GM has announced that it will join the Eclipse Foundation, one of the largest open source software foundations in the world.
The Detroit-based automaker will participate in the Software Defined Vehicle (SDV) Working Group, which is intended to nurture innovation and growth of automotive-grade software through the use of open source and open specifications. Participants from the GM Ultifi platform, along with others from various automakers, will collaborate in the group.
“By joining the Eclipse Foundation’s SDV Working Group, we aim to bolster collaboration within the industry to increase software reuse and interoperability across the automotive industry, therefore benefitting customer experiences at scale,” GM executive chief architect of Software Defined Vehicles Frank Ghenassia was quoted as saying. “By creating an open, shared software-defined vehicle protocol, we hope we can enable software to be easily shared across multiple companies and across smartphones, vehicle computers and cloud services. We hope others join us in this pursuit so customers can enjoy the benefits.”
General Motors will also contribute to uProtocol, which is designed to encourage greater standardization in the automotive space in regard to software. This standard is expected to create easy-to-use software that enhances the customer’s experience of their vehicle. Without a standardized system, there’s the potential of a broken system where each automaker would require unique codes, making it more difficult to expand services.
“We are excited that GM is joining the Eclipse Software Defined Vehicle industry collaboration,” Eclipse Foundation executive director Mike Milinkovich was quoted as saying. “They have clearly recognized the fundamental shift to collaborative open source software development that is taking place within the automotive market. Their contributions will help enable faster time-to-market, reduced development costs, new sources of revenue and new service models for the entire industry.”
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Comments
This all sounds well and good, but software standards are notorious. The saying goes that what’s so nice about standards is there are so many to pick from! Just look at how many different USB plugs we have.
Interesting. Gm has already announced that they will eliminate Apple and Android apps in future EV models. I wonder how soon before they are eliminated in the new ICE sales as well? There is a lot of connectivity money to be made from monthly subscriptions and you would have to be living under a rock to not know that this universal software development is for generating future income. Perhaps even as an effort to get the car manufacturers that still offer CarPlay and Android Auto to realize how much money that they could be making by not offering them for free?
Gm has never failed to disappoint me since my first gm vehicle that I purchased back in 1969. And still somehow I still am stupid enough to keep coming back. E.g., I bought and own a 2023 Chevy Bolt…….