our portfolio which are now really you know fit really really nice into the trend around how eifitects is evolving and then also it enables sdv reality as an off-staffed industry. I don't want to ask like what are some of the weaknesses you see in Aero's portfolio but what are some of the challenges that you know our next and the horizon that you know in 2024 you solved it by buying these software companies what are some of the big hurdles that you can envision coming up when it comes to sdv's and Aero's role with them. Well it's a very interesting question again I think I divided the sdv trend into the revolution around the e-architecture how this is changing and it will really cut cost so that's very exciting and that's a fact you will cut cost at the wire harness you will cut cost at the electronic control unit you will cut cost in the development of those electronic control units in the software development etc so I think there's a clear path on that sdv's and the architecture you need for sdv's food cut cost and that's that's very exciting and that's typically which always fueled the big drive of the automotive industry yeah and as I said I spent a big chunk of of my my career in the automotive industry the second thing where I'm and this is a personal opinion is our car makers able to upset an sdv or will the sdv become a commodity because everybody has it and then you need to give certain features for free over lifetime because people expect it because it's just for the 90 000 you know dollar car and then you why should I pay after one year hundred dollar forgetting this additional feature I just paid you 90 000 so that's the question the car maker has to solve and how how much actually they can harness off that and then especially if you put profit into the car makers it trickle down the typically the the chain of the tiers etc yeah so I think that's more kind of the challenge for I see at the sdv's all the car makers able to make us as a consumer a well-fledged paper bit at the time are we going to we are we willing to pay for the company does does that discussion or that discussion you know will be coming in the future does that and how does that affect some of the engineering decisions you're making now or do you just leave that up to the OEMs to decide and you just you know not think about that too much no no no no we drive our our decision making by ourselves aligning us on on the mega trends in the market and how we want to harness that and this is how we how we when they're on this this you know M&A activity because we want straight from particularly around the software piece and out of more different than as what I said um you know certain things which are very exciting to us is is 48 volts it's it's it's the usage of e-fanat and not just the the high speed e-fanat the 10 based t1s single pair e-fanat that's a great enabler technology um so these things are like kind of like our kind of like some of them are strategic pillars to us how we're going to move forward and they're they're very much important to us and how we're going to lay out our strategy like I cannot disclose everything of course sorry for that but I think those are obvious ones it's it's it's it's 10 based t1s single pair e-fanat it's our capabilities around software and then how we fit in the 48 volt bus of the future excellent that's a good place to end it Phillip thank you very much for joining us today and uh we look forward to watching what arrows doing in the future thank you Sebastian was a pleasure to be on the show next sustainability editor Roberto Baldwin speaks with qnx's VP of core product engineering Justin Moon about the company's software how it integrates into the software defined vehicle infrastructure the company's close relationship with automakers and its alloy core platform but first a message from our sponsor electrification keeps marching forward breakthroughs and thermal management chemistry charging design and safety seem to be announced every day to keep on top of what's happening in the industry register for the free online essay battery and electrification summit happening April 7th and 8th you'll get two days of insights from experts in the field head to essay org forward slash events forward slash battery dash electrification dash summit to register today that's essay org forward slash events forward slash battery dash electrification dash summit to register and a reminder it's free today we have Justin Moon vice president core product engineering at qnx Justin thank you so much for joining me today um first off let's start with what is qnx i think the average person probably people in the automotive industry we know a qnx's but yeah the average person maybe even the average engineer probably might not know what qnx's so so gives a little uh breakdown of what qnx's and what it's sure how qnx is a foundational software technology company that's been around for the better part of the last 45 years so that's sometimes surprising to a lot of people we've been around for quite a long time our historic focus was around operating systems we have a real time operating system virtualization safety security purely from a foundational perspective the automotive industry we've been you know very successful over the last 20 years or so even longer now almost 25 years now in terms of you know delivering that found those foundational components into the to the automotive industry but you know well prior to that much success and a lot of adjunct markets like medical devices industrial and automation uh things to that effect um and obviously you know looking at delivering similar types of solutions into some of those you know next gen like robotics and industrial automation from purely from a physical uh interception intersection with robotics and things like that so qnx although if you google it it's a you know you see oh s and hypervisor but it's well more than just those historic items it's everything that allows our customers to build truly you know safe secure and highly performant software cool and with that in mind let's talk a little bit about alloy core yeah yeah and and and you know in an increasingly software defined vehicle world how does how does this benefit oeums so if you think about what you know qnx does from a value prop perspective at the most fundamental level we provide those building blocks so that oeums tier ones and other technology companies can build that overarching system above it and those building blocks you know really allow for safety security purely from the operating environment perspective we layer that on with bsps or board support packages so hardware support file systems all of the things you would expect for a high level operating environment to provide with alloy core it's a very very deep partnership with another behemoth in the automotive tech industry and vector vector provides you know probably the most ubiquitous autosar classic deliveries in automotive industry also pivoting with the adaptive autosar adaptive autosar side of things but what alloy core is is a reimagining of technology integration it's not about just slapping a couple of products together and saying hey this is net new effectively what we've done is completely reimagined what does it mean to bring qnx technology and vector technology together to solve truly foundational platform problems that means you're not subscribing to any ecosystem it could be any ecosystem as far as alloy core is concerned the whole idea is provide those building blocks in a more cohesive highly performant from an integration perspective singular focus on safety and security from the multiple companies but really what we're doing is providing that providing that true foundation to allow the oeums to allow tier ones to truly focus on the value that they provide to their customers ultimately what we're trying to do is reduce the complexity in these sdv designs when you look at a very traditional traditional is hard to say with an sdv because it's still kind of new-ish but in an additional layered approach design you have software and top of software and top of software and abstraction on top of abstraction obviously when you start looking at those types of things the more layers you have the more software you have we start talking about it takes a lot more time from my application to access a thing down here because it's literally going through many many different layers so that reimagining is how do we reduce that complexity how do we make sure we're doing true integrations of those truly foundational components this is not about growing up the vertical stack that's what tier ones and oeums want to build they want to differentiate on that vertical stack solution from an ECU perspective what we want to focus on is that horizontal approach capitalized on the economies scale so you solidify on a singular platform from those foundational components perspective and again what do i mean by by foundational operating system hypervisor process and lifecycle management diagnostic stacks common logging common communications you know centralized configuration for the entire platform so you're not piecemealing all of these things together as part of a startup production you're actually inheriting this as inherent features of a commercial product one really nice thing because open source is a big part of what everybody's talking about from an automotive perspective certainly not blind to that so obviously we have to provide the most transparency we possibly can to ensure that developers can leverage this platform in an appropriate fashion so source code availability all of those types of things all part of what alloy core really is allocore isn't just to solve technology problems it's to solve those safety and security burdens it's to provide far more transparency in those foundational components but also there's you know commercial and legal and liability and demnification type challenges part of the industry as well that need to be solved there isn't a real solution for multiple parties to contribute to a safety element so multiple companies building something under the same safety case alloy core is that next step in that where there's two of us we're going to solve these challenges and two is where we start alloy core isn't just it's not a project it's a product with a well-defined roadmap and a very large future that will include other strategic partners that will include the possibility of distribution really trying to tackle a lot of those industry trends not just solely focused on tech integration but really understanding the entire supply chain and what that means cool so it you know it at the end of the day you you you've created a product that that should reduce the complexity because like you said there's so you know if you're if you just keep putting software stacks on top of software stacks so now you're having to build integrations for every this stack has to talk to this stack that has to talk to this stack and so now you have a you know maybe an HVAC signal or maybe you have a you know an airbag that has to dig through all this someone has to dig through all that to make that work at the software you know at the at the base level the vehicle so when something is either triggered or goes wrong it works correctly absolutely and I mean it's that performance and that latency management that's a big part of the reimagining but again at the same time you you mentioned airbags and all those types of things hopefully an airbag signal doesn't have to go through 8000 different layers to trigger anyway that was a demonstration that's not how airbags work I'm sorry no one take away from this but yeah I mean that was the sole focus I mean we've been in with vector in many many SOPs start to productions together and we found we were solving the same challenges over and over and over and over and then you're you're doing that as part of an S why why would you keep doing that over and over again this this led to the the visual other realization that there's there's something here from an innovation perspective that we can that we can do and then layer on that all of the other software side of it as well so not necessarily just the hard tech but the commercial angles and then how we actually work together I mean that's one of the you know one of the biggest things is bringing to engineering organizations together that builds very complimentary software but very different software understanding how those companies mesh together you would be surprised how easy it was for our and your organizations to literally come together and be one and I think that's a very strong statement to make because it is two very different companies but so well aligned from an implementation perspective from a culture perspective in terms of safety security first it was huge and it's been great so far so I can't thank the vector team enough it's been absolutely amazing. Excellent now Q and X is working with Mercedes and BMW what is the working relationship with with OEMs how tight is that partnership how does that work out I mean we're we are we talked to a lot of OEMs we're on multiple business models and we won't get into hollow those types of things engineer not not the commercial or sales guy we do have extremely close partnerships with the majority of the major OEMs and a lot of the new entrance and you know reaching into you know other geographic locations our partnerships are very strong you know we like to say that our roadmaps are generally not a guess we we are very much tied into you know what what is next not necessarily just for the OEMs but also their supply chain it's just as important to have great relationships with all of the technology suppliers again we're an operating systems company or a foundational software company where people build many many different aspects of the system on top of our our you know our deliveries and our products so you know having those really great relationships and understanding what's next and what's next next is a super important that's that that's that's I think that when you're talking about the OEMs plus you know the suppliers that's hundreds of relationships really they're very busy strategic alliances organization but very very busy I mean obviously you can't work with everybody and not everybody is going to be a technology partner I mean again from a scaling perspective you know as we move to true consolidation from a from an electrical and architecture perspective there's always going to be ECU still out there that our purpose built like a break controller and all of those types of things and those aren't you know the software that goes into those is typically at out of our classic or something that's just big loop that actually handles the signals and all of those types of things but as we move to consolidation and high performance compute and all of those types of things and every other buzzword you've heard about e-mecture and all of those and trying to avoid buzzwords these days but I mean it's those companies that are focused in and what that next generation looks like I mean obviously we're very successful in the automotive industry we've shipped in about 275 million vehicles to date so it's a large number but I need to answer your original question you know what is that partnership like I would say in a lot of cases we do it's very strategic without commenting on what business looks like and all of those types of things you know we can have those next generation conversations with a lot of people. Excellent excellent and now let's sort of bring it back to the average person the you know they hear about software defined vehicles I don't think they quite understand what it what that means to be honest can you quickly break it down what that means and how Q&X like it helps bring those to the market. Right so for the average user or somebody who's going to occupy a vehicle software definition at the you know at that level to me really is about configuration and personalization at least at that level. Being able to build systems that are very software complex to provide that flexibility for the end user to do whatever it is that they need to do. I won't put the crystal ball in here and put on my my guessing hat but I mean that's really at the end of the day what it is I mean what does it mean for OEMs and and tier ones and all of those types of things it's about reduction of complexity it's about capitalizing on economies of scale it's about shifting what complexity looks like I mean cars of today to be fair and cars of yesterday very hardware complex are really shifting that to more of a software complex with less componentry from a hardware perspective still very complicated but really shifting that paradigm from you know 150 plus ECUs with big loop operating systems or very bespoke single focus to far more consolidation and far more compute so really shifting the complexity dynamic but I mean software definition of the software divine vehicle for the average driver literally is the flexibility for you to leverage the money the thing you just spent a lot of money on for more than just a couple of years keeping it fresh making sure that you have options all of those types of things and I mean to be fair that that definitely drives brand loyalty right I mean you know being able to i drive cars for a long period of time so I certainly would love to be able to keep things fresh over you know the long period of time I can have a vehicle that is one of the you know the software to find vehicle is a vehicle that you know previously you would buy a vehicle and it was static like what you bought was what sat in your driveway or in your you know garage for you know five, 10, 20 years however long you kept the vehicle it didn't it didn't that was it that was the vehicle you bought it now they're more dynamic where there's the opportunity for automakers to say hey we have this feature we can send it to your car because your car will support it so now we're going to send a feature so your car can upgrade you know in in in in interesting ways over the lifetime of the vehicle so one one interesting thing that I was I was part of an interview with one of my colleagues from dr. he brought up a really really good point he said it wouldn't be great if the end state for SDV was I have a car I bought a new car I pulled my new car into my driveway my old car or my new car turned into my old car in terms of interface in terms of all of the data all of those and I didn't have to do anything that type of you know end state or vision is what software definition really does actually enable now whether or not that actually happens that's it's applying the sky thing I think at the same time I mean again from a if you want to think about it from a big leap perspective that's really what it could be right I mean it provided in software definitions become some form of standardized APIs or ways of communicating from a vehicle platform to vehicle platform perspective that's absolutely possible especially if you're a brand loyal and you buy trimline xyz and your new car is a different one and you want to have a similar experience you don't want to do all of the migration things I mean I dislike when people compare cars to phones but that upgrade experience is an expectation in a phone now a phone doesn't cost me $75,000 either and for $75,000 maybe that expectation isn't too far off right no no it's totally that makes a lot of sense especially if you know again if it's I think people become accustomed to something that when I come home and I put the old thing next to the new thing the new thing takes all the features that I like from the old thing and throws it on there plus I just have a new thing and I don't have to you know I think we all remember in the 80s and 90s okay you got a new computer I'll see you in a week that's great yes now it's it's very much like I couldn't just upgrade you know I just move all of my important preferences and applications of what not and documents onto the new computer over the course of a few hours I'm going stealth for the next two weeks yeah well thank you so much Justin for for chatting with us today Justin again vice president core product engineering at QNX Roberto thanks a lot I really appreciate the time thanks for listening to the SAE Automotive Engineering podcast we'll be back in March to talk about vehicle to grid technology and its future here in abroad this SAE Automotive podcast was produced by senior editor Chris Clonts the executive editor of automobile engineering is Sebastian Blanco music is by Roberto Baldwin and the SAE media group director of editorial and digital content Is citrus ethy.