Siemens and partners developing new software architecture for electric vehicles

5 March 2012

Siemens’ Corporate Technology research department is working with partners to develop new information and communications technology (ICT) for future electric cars. The project RACE (Robust and Reliant Automotive Computing Environment for Future eCars) is scheduled to run for three years and is being funded by Germany's Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology.

The partners intend to demonstrate the benefits of a centralized ICT architecture with two electric car prototypes. For the “Evolution” prototype, the researchers will replace the existing vehicle technology step-by-step with new components for features such as autonomous parking or inductive charging. The “Revolution” prototype is being newly designed from the ground up.

In vehicles built with this new technology, the driver assistance, safety, and infotainment features will mostly be installed as software instead of being managed in control units. This will reduce the current complexity of the ICT architecture and at the same time increase its power.

Today, drivers and vehicle occupants enjoy improved performance, comfort, and safety thanks to functions like the anti-lock braking system, Electronic Stability Program, active parking aid, emergency brake assistant, lane departure warning system, and proximity-controlled cruise control. However, the associated ICT that has grown up in vehicles over many years is becoming increasingly complex.

This is making the introduction of new features increasingly labor-intensive and expensive. The individual components are connected with many different data transmission systems, for example. It is difficult to upgrade cars with new functions that weren’t built in to the vehicles during the initial manufacturing process. Electromobility offers the opportunity to rework the ICT architecture and to quickly integrate new functions.

To this end, the partners want to bring together all the functions in a few central computers with a single bus system. The advantage here is that new systems would be installed via Plug&Play technology such as on a PC—extra control units and wiring would no longer be necessary. The new architecture should also enable the vehicle to communicate with a future intelligent power grid and transport system and allow the development of completely new functions—such as an “autopilot” that could steer the vehicle autonomously in the future.

The project partners are Siemens, TRW Automotive, AVL Software and Functions, fortiss, Institut ILS at the University of Stuttgart, the departments Software & Systems Engineering and Real-Time Computer Systems at the TU München, Fraunhofer Research Institution for Applied and Integrated Security (AISEC), and the RWTH Aachen (ACS/ISEA).