Welcome to the wonderful world of automotive! Writing a section on automotive trends is always challenging since trends are continuously evolving. Thus, this section becomes a snapshot of the current trends at the time of this writing. Of course, we recognize that something that may be a trend in this snapshot of today may have lost steam in some time and that there may be a new trend, buzzword, or hot topic when you are reading this book.

For example, an excerpt of automotive trends from a book in the 1980s may have sounded something like the following:

“There is a new in-vehicle communication protocol called Controller Area Network (CAN) that will revolutionize communication between Electronic Control Units (ECUs). CAN offers several benefits including reduced complexity of in-vehicle networks, improved scalability, and reduced weight and cost of the wiring. Using CAN allows ECUs to communicate with low latency and high reliability...

Based on the aforementioned trends, we see new automotive use cases and solutions emerging that span across the entire ecosystem of connected vehicles to backend cloud solutions, user devices, and mobile apps. This section only aims to give a brief introduction to automotive IoT, which is described in more detail in Chapter 2, Introducing Automotive IoT Use Cases.

Automotive IoT

In this book, we will refer to these use cases as automotive IoT use cases. Before going further in this book, we will outline a definition of automotive IoT as it is a relatively new term and may have different interpretations depending on your background.

Automotive IoT definition

Automotive IoT is defined as use cases and solutions with specific purposes for the automotive industry that encompass vehicles and backend solutions and/or other relevant smart devices such as mobile devices.

An overview of the automotive IoT ecosystem is depicted in Figure 1.2.

This chapter presented an introduction to the current automotive trends. Common terminology and concepts were described, including CASE, SDV, SOA, mobile apps and the cloud, modern software development approaches, and relevant standards and regulations. Moreover, we gave an introduction to the automotive IoT ecosystem and presented several automotive IoT use cases. These topics allow you to establish the solid foundation needed to consume the following chapters in the book. The journey will equip you with skills for understanding and navigating the complex landscape of automotive IoT, from evolving vehicle architectures to secure development practices and holistic application development.

In Chapter 2, Introducing Automotive IoT Use Cases, we will provide several examples of automotive IoT use cases in more detail.

• [1] SAE J3016_201806 Standard, https://www.sae.org/standards/content/j3016_201806/
• [2], White House Fact Sheet on Affordable Electric Vehicles, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/04/17/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-announces-new-private-and-public-sector-investments-for-affordable-electric-vehicles/
• [3], European Parliament Press Release on Fit for 55 Initiative, https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20230210IPR74715/fit-for-55-zero-co2-emissions-for-new-cars-and-vans-in-2035
• [4], U.S. Department of Commerce Market Intelligence on Japan's Transition to Electric Vehicles, https://www.trade.gov/market-intelligence/japan-transition-electric-vehicles
• [5], Toyota Woven Platform, https://woven.toyota/en/
• [6], Volkswagen Cariad Technology, https://cariad.technology/
• [7], Bosch Car Software and Electronics Stories, https://www.bosch.com/stories/car-software-electronics/