Launch new vehicles faster with over-the-air updates. That’s engineering.
Auto companies want to launch new vehicles fast and win market share. The customer, a China-based EV startup, had big plans to launch their EVs. However, they needed to address complexities in their vehicle firmware. Tata Technologies implemented a secure over-the-air (OTA) update architecture that allowed the customer to ship products to the dealership and update software securely before handing them.Challenge
Modern vehicles are equipped with hundreds of embedded Electronic Control Units (ECUs), which supervise a great deal of their functionality. The auto manufacturer noticed an increase in ECU firmware in their vehicles, leading to several complexities including 1. Increased risk of defects leading to customer dissatisfaction, product recalls, and safety issues 2. Delay in vehicle launch owing to the need for rigorous software testing, and 3. FW implementation at dealership incurring huge cost. The customer wanted to address these challenges with a robust system that seamlessly updated the modules over the air while reducing time to market. To implement this system, the customer chose Tata Technologies, one of the leading engineering service providers for various global EV giants.
Solution
Tata Technologies implemented faster time-to-market solutions for the customer’s connected cars portfolio. Driven by Firmware Over the Air (FOTA) system, the solution was specifically designed to update every (electronic) module within a vehicle, smartly, and seamlessly. FOTA enables updating of digitally connected products to seamless updating of the connected vehicles.
We also enabled the auto manufacturer to update over-the-air (wirelessly) post sales without visiting dealership leading to shorter vehicle launch timelines. Our solution also made sure the customer reduced software development and testing dependency while pushing critical updates, thereby saving on product recalls, product failures, and safety failures.
Moreover, the vehicle environment posed several additional challenges for the customer, including data transmission cost, vehicle functionality during the update, memory storage for storing a pending update, update failure recovery protocol, and vehicle safety while updating. Our experts ensured that the innovation streamlined the update process – making this an industry-first novelty with seamless and robust firmware update architecture. Our innovation also allowed provision for a Wi-Fi connection for minor updates, making it extra safe and secure for the customer to operate.
The customer trusted our expertise. The process architecture enabled the customer to launch vehicles faster by reducing time (approximately 3.5 hours per car each time) to market and keep electronically controlled vehicle parts operationally updated more frequently. The innovation further helped in reducing recall issues due to update failure.
Highlights
