WirelessCar and SBD Automotive Announce Webinar: Making the Software-Defined Vehicle a Reality

WirelessCar and SBD Automotive will host a free webinar on 7 October 2021 at 2:00PM CET with experts from CARIAD and Kia about the Software-Defined Vehicle (SDV).

Moderated by Andrea Sroczynski, Managing Director at SBD Germany, the panel of automotive exper​ts will include Michael Wintergerst, Executive Vice President for the domain Vehicle & Cloud Platform at CARIAD; Marco Lanzetta, General Manager Cross Carline – Connected Cars, Future Trends & Innovation at Kia; Matthieu Lainné, Business Development Manager at WirelessCar; and Alex Oyler, SDV Principal at SBD Automotive Japan.

The panel will cover the following questions:​

1. How are OEMs quantifying the changing preferences of consumers, and how is this affecting the approach to SDVs?

2. What is the most important enabling techn​ology for software-defined vehicles within the purview of role/experience?

3. Software-Defined Vehicles demand that OEMs make substantive changes to their development process for both hardware and software. What are some of the things that OEMs can do to ease this transition?

4. Traditional organization structures are not well-suited to the dynamic competitive environment of software-defined vehicles. What are some of the short-term and longer-term initiatives that OEMs should consider in order to adapt their organizations to the needs of SDVs?

According to Andrea Sroczynski, “The software revolution within the automotive industry is a major disruption to manufacturing businesses, and all OEMs must have a strategy for how to maintain their current business.” In advance of this discussion, Sroczynski received the panel members’ respective positions on the Software-Defined Vehicle.

When it comes to the OEM approach to SDVs, Michael Wintergerst, Executive Vice President for the domain Vehicle & Cloud Platform at CARIAD offered that, “We see significant value creation from software-defined vehicles as it allows us to bring our product development much closer to the end consumers while drastically improving responsiveness to the demands of individual markets and segments.”

Marco Lanzetta, General Manager Cross Carline – Connected Cars, Future trends & Innovation at Kia Europe, ​meanwhile, touched upon the changing preferences of consumers and the forces driving this digital ​transformation:“The convergence of automotive disrupting mega trends such as electrification, autonomous driving, ​seamless ​connectivity, is redefining life on board. Customer expectations for in-vehicle quality time are rising and ​software will play a key role to fulfill these expectations.”  

​As OEMs navigate the transition to the Software-Defined Vehicle, technology and digital service partners like WirelessCar see both enormous opportunities and challenges. According to Matthieu Lainné, Business Development Manager at WirelessCar, “Software computation started on the cloud but is now enabled and embedded into the vehicle, changing the way services are designed, delivered and updated. The software-defined vehicle opens a new era with a homogenous computing platform between vehicle and cloud.”

Alex Oyler, SDV Principal at SBD Automotive Japan, underscored the unprecedented evolutionary journey to the Software-Defined Vehicle and its far-reaching effects: “The development of software defined vehicles, and the competitive forces driving their adoption, represent the most powerful change the automotive industry has ever seen and their adoption in some way affects every aspect of the business, including organization structures, development processes, supply changes and staffing strategies.”