Volkswagen EVs to Have Elektrobit HMI Infotainment System

Elektrobit, which makes embedded and connected software products and services for automotive companies has announced it will be making and supplying a development platform for the digital instrument clusters and infotainment devices that will be installed in all of Voolkswagen’s new electric cars. Elektrobit is a fully owned subsidiary of Continental Automotive and said that using its EB GUIDE toolchain, Volkswagen’s developers can quickly design even complex human-machine interfaces (HMIs).

The EB GUIDE has graphical, voice-, touch-, and gesture-based controls which permits the development of customized user interfaces for different brands from a single source. The software toolkit is billed as one of the most feature-rich HMI software solutions in the industry.

Gunnar Wegner, head of HMI Development at Volkswagen said that EB GUIDE provides a sophisticated HMI framework and HMI development environment for automotive series production. Its 2D and especially 3D features of EB GUIDE meet all the technological and visual criteria that Volkswagen had for IVI and cluster user interfaces.

He added that one outstanding characteristic of EB GUIDE was that it matched well with the Volkswagen HMI development process. The development platform’s plug-ins seamlessly integrate with the auto manufacturer’s skinning and internationalization process. EB’s HMI toolchain is an ideal candidate for multi-user editing and HMI integration in Volkswagen’s large team of developers. Volkswagen HMI Development takes on high requirements and expectations at every level. EB GUIDE will help them to meet their requirements continuously.”

Volkswagen also said that EB GUIDE would help the company to save time and ramp up the productivity of HMI development teams as they could apply a model-based approach to the HMI development process including prototyping, specification, implementation, and maintenance.

Instead of developing software, HMI developers can design the HMI with EB GUIDE’s desktop tools and execute it with EB GUIDE’s run-time components which have been designed specifically to run on automotive devices. HMI developers can optimize the user experience as the EB GUIDE makes it possible for them to instantly test their changes on the desktop PC and then quickly deploy them to the target device.

Elektrobit claims that its EB GUIDE is the only HMI development platform that allows developers to implement intuitive graphical 2D or 3D user interfaces with voice, touch, and gesture control features.