From Scratch to the Road: PREEvision and the Holon Mover Project
Building a Future-Proof E/E Architecture With Holistic System Design
Cognizant Mobility designs and integrates E/E architectures for production vehicles. The current highlight is the development of the complete E/E architecture for the autonomous Holon mover using PREEvision.
As a leading engineering partner for OEMs and suppliers, Cognizant Mobility provides single-source process expertise, technology consulting, and the design and integration of electrics, electronics, and embedded software (E/E) for complete vehicles. For more than seven years, Cognizant Mobility has successfully used the PREEvision E/E engineering solution from Vector as a development environment. This empowers engineers to achieve excellence in the consistent design of E/E systems.
The agile mindset of the team, the consistent implementation of system design paradigms, and the right development environment form the cornerstones of successful E/E development for complete vehicles.
The Holon Mover Project
The mover of Benteler subsidiary Holon is an inclusive on-demand vehicle for local public transportation and mobility-as-a-service providers. At its heart is Level 4 autonomy integrated into the all-electric mover. At the start of production, there will be an additional cockpit that can remotely connect to the vehicles and take control in an emergency at any time.
The mover can carry up to 15 people. It also has many features that support on-demand use – such as audiovisual communication equipment, additional passenger safety systems, automatic boarding ramps, and even a Braille communication aid. Holon unveiled the mover to the public for the first time at CES 2023 in Las Vegas. The first pilot operation was scheduled for 2025 in Hamburg, Germany.
Architecture
Using PREEvision, Cognizant Mobility designed the Holon mover's E/E architecture entirely from scratch.
Integration
The system integrates 25 ECUs, nearly 280 sensors and actuators, and approximately 1,500 circuits.
Team Spirit
A dedicated team of nearly 130 engineers collaborated to deliver the project.
Scale
The PREEvision E/E architecture model for the Holon mover encompasses approximately 4 million functional artifacts.
The Development Environment
Building a future-proof E/E architecture requires a seamless integration of powerful technology and highly skilled experts. For the Holon mover, Cognizant Mobility combined a comprehensive engineering platform with deep domain knowledge to drive innovation.
The Tool
Using PREEvision, experts map and integrate all levels of the E/E system within a single model. This spans from specifications to logical functional design, software, network and hardware architecture, and the wiring harness.
Efficient variant management ensures optimal reusability of assets, handling around four million functional artifacts for the Holon mover. A powerful server infrastructure guarantees conflict-free access to centrally stored data. This enables large, distributed teams to build and maintain the model efficiently while fully supporting workflows, change management, and quality requirements.
The Team
To maximize this powerful tool and leverage its extensive capabilities, the complete vehicle development department at Cognizant Mobility completed comprehensive PREEvision training. The spectrum ranges from mentoring by experienced users and internal workshops to official Vector courses and certification programs.
Armed with this in-depth knowledge, application engineers collaborate closely with Vector specialists across customer support, engineering, and product management. Regular management-level exchanges coordinate this strong partnership, fostering true team spirit and ensuring excellence throughout the entire development lifecycle.
Architecture Design Framework
Armed with expertise and a comprehensive Architecture Design Framework, Cognizant Mobility engineers collaborate directly with the customer's team in PREEvision. Together, they develop robust full-vehicle E/E system architectures quickly, consistently, and without information loss.
Accelerate the Concept Phase
At the project's start, teams structure and configure the PREEvision model according to specific requirements, applying proven templates for diagrams, tables, rules, and automations. After an initial introduction, the customer's project participants receive methodical support with modeling guidelines and operational assistance. The team then builds an initial E/E architecture using the framework's existing concepts, logical functions, and extensive component library.
The framework's vehicle configurator identifies equipment variants and integrates them into the model. The report generator automatically creates bills of materials for the required components and detailed templates for supplier inquiries. In the next phase, the team consolidates the architecture, factoring in supply sources and precise component specifications. This approach identifies key components of the future production architecture early in the development process.
Ensure Seamless Traceability
Direct traceability of requirements in PREEvision provides valuable support. Engineers link requirements to logical vehicle functions or individual development artifacts, such as software components, hardware components, or network communication elements. At the end of the concept phase, the built E/E design reflects all specification requirements. This minimizes debugging effort, streamlines the integration of functions, and accelerates development time.
Engineers derive test specifications directly from the requirements context and their implementation. Lifecycle management integrates any development artifact in PREEvision, supporting collaboration between the vehicle domain requirements engineer, suppliers, and the testing team. Combined with automatic test coverage checks and template-based reporting, this increases transparency and synchronizes tests with vehicle releases.
Wiring Harness Integration
For the Holon mover project, Cognizant Mobility designed the complete wiring harness in PREEvision for the first time. This forms the exact basis for the production drawing. Engineers efficiently build the wiring harness using the hardware architecture from the E/E model, tools for ground isolation and wire cross-section determination, and a comprehensive component library. By importing geometry data from CATIA for installation spaces and routing paths, the team generates a finished wiring harness drawing as direct input for the supplier.
Shape the Future of Your E/E Architecture
You achieve this level of integration and innovation with the right tools and partners. Master the shift to software-defined vehicles by building a robust, future-proof architecture. We believe that tackling complex E/E challenges head-on gives you a decisive competitive advantage. Create momentum for your own development process and reach out to our experts. Discuss your specific requirements with us and discover how Vector supports your next visionary project.