ICT-architecture for multi-modal electric vehicles

This paper presents a new information and communications technology (ICT) architecture for future automobiles, which enables an easy and flexible modification of its functionality by end user, operating companies or manufactures. This enables software-based extensions of company-specific functionality (e.g. fleet management software) without the todays need of additional hardware. Through that a car is adaptable and multi-modal, because of the change of functionality within seconds. We call this kind of vehicle a software-defined car. New possible business models are discussed, which occur through software-defined cars. Companies for example would be able to share cars with other companies to adapt the number of vehicles to the current demand or third parties could develop and sell functionality for the car. The ICT architecture as core of that kind of multi-modal car defines three different levels of adaption with different restrictions depending on the access rights of the different interest groups. An adaption is possible from the human machine interface (HMI) to the driving functionality like the acceleration degree. The ICT architecture enables the influence-free execution of applications with different safety levels, which enables aggregation of control units within the electric and electronic (E/E) architecture as additional advantage. Finally the prototyping vehicle is presented, at which the ICT architecture will be realized and demonstrated.