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Thanks to the coordination of the technical leadership and a great turnout for the technical programs, there was significant engagement and progress made at the recent COVESA All Member Meeting in Porto, Portugal.

Vehicle Signal Specification currently has a significant buzz in the industry and there are multiple perspectives as to where it fits and how to use it. Hence, there is a common theme and push of making VSS real, practical and useable. Many of the sessions and workshops held in Porto aligned with moving this forward.

• Data Centric Architectures – Christian Muhlbauer, BMW and Stephen Lawrence, Renesas
• VSS Deployment Scenarios – Erik Jaegervall, Bosch
• Grounding Ontologies and Modeling in the Practical – Daniel Alverez-Coello, BMW
• Using VSS to Interact with AUTOSAR Systems (VSS Vehicle API) – Erik Jaegervall Bosch
• Developing with Drive Playback – Emil Dautovic, RemotiveLabs, Peter Winzell, Volvo, Renjith Rajagopal, Volvo, Kristoffer Nilsson, Volvo
• Architecture and Deployment Scenarios of the VISSv2 Interface – Ulf Bjorkengren, Ford
• Building Bridges with a common Data Middleware: How to enable Data Sharing and Collaboration across different Domains – Christian Muhlbauer, BMW, and Stephen Lawrence, Renesas

VSS 4.0 will be released soon.  We are currently in pre-release status. Our goal moving forward, is to align releases with All Member Meetings.

EV Charging Event Data Aggregation Project, led by Matus Banyay, Ford, Karsten Krabel, Ford, and Achim Henkel, Bosch, continued to align with VSS the data required to support better EV charging experiences. 

EV Power Optimization Project, led by Pradeep Kumar, Mobis, and Chandra Chitikela, Mobis, continued to align with VSS the data required for optimizing battery usage when needed.

A new Commercial Vehicle Birds of a Feather group was proposed by Ted Guild, Geotab and Thomas Spreckley, ETAS after:

• a presentation of FleetOps – Making VSS Practical by Ted Guild, Geotab, and Lowry Snow, AWS
• a demo of FMS + VSS Demo – Sven Erik, ETAS, and Thomas Spreckley, ETAS

As mentioned in Steve Crumb’s recent blog post, there was a proposal for App Framework Standardization by Melina Mascolo, BMW and Camille Ghibaudo, FORVIA that had significant interest from many OEMs, Tier 1s, technology and platform companies.

Alternate ways of accessing vehicle from Android are still very much in mix as well with Android API:  Closing the Gap – Jan Kubovy, BMW.

These are just a few of the AMM technical highlights, but you can find even more sessions and workshops here.

Please engage and get involved and to learn more about what is happening in COVESA, check out our wiki.

COVESA enjoyed another All Member Meeting in the beautiful city of Porto, Portugal, with just over 200 people in attendance. A big "thank you" goes out to our event sponsors and showcase participants shown in the graphic below. Sessions, slides and many videos from the three-day program are found here.

The first half-day of the program focused on introductory sessions to Vehicle Signal Specification and How to engage in COVESA expert groups and projects. Unlike previous AMMs, a three-session focus on vehicle App Stores closed the day with a market view, an appeal for a new COVESA group and then a working session to advance a Charter document for that group.

Wednesday was the busiest day with multiple tracks ranging from a business-level track, to a series of meetings to advance the work of the Data Expert Group.  Matt Jones and Shareef Hakim from Ford tag-teamed on sharing what OEMs are looking for in the future of connected vehicles, followed by a presentation by Gerald Spreitz from Bosch on Vehicles in a Digital Ecosystem. Next up on the business track was an excellent presentation by Maitê Alves Bezerra from Informa Tech Automotive Group on Understanding the Software Defined Future.  Also new to this AMM was the presentation and panel led by Magnus Liljeqvist of Volvo Trucks on Fleet Operations and the value of open collaboration to advance that sector. The remainder of the business track addressed subjects like sustainable software architectures (Aptiv), services as software-enabled revenues (Informa-led panel), the future of in-vehicle experiences (Stellantis) and the legal framework needed for software defined vehicles (RTI). Slides and videos of these sessions can also be found on the event page.

Another highlight on Wednesday was the story telling of two Ford employees that drove from Cologne Germany to Porto in an electric vehicle, and the charging anxieties and victories along the way. Wednesday closed with a member showcase and reception during which several organizations presented their products and services and several vehicles were displayed.

COVESA Community Director Paul Boyes will post a separate blog regarding the highlights of the technical programs, including other new projects (besides the App Store) under discussion within COVESA.

COVESA is finalizing plans for its fall 2023 member meeting, likely to be in the Detroit-area on 10-12 October. Sponsorship opportunities and showcase tables are available and can be secured by contacting Mike Nunnery (mikenunnery@comcast.net).  We look forward to another great event in the fall and hope to see you there.

And another special thanks to our AMM event and showcase sponsors: 

With Pedro Lopez Estepa, Director of Automotive, RTI

What does your company do? What services, or products, do you provide?

Real-Time Innovations (RTI) is the largest software framework company for autonomous systems. RTI Connext® software is the world's leading architecture for developing intelligent distributed systems from autonomous vehicles to medical robotics to unmanned aerial vehicles to sophisticated defense systems. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, RTI is the leading vendor of products compliant with the OMG® Data Distribution Service (DDS™) standard.

RTI Connext Drive® is the automotive-grade connectivity software framework that delivers the automotive software components, development tools and runtime applications to accelerate the development and deployment of autonomous vehicles, including ISO 26262 safety and ISO 21434 cybersecurity designs. It accelerates direct integrations into AUTOSAR Classic and ROS 2 which minimizes overall system complexity and cost, while providing scalability and flexibility to build a future-proof, evolving system that doesn’t compromise performance.

Connext Drive is certified to ISO 26262 ASIL-D, offering an accelerated path to building safety-critical systems for electric and autonomous vehicles.

Why did you join COVESA and how long has your company been a member?

RTI joined COVESA in late 2022. We joined at the request of several COVESA members, who requested our help as the organization explored the role of DDS in its current recommendations on communications interoperability and standards (specifically VSS and the cooperation with AUTOSAR). Over the past few years, OEM interest in DDS has risen sharply. As the global leader in DDS technology for automotive (and other industries), RTI engineers are experienced at integrating DDS with other standards such as SOME/IP, FRANCA IDL and AUTOSAR data serialization.  So we’re here to help, and to listen, learn and actively participate in the work of this consortium.  

What benefits does your participation in COVESA bring to your company and business?

COVESA is a thriving community that is working towards open, collaborative and impactful technology for connected vehicles. Like COVESA, RTI too is at the forefront of technology innovations that will enable the next generation of automotives.  In particular, we are interested in next-generation communications. The new software architectures provide major benefits to enable key functionalities, but if it goes in the wrong direction, it could result in large increases to the cost of integration. It’s therefore critical for auto companies to have access to a common architecture with standard communication models that can be shared across platforms and suppliers, in order to accelerate the development and cost optimization for the complete supply chain. VSS aims to solve this problem, and its impact will go beyond development. For organizations such as RTI, this will bring the focus on enhancing functionalities and not contextualizing on custom vehicle signal specifications. 

Which COVESA collaborative project(s) or Birds of a Feather (BoF) is your company engaged in and why is that beneficial to your business?

As a leader in DDS technology, RTI is interested in participating in the Vehicle Signal Specification (VSS), which defines a common approach for describing vehicle data. We believe that DDS could enhance the performance of the widely-adopted VSS data model, and we’re here to help with some of the integration modeling work to make this happen. In addition, RTI plans to be a key contributor on the interoperability tasks with AUTOSAR. RTI has been a key member in AUTOSAR, defining the integration of DDS in both Autosar Adaptive and Classic.

Yu Fang, Co-Founder and CTO, Sonatus

Sudhir Dhankhar, Director of Engineering - Cloud, Sonatus

Vehicles are undergoing an incredible period of transformation with many different aspects of vehicles changing at the same time.  The rapid growth of electrification of vehicles is simplifying the vehicle design and promoting a transition to new E/E architectures.  Moving away from the old approach of discrete ECU’s doing individual functions, ECU’s are also consolidating into domains and sharing compute resources, reducing vehicle cost.  Driver experiences are expanding, including radical improvements in driver assistance and driving automation, improved entertainment, as well vehicle personalization. Software innovation underpins every aspect of these many areas of evolution and vehicle software is becoming more advanced and complex as vehicles shift towards becoming Software-Defined Vehicles (or SDV).

Vehicles are also becoming more connected, with services and capabilities connected to, and benefiting from, the cloud.  This flow of data improves the user experience and enables a wider array of innovations. The Connected Vehicle Systems Alliance (COVESA) is an important industry initiative that is working to bring standards to connected vehicles and promote the rapid development of these technologies.  Sonatus is a member of COVESA and has adopted the Vehicle Signal Specification (VSS). To help explain the importance of VSS, it may be useful to give some context about Sonatus.  

At Sonatus, we’re accelerating vehicle software innovation by delivering key software building blocks that enable OEMs to shift to software-defined vehicles faster and at lower costs.  These building blocks allow OEMs to continually improve and enhance their vehicles at any time, even after they are sold.  Sonatus offers a range of products and solutions to speed vehicle manufacturers' journey towards SDV in areas like data collection, vehicle automation, vehicle networking, cybersecurity and others.

SDV brings many valuable benefits to vehicle OEMs, suppliers, and customers:

• SDV enables issues to be fixed and functionality to be added to the vehicle post-production.
• SDV’s offer improved vehicle safety (including vehicle security), reliability, & maintainability.
• The flexibility that SDV’s bring enables new services that improve ownership experience and can save cost.

But to realize these benefits, OEMs need to enable application development both within the OEM and from the vehicle ecosystem. Most of these applications rely on access to quality, fine-grained data from vehicles and ability to add new features, but today sharing that data has challenges:

1. It is impractical to send all vehicle data to the cloud all the time, as the transmission and storage costs would be prohibitive.
2. Traditional software updates to vehicles are through cumbersome Over The Air (OTA) updates, which require significant development and testing, not to mention challenges in deploying the large updates across a fleet. This reduces the speed of innovation.
3. The naming of the vehicle signals changes from one vehicle model to another and also is different between different brands which makes it difficult for developers to build applications that can span multiple vehicle models and brands.

Two of Sonatus’s solutions aim to address these first two key challenges and enable faster vehicle innovation: Vehicle Data Collection (VDC) and Vehicle Automation Manager (VAM).

Sonatus Vehicle Data Collector enables vehicle manufacturers to create fine-grained, customized collection policies that give them the precise data they need and under specific trigger conditions. Through customized fine-grained data collection, OEMs can achieve an array of valuable use cases like predictive maintenance, diagnostics, product planning, cost optimization, and much more. VDC’s solution operates in the vehicle as well as in the cloud.

Sonatus Vehicle Automation Manager builds on our data collection capabilities but also adds actions. Through VAM, OEMs can create new features and experiences at any point in the vehicle’s life or automate the testing of existing functions by simply defining workflows using lightweight, yet flexible policies. VAM enables developers to draw upon data from across the car, and take actions in many vehicle systems, all without coding and difficult validation.

But the third challenge of inconsistent signal naming can remain a barrier. Sonatus VDC & VAM leverage VSS from COVESA to overcome this: VSS defines a common data model for vehicle signals, sensors, actuators, and attributes.  This common framework is critical both in the vehicle and in the cloud.  VSS offers multiple benefits to different layers of the value chain:

• Interoperability: VSS ensures that different vehicles, infrastructure and devices can communicate with each other, regardless of the brand or technology. For example, the signal sharing vehicle speed may be different across models or OEMs. In VSS it receives the common name Vehicle.Speed, making it easier to consistently access the correct signal across models and OEMs.
• Reduced Operational Overhead: With VSS, OEMs and their partners can define & deploy one data collection policy to collect data without worrying about different models and brands.
• Safety: VSS can be used to improve safety by enabling vehicles to share information about their location, speed, etc., in a brand agnostic way allowing other vehicles and infrastructure to respond appropriately.
• Innovation: VSS enables application developers to build innovative brand/model agnostic applications using common standards.
• Reduced Costs: With VSS, since naming is brand and model agnostic, it can result in improved software reuse and thus lower development costs.

For Sonatus, we have had a positive experience with VSS and see the scalability and reuse benefits it provides. We are excited to be one of the leaders in helping bring this technology to market and hope, through our advocacy, we can help demonstrate the benefits of the wider adoption of VSS across the industry.

To learn more on how Sonatus is implementing VSS, please join the COVESA Spotlight presentation on February 2 at 10 am PT / 1900 CET. Join using the Webex link.

Colleagues and friends ask, every year, “What was the most interesting thing you saw at CES this year?”  Some years it can be a challenge to answer, since there are so many cool and interesting things shown at CES.  This year it was very clear.  The most interesting thing I saw at CES was the growing adoption and awareness of COVESA’s Vehicle Signal Specification (VSS). VSS is a common data model used in and out of the vehicle to enable, facilitate, speed and scale of development of applications and services across OEM vehicle models, between OEMs, and third-party ecosystems. In the vehicle, data is typically mapped to VSS as close to the source as possible. It is also used in the cloud. This data is exposed by platforms to be used in services, applications, analytics, machine learning, digital twins, and simulations.

Not only are companies adopting VSS, but they have sincere interest in collaboration to improve, mature and grow its usefulness.   

Member companies that showcased their VSS implementations on the show floor at CES:

• RTI Connext - Data-centric communications framework
• Sonatus - In-vehicle infrastructure and data management solutions

Other companies that showcased their VSS implementations on the show floor at CES:

• Amazon Web Services (AWS) for Automotive - In-vehicle, cloud and cloud-to-vehicle services and solutions
• AWS Fleetwise - Collect, transform, and transfer vehicle data to the cloud in near realtime
• Blackberry IVY - Cloud-connected automotive AI platform

There were many others interested in and using VSS and areas where VSS is a clear fit for larger adoption (e.g., Electric Vehicles (EV) and EV Charging).

For more information about VSS can be found here and if interested in learning more, please contact me.  We welcome your active participation in VSS-related activities and here’s to further adoption and maturation of VSS in 2023!  

CES returned from a multi-year, COVID-induced hiatus with a vengeance!  The success of that event positively impacted the COVESA Showcase and Reception event held on 5 January at the Bellagio Hotel. COVESA smashed records for booths/tables taken (77) and for confirmed attendance by a targeted automotive audience (1780), both of which represent a roughly 25% increase from the previous, pre-COVID records for the event.  An extensive photo gallery of the event can be found here.

COVESA is very grateful to all the event sponsors (listed in the below graphic), to the showcase participants and to Mike Nunnery, COVESA Business Development Manager, and his entire team for their excellent logistical execution. Another special thanks goes to the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) and the Michigan Office of Future Mobility and Electrification, both of which added significantly to the event by accommodating a start-up pavilion and by hosting the Lt. Governor of the State of Michigan, Mr. Garlin Gilchirst II, who welcomed the crowd during a brief on-stage speech.

New to the event this year was AUTOSAR, an automotive alliance that has established a de-facto industry standard for an automotive software architecture, and their PiCar demonstrator. For this event, COVESA member TietoEvry extended the AUTOSAR demonstrator to include an integration of the Vehicle Signal Specification (VSS).

This integration is an early reference of an AUTOSAR concept to develop a Vehicle API connecting the AUTOSAR adaptive platform to vehicle data formatted according to VSS. The demonstrator gave of glimpse of the progress made in the COVESA-AUTOSAR alignment discussions announced in October of 2022.

COVESA was happy to provide a high-profile event with a very targeted audience to 25 of its showcasing members, some of which had just recently joined the alliance. In addition to AUTOSAR’s presence, the event served as an alignment opportunity to other industry collaborations including eSync Alliance (OTA standards), OpenADR (energy management and EV charging), Society of Automotive Engineers and the National Association of Broadcasters (advancing new content in the vehicle).  A table was also dedicated to Vehicle Experiences, a new COVESA Birds-of-a-Feather (BoF) launching in February.

While CES 2023 was a much more populated event that had a positive effect on COVESA’s showcase and reception, the showcase had significant highlights of its own, not only in participation and sponsorship, but in strengthening relationships between industry-leading collaborations and, of course, gave 25 of our members an awesome platform for showing their products and services. We invite all of our members to consider participating in next year’s event and in other showcase events at our upcoming all member meetings.

Thanks again to our sponsors, participating organizations and to Mike Nunnery’s team for a record-breaking event – let’s do it again next year!

COVESA wrapped up its fall All Member Meeting in late October with close to 250 in attendance and close to fifty speakers on the program. A big "thank you" goes out to our event sponsors and showcase participants shown in the graphic below.

The first half-day of the program focused on introductory sessions to Vehicle Signal Specification, Vehicle Service Catalog, and how to engage in COVESA expert groups and projects. The day closed with panels and presentations on Data Privacy and In-Vehicle experiences. While not all sessions used slides, the program and many session slides can be found here.

Wednesday was the busiest day with multiple tracks ranging from a business-level track, to a series of meetings of the newly formed Data Expert Group.  Lisa Drake from Ford shared a compelling vision of Ford's future of EVs, followed by a moderated panel of Ford and Stellantis representatives discussing emerging industry opportunities for OEMs. Next up on the business track was a cloud presentation by Alex Oyler from SBD Automotive followed by panels representing Tier 1, Silicon vendor, and Cloud vendor perspectives, as well as perspectives from organizations defining and delivering data-enabled services to the industry. Hyundai Motor presented a case study on their vehicle data architecture and AWS presented how they were using VSS in the context of their Fleetwise product.  The day was bookended with an equally compelling perspective from Visnu Sundaram on Stellantis' view of the future of in-vehicle experiences.

Another highlight on Wednesday was a Talking the Drive podcast recorded live at the AMM. In this episode, People-driven Marketing in the Car, host John MacLeod sat down with CEO of Drive Time Metrics, Rod MacKenzie, and Rivet Chief Engineer, Roy Casino for a great discussion about what marketers want, what’s missing and who can step up to revolutionize programming and marketing in the future car. You can listen to the recorded podcast here.

Wednesday evening was highlighted by a bustling and active showcase and reception during which more than 20 organizations presented their products and services. The Ford F150 Lightning on the floor instantly became the most expensive backdrop for selfies and group photos during the event.

Thursday kicked off with a view from academia with a presentation on the NSF-funded PIVOT project as well as additional working sessions by the Data Expert Group. Next up were working sessions of the EV Charging Event Data Aggregation project and a "pot-pourri" of talks by COVESA members on topics ranging from safe road infrastructure, to evolving UX insights, to the value of vehicle content to behavior AI in connected vehicles.

The event marked a second and definitive return to in-person events for COVESA. It was an invigorating event with an abundance of program content, new faces and great networking opportunities for all.

COVESA is in the planning stages of determining its Spring 2023 location, while actively planning for its CES 2023 showcase and reception in January (use passcode "collaboration" to gain access to site). Early indications show that the CES event will likely be as large and as well-attended as pre-COVID events. Sponsorship opportunities and showcase tables are still available by contacting Mike Nunnery (mikenunnery@comcast.net). We can't wait to see you either at our CES event or during the Spring AMM. 

And another special thanks to our AMM event and showcase sponsors: 

Leading Automotive SW Organizations Announce Collaboration on SDV Topics

The automotive industry is undergoing a major transformation towards the software-defined vehicle (SDV) whereby cloud and interface technologies play an important role. Given the variety of technologies and topics required to realize the software-defined vehicle, several collaborating organizations are positioning themselves to contribute to the software-defined vehicle, and these contributions must be coordinated.

With this coordination in mind, COVESA and AUTOSAR will leverage their respective strengths to align on a common collaboration towards several software-defined vehicle topics. COVESA will focus on vehicle data and services as well as cloud interaction while AUTOSAR will offer an open interface for the overall system architecture and the in-vehicle network. The collaboration will start with a vehicle API concept being discussed by both organizations. 

This approach emphasizes an exchange of vehicle data, described by COVESA’s Vehicle Signal Specification, between the cloud and AUTOSAR’s platforms for in-vehicle communication.  A joint proof of concept demonstration will show a seamless integration of communication, exchange of data and access of services between cloud and in-vehicle ECUs. In its initial phase the collaboration will focus on passenger cars, two-wheelers and commercial vehicles with an optional extension to other land-based transportation applications. As vehicle data and services become increasingly relevant to functional safety and cybersecurity, the collaboration will consider appropriate enhancements to vehicle data and services, including real-time behavior.

COVESA and AUTOSAR plan to extend the collaboration to other organizations contributing to the software-defined vehicle area.

Please visit the COVESA and AUTOSAR websites for more information on both organizations.

COVESA was formed with one goal in mind: to develop common approaches and open technologies that accelerate innovation for connected vehicles and over the last year, our members, along with industry partners, have made significant contributions toward this goal. 

COVESA members have worked together to publish version 3 of the Vehicle Signal Specification (VSS), the foundational data backbone for the Software Defined Vehicle. VSS is the most widely adopted, common approach for describing vehicle data that is created by, and exchanged between in-vehicle systems, mobile devices, and various touchpoints outside the vehicle including back-end cloud and EV charging points.

While we are proud and excited about this strong momentum, we continue to look for new ways to enhance our focus and recently implemented a refined technical structure that will allow us to further expand and grow our technology projects and engagements.

Refined Technical Focus: Data Expert Group

We’ve enhanced our technical focus with the launch of the Data Expert Group (DEG) providing COVESA a single entity in which best practices and common approaches for connected vehicle data and interfaces are discussed, documented, and where appropriate, proved.  

The DEG will work under the oversight of the COVESA Technical Steering Team and will explore interactions with multiple touchpoints (integration points) on its own as well as horizontally in support of other Expert Groups such as the Electric Vehicle Charging Expert Group. Touchpoints out-of-scope will be tracked by the Technical Steering Team and may, from time-to-time, require analysis based on work done in other regulatory or standardization bodies.

The Data Expert Group is organized around four key pillars with existing activities (e.g., groups, projects and initiatives):

• Best Practices & Guidelines: How to handle privacy/identity, security, data model definition, API first approach in automotive, and governance.
• Data Modeling/Ontologies: VSS for vehicle domain data; PDM for personal data; Knowledge layer Ontologies and Graphs; Concept and tooling; and Interactions with other domain models.
• Data Architecture/Infrastructure: Data Base Layer - Storage, serialization and synchronization; and

Technical implementations and proofs of concept.

• Interface Definition: API (Vehicle Services Catalog (VSC)) definition with strong link to the VSS concept; How to handle deployment specific mapping; and Realization with existing tooling.

Discover more about the Data Expert Group and how to participate and contribute on the COVESA Wiki.

Remapping COVESA Projects

With the introduction of the DEG, COVESA technology engagements such as the Common Vehicle Interface Initiative (CVII) and the Connected & Cloud Services (CCS) project have been integrated into the new structure.

The discussions held formerly in the CVII Tech Stack will be distributed into the relevant pillars of the DEG. CCS discussions, including usage of the W3C Vehicle Interface Service Specification (VISS), have also moved into the DEG. And finally, the work of the VSC project will provide the foundation of the Interface Definition pillar of the DEG.

Ways to Learn More  

The upcoming COVESA All Member Meeting on 18-20 October in Dearborn, Michigan, is the perfect opportunity to learn more about the enhancements resulting from the DEG launch. Several introductory sessions will be held as well as deeper dive technical breakouts of DEG topics. Non-members are welcome to attend the event which features a full-day, business-focused track on the 18th, exploring some of the most important challenges facing the connected vehicle industry. Senior leaders from Ford Motor Company, GM, Stellantis, Hyundai Motor, Bosch, Wind River, LGE, Ricardo, and many others will present. The day will end with a reception and showcase where member companies will demonstrate their latest products and services.

Many technical working sessions are also planned for all three days advancing existing and emerging activities of COVESA including Vehicle Signal Specification, EV charging, in-vehicle payment, in-vehicle experience, and many other topics.

Registration for the full event or a one-day pass is available here.  

If you are unable to attend the COVESA All Member meeting, please visit the COVESA Wiki for information about technical participation in COVESA projects. 

COVESA’s Vehicle Signal Specification (VSS) version 3.0 is now available.  

Reminiscing

I was introduced to VSS 6+ years ago at an All Member Meeting in Paris. At the time GENIVI and the W3C were kicking around the idea of a common service that could deliver and receive signals (data) from  a variety of contexts inside and outside of the vehicle using well known, ubiquitous web technologies. The vision was to standardize and democratize development, enabling a much wider range of developers to innovate in Automotive. Magnus Feuer, of JLR at the time, and Gunnar Andersson, of GENIVI, piped up and said, “We have the data model for you! Have you heard of VSS?”  

They proceeded to present an incredibly simple and pragmatic approach to modeling vehicle data that could be used in a variety of in and out of vehicle contexts. It was agreed that the group would try using VSS for the service. The service became Vehicle Information Service Specification. And, of course VSS is still VSS.   

The following goals and approaches have been there from the beginning and have contributed to VSS’ adoption and growth: 

• keep it understandable and simple to get started
• allow for complexity as needed 
• cover as many uses and contexts as possible
• allow for variability
• keep it useful

VSS v3.0 - Introducing Overlays

In keeping with these goals the most significant feature introduced in VSS v3.0 is Overlays.  

It is well understood, with vehicle data, variation is the norm not the exception. And, it is highly unlikely that any one organization will adopt and support the entire VSS standard catalog specification. It is, however, very likely that organizations will adopt a subset of the standard catalog but will need to add/modify nodes and add/modify metadata. For example, an OEM wishes to support a much wider set of proprietary or different HVAC signals than the standard catalog provides. The Overlay feature supports this variability.  

Overlays also support specific Profiles. A Profile can be thought of as a specific type of vehicle, for example motorcycle, delivery truck, etc…  The VSS group is considering the creation of recommended/standardized Profiles.  Currently there is a draft version of motorbike profile.

Overlays have been discussed with the VSS group for some time, but are still in their early stages. For details see Overlay documentation here.

Additional v3.0 Additions and Changes of Note

• Introduction of instantiate keyword to exclude specific signals from instantiation. See documentation.
• Refactoring of CombustionEngine signals
• Battery branch renamed to TractionBattery
• Refactoring and extensions of signals related to TractionBattery and Charging
• Keyword enum changed to allowed
• Refactoring of seat signals
• Extension of wiper signals

Complete v3.0 release notes with details are here.

Thank You

COVESA gives a big thank you to all the people who contributed to this release.  THANK YOU!  The best way to thank them is get involved.

Get Involved

We are now at a point in time where the connected and software defined vehicle are starting to take off. OEM and vendor adoption of VSS has grown. Let’s continue to grow adoption and mature VSS. Please get involved. 

• Join our weekly calls on Tuesdays at 7am PT / 10am ET / 4pm CET 
• Learn more about VSS and meet those involved at COVESA’s All Member Meeting on October 18-20 in Dearborn, Michigan. There will be VSS sessions every day.  Register here.
• Bring and submit your ideas.  Ideas and questions may be submitted via GitHub issues in the VSS project.
• Contribute to the specification and tools
• Look for more to come on COVESA’s recently approved Data Expert Group
• Look for more to come on COVESA’s relationship with other industry alliance

If you have any questions contact me: paul.boyes@covesa.global.

COVESA Member News

What a great first half of the year it has been for COVESA with continued growth and interest. In April, we kicked off the second quarter with a wildly successful All Member Meeting held in Leipzig, Germany. This was followed by the much-anticipated event at AutoTech: Detroit in June where COVESA had a strong presence on stage and on the showroom floor driving a standout experience to increase COVESA awareness and engagement with existing members and prospects. 

To top off the AutoTech: Detroit event, we had a full house at our annual networking reception. Thank you to our networking event sponsors (see below) for their continued alliance support. The positive response we have received from our presence at AutoTech has boosted our member interest substantially with new members joining COVESA each month. A big welcome to some of our recent new members: Humanising Autonomy, Cymotive Technologies, Garrett Motion, Innovation Works, Emergency Safety Solutions, Mojio, Area X.O., Stellantis, MAVI.io, TuneIn, and Rivit360.  

The COVESA Board was able to meet in person in Frankfurt, Germany early July to discuss the next 18-24 month outlook for strategic planning. 

Please read on to learn more about our significant inroads over Q2.

Technology Engagements

• EV Charging

EV Charging BoF kicks off with a proposal by member company Ford for multiple OEMs to collect and share charging data to improve the charging experience.  

A recording of the presentation is here. Next steps: Scope and start proof-of-concept. 

• digital.auto

digital.auto BoF kicks off with a proposal by member company Bosch to support OEMs in the adoption of SdV and COVESA standards by making it easy to rapidly explore and test the feasibility of new business ideas and features through an online playground. Project details and a recorded presentation can be found here.

• Vehicle Service Catalog

“Vehicle Service Catalog Deployment - Containers” was presented by member company Renesas to the VSC project team showing the potential of deploying VSC as Open Container Initiative containers. More information on the presentation can be found here.

Vehicle Service Catalog continues to mature as a project. Please join the project team on Mondays at 10 am PT / 1 pm ET / 1900 CET. For the latest on VSC, please visit here.

• Vehicle Edge to Cloud Edge

Vehicle Edge to Cloud Edge was proposed as an implementation project by member company Geotab. Project details can be found here.

Details on COVESA projects can be found on the COVESA Wiki. 

Upcoming Events

COVESA All Member Meeting

We have kicked off the planning for COVESA’s Fall All Member Meeting (AMM) which will be held at the Dearborn Inn in Dearborn, Michigan USA on October 18-20, 2022. Early bird registration will open on Monday, August 15th. Our theme will be data and in-vehicle services and the AMM will include a showcase. A sponsorship prospectus will be available by mid-August and a call for member participation proposals will be sent on July 31st with a deadline of late August. More details on the AMM will be shared in a separate communication. 

COVESA Marketing Team

The Marketing page is now LIVE (https://www.covesa.global/covesa-marketing-team).  We have successfully transitioned from a Marketing Team Wiki page to our newly launched HTML-based page. Please take time to review the contents of this page which include COVESA Brand and Communication guidelines, access to download COVESA logos, artwork for use on your company website and social media, a COVESA briefing deck, and much more. If you’re interested in becoming a part of the Marketing Team please contact marketing@covesa.global  or bgoolsby@covesa.global, we would be happy to welcome you to the team.

COVESA Blog Highlights

In case you missed some of our most recent blog articles, please be sure to review them on the COVESA Wiki.

COVESA Roundtable - July: How would a similar, common approach for defining vehicle services in a standard way simplify system development and deployment? Ulf Björkengren, Principal Connectivity Strategist at GEOTAB, and Paul Boyes, Community Director at COVESA share their perspectives on how a common approach for defining vehicle services will simplify system development and deployment. Read the article here.

COVESA Roundtable - May: What benefits does an industry-wide initiative like the COVESA and W3C Common Vehicle Interface Initiative (CVII) bring to the automotive industry? COVESA members GEOTAB, Humanising Autonomy, and Renesas Electronics along with COVESA’s community director, share their insights on the benefits they see from an industry-wide initiative such as the Common Vehicle Interface Initiative (CVII). Read their perspectives here.

COVESA Roundtable - April: How can collaborative organizations accelerate the development of a common platform for the software-defined vehicle? We asked some of our members to provide their perspectives on how collaborative organizations can accelerate the development of a common platform for the software-defined vehicle. Read the article here.

Information and news on COVESA can always be found on our social channels. Be sure to Share/Like/Comment on COVESA content and follow us at:

• Twitter @COVESAglobal 
• LinkedIn at Connected Vehicle Systems Alliance
• YouTube

COVESA Marketing Team

Congratulations to Open Insurance for the publication of the first version of the open insurance API specification based on Swagger 2.0.  It is meant to provide a standards format to unify how the insurance industry defines and describes RESTful APIs.  

We appreciate working with the the team at OPIN's Automotive Lab to align VSS with OPIN’s data standards facilitating the consumption of data generated by connected vehicles. Over the course of almost 10 months, technical and business use cases were discussed at length. As a result, OPIN's Motor insurance data model has been complimented with more than 80 new data properties encompassing dynamic, semi-dynamic and static signals.

This work has been documented and published as a set of two documents. The first is titled 'OPIN Enabled Mobility Use Cases' and the second is guidance document on logical composition of end to end technology system and the boundaries of responsibilities, titled 'Motor Insurance Technical POC and Implementation'.

We look forward to continued work with Open Insurance.