Partnerships / AUTOSAR
Interview with Simon Fürst, speaker of the AUTOSAR consortium until April 2010
What was the reason for founding AUTOSAR? What objectives does the consortium pursue?
In short it is to provide a worldwide standard for all non-competitive parts of the E/E (Electricity/Electronics) system of a car that enables all parties involved in the development to handle the continuously increasing complexity of the E/E system.
How does the collaboration between the – actually competing – enterprises of the consortium work?
Right from the start of the partnership it was the clear focus of AUTOSAR to concentrate on non-competitive and non-customer-related functionality. Therefore the slogan of AUTOSAR is “Cooperate on standards, compete on implementation”. Having a joint standard in that area enhances the overall ecosystem for all participating companies.
What would you say are the biggest results achieved by the AUTOSAR partnership up to now?
AUTOSAR is currently by far the largest and worldwide most established development partnership in the automotive domain. Having brought together so many companies from all across the world to develop a common E/E system and software standard that is right now in series production is definitely THE success story of AUTOSAR.
What is the role of consulting firms like Altran within this consortium?
The role of any member is defined via its membership level. For “Premium Members” like Altran it is an excellent opportunity to actively contribute to the development in any area of the standard where the company has good competencies and most interest in.
Which subjects are currently on the agenda and which subjects are trendsetting for the AUTOSAR standard in your opinion?
For its current Phase III AUTOSAR has three major work areas:
(1) Maintenance of the existing Releases to give the best support to the roll-out to all members of AUTOSAR.
(2) Ensuring of efficient and long term maintainability of the AUTOSAR standard.
(3) Further development towards a Release 4.1 planned for the end of 2012, where we will provide selective enhancements of the standard based on market needs.
After six years of common work on specification, some OEMs and suppliers are currently occupied with the implementation of the AUTOSAR standard. What’s your opinion as the spokesperson of the consortium about the current introduction of AUTOSAR into practice?
The first cars that have AUTOSAR functionality in their electronic control units are already on the road. Currently all major OEMs and suppliers are actively migrating to AUTOSAR. I am happy to see that, even with all the different migration scenarios, generally speaking migration is taking place in all areas of the standard and in all functional domains of the cars.
The current development stage will continue until the end of 2012. Does the consortium already have any ideas for the further development of the AUTOSAR standard?
Currently the AUTOSAR Core Partners are starting to define their objectives for a post Phase III organization of AUTOSAR. This process is at its very beginning and no decisions have been taken so far. When looking at other standards in the automotive domain, you can see the possible options that are available.
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