software-defined-vehicles
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ECARX wants to own the brains behind your dashboard
Its technology rides in roughly 12 million vehicles. Now ECARX is betting on richer cockpit computers and a $266 million software deal to make more of the money behind the screen.
The Software Company Asking Linux to Show Its Work
Codethink built a consultancy by fixing the plumbing beneath cars, medical devices and financial systems. Its bolder project is to make open-source software acceptable where a bug can become a safety case.
Raj Kanaya Has Spent a Career Making Machines Talk
Before cars became software, Raj Kanaya was already wrestling with the pipes beneath the cloud. His route from data-center switches to connected vehicles reveals a career built around one stubborn question: how do you make complicated infrastructure useful?
Albert Lilly Has Spent a Career Making Complicated Technology Make Sense
From online compliance courses to cars that update overnight, the Sibros CMO has built a career around a deceptively hard task: translating complex systems into useful stories.
A Third Recall Sent Him Back to the Dealer. So He Built the Software Layer Carmakers Were Missing
Sibros started with an irritating question: why should a software bug require a trip to the dealership? Its answer grew into a cloud control room for the messy, safety-critical life of a modern vehicle.
Shirin Hameed Turns Engineering Detail Into a Reason to Care
At Detroit Engineered Products, the CMO works in the narrow gap between simulation data and human judgment. Her playbook favors useful questions, specific outcomes and trust that survives the sale.
John Heinlein Learned to Market the Machine
A Stanford-trained computer architect became a marketer without abandoning the engineer in him. At Sonatus, John Heinlein now makes the case that a car should improve long after it leaves the factory.
Ramin Shirani Has Spent a Career Teaching Machines to Talk
He helped Ethernet devices agree on how to connect, took one chip company public, and heard more than 100 rejections along the way. Now Ethernovia’s CEO is betting that cars and robots need a nervous system as carefully designed as their brains.
Volkswagen Tried to Build One Brain for Nine Car Brands. CARIAD Learned Where Not to Do It Alone
CARIAD was supposed to give Volkswagen a single software spine. Delays, executive turnover and billions in annual losses forced a more useful idea: own the layers that create leverage, and partner for the ones that do not.
Harini Ganesan Is Designing the Org Chart Behind the Software-Defined Car
Cars can update overnight. The organizations building them cannot. Harini Ganesan has spent two decades learning how hardware, software and people move together - and why the slow conversation is often the quickest route forward.
HARMAN International
You may know the speaker. You probably do not know the company inside the dashboard. HARMAN has spent seven decades turning sound science into a sprawling business across homes, stages and more than 50 million vehicles.
Stellantis
Fourteen car brands, one Dutch holding company, and a bet that a constellation beats a single star. Inside the automaker stitched together from Jeep, Peugeot, Fiat and Maserati - and the reset now under way.
Qnovo
Qnovo is a Milpitas, California software company that makes lithium-ion batteries smarter. Its intelligent battery management platform - powering SpectralX adaptive fast charging and SentinelX safety diagnostics - is embedded in more than 150 million smartphones and increasingly in EVs from the world's top automakers, helping prevent fires, extend range, and stretch battery life.
Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies
Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies (RV Tech) is a 50/50 joint venture launched in November 2024 that fuses Rivian's software and electrical-hardware know-how with Volkswagen Group's global manufacturing scale. Co-headquartered in Palo Alto, it builds the zonal electrical architecture, operating systems, in-vehicle AI, and cloud-connectivity stack that will power next-generation software-defined vehicles across Volkswagen, Audi, Scout, Rivian, and more - aiming to make every new car smarter, cheaper to build, and continuously upgradable over the air.
Carsten Helbing
Carsten Helbing is the COO and Co-CEO of Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies, the $5.8 billion joint venture headquartered in Palo Alto that is building the software and electrical architecture stack for a new generation of software-defined vehicles. A mechanical engineer by training who spent more than two decades at Volkswagen - rising from graduate engineer to Group Chief Technology Engineer - Helbing now leads a ~1,500-person organisation alongside Rivian co-CEO Wassym Bensaid, bridging German engineering discipline with Silicon Valley's software-first culture to redefine how cars are built, updated, and experienced.
Lei Zhang
Lei Zhang is the CEO of CARIAD, Inc., Volkswagen Group's U.S. automotive software subsidiary based in Mountain View, California. A seasoned technology executive with 16+ years spanning Microsoft, Google, Huami, and NIO, Zhang now leads CARIAD's Interior, Infotainment & Digital Experience division globally. Known for pioneering NIO's NOMI digital assistant and championing software-defined vehicle innovation, he earned MotorTrend's Software-Defined Vehicle Innovator Award in 2023. His work sits at the intersection of Android OS expertise, AI-driven user experience, and the fast-evolving world of connected, electric mobility.
Shrinath Acharya
Shrinath Acharya is the CEO and co-founder of Excelfore Corporation, a Silicon Valley-based automotive IoT company pioneering over-the-air (OTA) software updates and vehicle-to-cloud connectivity for software-defined vehicles. With 25+ years in technology spanning mobile, automotive, and enterprise software, he has built Excelfore into a globally recognized platform trusted by 20+ automotive OEMs including Audi, Tata Motors, Maruti Suzuki, and VinFast. His eSync OTA platform is deployed across millions of vehicles worldwide, and under his leadership Excelfore has earned Frost & Sullivan's 2024 Global Enabling Technology Leadership Award.