Autotech

Autotech is a concept used to describe the disruptive technology that has grown out of the automotive sector. For over two decades, major progress has been made in fuel economy, ride quality and safety. The progress has driven the development of advanced embedded systems that has accelerated the increase of new user features. When the different features work together and communicates with the environment a setting for advanced new features and service arise.

For a typical executive car, the number of ECU in the embedded system has increased tenfold from 1997 to 2017, now totaling of over 100 units. At the same time, the size of executable software in such a car has increased by a factor of 1000, going from about 1 Mb to 1 Gb.

This is done without compromising the strict requirements on quality, environmental impact, unit cost, and product life time.

The category of features that is increasing most rapidly is Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS). Within a couple of years, a standard passenger car will be able to drive with a great level of autonomy. The implications of this are major a hard to overview today.

The fast-growing technical complexity puts higher demands on the development of Life Cycle Management Systems, e.g., to monitor performance, do fault tracing, improve functionality by download of new software, ensure environmental and safety compliance.

The Autotech area has attracted lots of financial investor attention and cross-industrial co-operation the last couple of years. Also, some concern has been raised about the actual consumer interest and adoption rate.

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