Vehicle E/E Architecture and Key Technologies Enabling Software-Defined Vehicle 2024-01-2035

The automotive industry is currently undergoing a significant transformation characterized by technological and commercial trends involving autonomous driving, connectivity, electrification, and shared service. Vehicles are becoming an integral part of a much broader ecosystem. In light of various new developments, the Software-Defined Vehicle (SDV) concept is gaining substantial attention and momentum. SDV emphasizes the central role of software in realizing and enhancing vehicle functions, enriching features, improving performance, adapting to surrounding environment and external conditions, customizing user experience, addressing changing customer needs, and enabling vehicles to dynamically evolve over their entire life cycle. The advancements in vehicle Electrical/Electronic (E/E) architecture and various key technologies serve as the technical foundation for the emergence of SDV. This paper gives a definition of the SDV concept, provides views from different aspects, discusses the progress in vehicle E/E architecture, especially zone-based architecture with centralized computation, and various technologies including High-Performance Computing (HPC) platform, standardized vehicle software architecture, advanced onboard communication, Over-The-Air (OTA) update, and cybersecurity etc. that collectively enable the realization of SDV.