The expanding  industry ecosystem now includes OEMs and their Tier 1 suppliers, cloud services providers,  connected vehicle platform providers, independent software vendors and system integrators.  Some companies have changed focus from vertical, industry-based (like automotive) approaches, to delivering horizontal solutions across multiple industries (e.g. Internet of Things that move).  All these actors need access to the data, interfaces and services offered by vehicles (this includes cars, trucks, bikes, buses, etc.) and this motivates common descriptions of those.

We propose to name this industry future the "Common Vehicle Interface Initiative", but this topic is multi-faceted as explained below.

It is worth noting that for many years, the automotive industry have discussed the future of in-car software in various consortia, forums and conferences focused on the embedded systems, i.e. the in-vehicle hardware, software and networks.  The AUTOSAR consortium is one example.  Automotive OEMs and their suppliers shared ideas about the need for standard technologies and APIs.   Interface-centric development has moved toward a more flexible, agile and efficient development of embedded software.  As system complexity increases, this need has not been reduced, but connectivity brings it to a whole other level.

For designing the in-vehicle systems, OEMs need a software marketplace with components that are interoperable on the functional level.  This need has traditionally driven investment into projects like GENIVI and AUTOSAR to support an ability to put together complex systems from diversely sourced, but compatible parts.   System development now includes an increasing amount of OEM-owned software that also needs to fit with what the marketplace offers.

In parallel, the automotive market is changing rapidly to a mobility market where the vehicle is an element of a wider cloud-based system providing mobility services.  As a consequence, the EE architecture of vehicles will evolve from a vehicle-centric computing platform to also include vehicle-cloud computing.

The future Vehicle Cloud Architecture will vastly increase the connected car functions and data exchange.  In addition to achieving compatible interfaces between components inside the vehicle, any functions that also need to be remotely accessible or in other ways cloud-connected bring a new opportunity and a new need for standards.  These new demands make standard interfaces an absolute necessity. The fundamentals of connecting components are defined in platforms like AUTOSAR, but the missing interface agreements on the functional level means that a software marketplace with minimized integration effort is not yet fully realized.  There is a gap in achieving seamless interoperability between software components sourced from different vendors, and perhaps an even larger gap to achieve a powerful service oriented architecture (SOA) vision.  Both require common services to be named with functions and parameters fully defined.

The GENIVI Cloud & Connected Services project is actively investigating essential standards and solutions to enable a vehicle data driven software architecture as an important step towards realizing the in-vehicle and back-end systems, and ultimately create an end-to-end vehicle-to-cloud computing platform.  It is in our opinion time to start talking about the next level of common service catalogs for the connected future. 

After having a first round of discussion with some parties on the topic of generic interfaces from the outside cloud architecture to the vehicle, we believe it is now time to get together and exchange ideas and needs, and then work jointly on the definition of all the connected services and technologies that make up this Common Vehicle Interface. For questions about how to join this effort, please contact GENIVI PMO Lead or GENIVI Development Lead or register to the upcoming GENIVI Virtual Technical Summit.  → Project Home Page here!

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