Vitesco Technologies and Vector Collaborate on Software for Central Vehicle Controllers

Vitesco Technologies, a leading
international supplier of modern drive technologies and electrification
solutions, is cooperating with Vector, the Stuttgart specialists for
software and automotive electronics. The aim of the collaboration is to
further accelerate software development in the field of coordinated
vehicle movement with a central master controller. Vitesco Technologies
brings around 25 years of software experience and system expertise for
complete drive solutions to the current partnership. Vector supplies
control unit software in accordance with the AUTOSAR Classic standard
and also has the necessary expertise in the corresponding software
components.

Both companies are long-standing members of the AUTOSAR
development partnership, and will use their collaboration in the field of
Vitesco Technologies master controllers to add a flexibility concept to
the familiar industry standard to simplify the possible uses of AUTOSAR
Classic in central control units as well.

“Vehicle electrification results in very extensive and complex software
systems. Making these run reliably throughout requires great overall
system expertise for software and hardware. Both are strengths of
Vitesco Technologies,” says Andreas Wolf, CEO of Vitesco
Technologies. “With the strategic partnership with Vector Informatik, we
are now realizing these overall solutions on the market even faster.”

Dr. Günther Heling, director of embedded software and systems at
Vector, added: “We also see speed as the major advantage of close
collaboration with Vitesco Technologies: We were able to make our
solution available for series projects at the same time as the AUTOSAR
standard was expanded.”

Large software systems define the drive
Software is increasingly becoming the decisive part of challenging
automotive projects. This is primarily due to the electrification and
centralization of increasingly computing-intensive functions, while at the
same time increasing complexity. Large systems with more variants are
increasingly running on a high-performance computer. The master
controller from Vitesco Technologies is also based on this approach.

While the software in previous systems with the individual functional
areas in the drive, coordination of all vehicle movements, and energy
management is distributed among multiple electronic control units with
complex interconnectivity, this is combined in a central control unit
during development of the master controller. This results in more
complex and larger software systems. Making these new systems run
reliably throughout requires qualified overall system expertise for
hardware and software. Vitesco Technologies has many years of
experience with both of these. As Continental Powertrain, the company
was already a founding member of the AUTOSAR development
partnership, and also headed various working groups. Thanks to
Vector’s software expertise, particularly in the AUTOSAR Classic
segment, Vitesco Technologies can concentrate more closely on
software function development and system integration.

“In an electrified vehicle, a large number of software and function
modules in a control unit have to coexist without any problems. It must
also be possible to add and update individual function blocks without
influencing all the others, or even having to re-generate the entire
system,” explains Gerd Winkler, head of development for electronics
and software architecture at Vitesco Technologies. This is exactly the
purpose of the flexibility software concept, which has been part of the
industry platform since AUTOSAR release 20/11. As part of the ongoing
strategic partnership between Vitesco Technologies and Vector, a
central vehicle control system based on software and hardware that is
close to production is already being developed for a major German
vehicle manufacturer.

Vitesco Technologies has now developed a virtualization framework
(vAPP) as a new software technology. This makes it even easier to
replace software modules (“apps”) in central control units within a lean
AUTOSAR Classic architecture, something previously only possible with
significantly more demanding and computing-intensive solutions with
the AUTOSAR Adaptive standard.