Software on wheels

Software Cost Engineering in the automotive industry

Not too long ago, the competition in the automotive industry was about who has got the most horsepower, the greatest torque or the fastest 0-100 acceleration. These days, all the mechanical petrolhead achievements seem to fade away. Now it is all about having the most connected car or the slickest infotainment systems.

So the question arises whether cars are mechanical vehicles with increasing amounts of software or are they computers embedded in hardware to make them automotive. The minimalistic design of some new manufacturers that only sell and produce electric vehicles is an indication of the latter. Take for instance Tesla. In their behaviour, they are not a car company, they are an IT company. The magic of a Tesla is not the car, it’s the software and the IoT network behind it.

Back in 2018, KPMG already concluded in a report on cyberthreats that might disrupt the automotive industry, that an average car contained more than 150 million lines of code, plus multiple individual computers and a vast number of wireless connections. In 2019 Jaguar Land Rover predicted that driverless cars will require one billion lines of code. Since most of today’s most popular cars can stream music, send texts, offer real-time traffic information and personalized roadside assistance, detect nearby activity through sensors and even park or drive autonomously in controlled situations, it is safe to assume that we are now somewhere between 150 million and one billion lines of code per car.

Developing a contemporary car involves a huge amount of software development. This could increase even further with the shortage of computer chips. Now car and component manufacturers have to rethink their decision to put the control units that process information from ‘dumb’ sensors on dedicated chips, because these chips cannot be produced. These ‘dumb’ sensors provide only one-dimensional data, so the data exchange does not require an update if the sensors are upgraded. It can be more advantageous to build that into the car’s software, because that is working on multi-purpose chips that are commonly available. That used to be reserved for controlling ‘intelligent’ sensors, like the LiDAR.

Since the automotive industry is very competitive, there is a world to win by the car or component manufacturer who can develop a car or component in the most economical way. A car still consists of a lot of physical components, so when you are building millions of cars, it remains of the highest importance to get your components for the right price and your production process as efficient as possible. But with the ever-increasing importance of software it would be difficult to overstate the importance of getting the software development cost right.

Automotive is setting the example

The automotive industry is extending their traditional cost engineering departments with software cost engineering capabilities. Large component suppliers, like ZF, already have integrated cost expertise in place. Others, like Volkswagen, are developing their software cost engineering capabilities.

In the highly competitive arena of the automotive industry, software has become a competitive advantage, but at the right price. Since software is eating the world, my firm belief is that more industries will follow the example of the automotive industry and take software cost engineering as serious as the construction and process industry did with traditional cost engineering.

Certification as the next step

Another sign that software cost engineering is becoming a serious profession is that certification is on the way. ICEAA, one of the world’s leading certification authorities on cost engineering, is extending their certification program with software cost engineering. I hope that they can present their new certification on the Software Cost Estimation Summit that will be held in Haarlem (the Netherlands) and online on November 9 and 10. That will be a serious next step to get this profession the recognition it deserves.

Interested in becoming a software cost engineer? We’re hiring!

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