Software Defined Systems

The transition to Software Defined Vehicles (SDV) presents significant challenges that extend beyond technology, deeply impacting organizational structures and workflows in the automotive industry. Historically, OEMs and suppliers have operated within siloed domains like infotainment, ADAS, and powertrain, each with dedicated teams and development processes. SDV fundamentally changes this landscape by shifting from hardware-centric architectures to a unified software-centric paradigm.

This shift requires companies to transform their development organizations into agile, end-to-end software teams that collaborate seamlessly across domains. These teams must adopt continuous integration and continuous testing (CI/CT) practices to keep pace with the dynamic nature of software development and deployment.

Software Defined Challenge

On the technical side, SDVs run multiple vehicle domains on a single high-performance computing platform. This demands careful separation of software stacks through hypervisors, ensuring memory protection between different operating systems such as AUTOSAR and Linux. Moreover, dependable and secure inter-process communication mechanisms are essential to meet stringent automotive safety and security standards (e.g., ISO/SAE 21434: 2021, ISO 26262), which evolve alongside these new software platforms.

Ultimately, the challenge lies in rethinking both technology and company culture to support a flexible, software-first approach while maintaining the highest levels of safety, security, and dependability across diverse vehicle domains and product lines. This transformation is critical for building the vehicles of the future.

Vector Consulting for Software Defined Vehicles

Vector Consulting Solutions is your strategic partner in navigating the Software Defined Vehicle (SDV) revolution, transforming challenges into opportunities for innovation, agility, and market leadership.

Partnering with Vector Consulting Solutions provides a comprehensive SDV consulting service blending innovative technology, expert process alignment, and organizational transformation. Together, we empower you to accelerate product delivery, enhance software quality, reduce risks, and open new revenue channels through software-driven vehicle innovation.

Explore how Vector can help your company lead in the booming era of Software Defined Vehicles, futureproofing your business in a rapidly evolving automotive landscape. Let us drive the future of mobility with you.

Over 20 years of experience with test tools, test methods and testing, Our global team offers hands-on support, insights and benchmarks tailored to your needs.
Turn manual test methods into test scripts and how-tos, which are aligned with process standards(see picture).
Customers save money and effort with our support on the long run, becausedemands concerning test performance are increasing.
Full support for integrating Vector’s tools, such as CANoe, vVIRTUAL target, vTESTstudio into your testing environment.
Aligned with standards such as ASPICE4, ISO 26262, ISO 21434, and necessary audits.
Fast and prioritized access to our global Vector expert network

Solutions for Software Defined Vehicles

Vector Consulting Solutions offers a unified One Vector Group Solution to support automotive companies in their Software Defined Vehicle (SDV) transformation journey.

Code First Collaboration

We closely engage with developers to produce QM+ compliant code that integrates safety and security requirements from the outset. Using generative AI-driven techniques, we help accelerate the generation and integration of compliant software. Our approach ensures process alignment through round-trip engineering within a single IDE, keeping requirements, design, and code consistently synchronized.

Shift-Left Testing

Our methodology embraces incremental shift-left testing. We help embed early by validating smaller, manageable chunks of software as they are developed. The test approach follows a test-as-you-write, design, and develop philosophy which significantly enhances quality and speeds time to market. This enables earlier and continuous testing at the smallest functional segments, embedding quality assurance as code and design are produced.

Shift-Up Architecture Review

We facilitate the design and review of modern E/E architectures as the industry transitions from traditional to zonal and high-performance computing platforms, embedding new safety and security mechanisms.

Software Package Deployment (SUMS)

Vector supports efficient definition and selection of integrable software packages, streamlining deployment across diverse vehicle platforms.

Supplier Integration Support

Managing diverse software from suppliers and open-source platforms can be complex. Vector’s SDS architect and manager services offer expert integration, quality metrics, and coordination to streamline your supplier landscape. The One Vector Group Solution further unifies software and hardware partners under a collaborative ecosystem, facilitating knowledge exchange and organizational transformation.

Software Factory Consulting

The One Vector Group Solution provides end-to-end consulting and ecosystem management to coordinate software and hardware partners effectively, enabling cohesive organizational transformation and knowledge exchange. Read more in Link to Vector SDV Page.

Feedback

"I appreciate Vector Consulting Services as a very experienced partner for improving engineering of our global software teams."

—Florian Frischmuth, Chief Engineer, Ford

"With Vector Consulting Services we have an excellent partner for improving our engineering efficiency and optimizing our life-cycle processes."

—Guenther Glas, Head of Systems Automation, MAN

Services we offer

Vector’s expertise in the software factory is built on maturing testing to fully automate all test levels. Software artifacts flow through a structured pipeline—the software factory—to ultimately produce verified binary code. We recognize that software development skills must be enhanced with capabilities in monitoring and maintaining such automated software factories. Vector provides these vital skills.

Our Vector Coaches bring extensive experience in programming and test tool automation, helping your teams adopt best practices efficiently. We provide process capabilities aligned with safety and security standards such as ISO 26262 and SAE/ISO 21434:2021, ensuring that requirements, coding rules, and code coverage meet expected levels.

Moreover, we systematically integrate test scripts and processes so that automation complements process adherence. This holistic approach maintains compliance with frameworks like ASPICE while maximizing automation benefits, ensuring quality and consistency throughout your software development lifecycle.

Through this expertise, Vector enables organizations to realize highly mature software factories where continuous integration, testing, and deployment are seamless and compliant which are key to agile and efficient development of Software Defined Vehicle