According to CARIAD director Dirk Hilgenberg, Volkswagen’s software division, CARIAD, has come out of a study commissioned by VW’s new CEO with a strategy to move toward a unified software architecture for future cars, one hop at a time.
A “unified” software and electronics architecture for all cars manufactured by the VW group is Volkswagen’s ultimate objective. In Europe and North America, it will rely on Qualcomm “system on a chip” semiconductors, while in China, it will employ super-chips created with a Chinese partner company called Horizon Robotics.
“We are not allowed to pull data out of China,” Hilgenberg said. Volkswagen has promised investors an update on software progress in March.
One of the reasons the VW supervisory board chose to fire Herbert Diess as CEO and replace him with Porsche CEO Oliver Blume last summer was delays and cost overruns at CARIAD.
According to sources with knowledge of the situation, the implementation of a new software platform designed to enable “Level 4” autonomous driving, which was scheduled to begin throughout the fleet in 2026, will be delayed until the end of the decade. A 2028 launch, according to one source, seems likely.
In VW’s previous strategy, 120 tiny computers were utilized to regulate various processes. One master “system on a chip” that is strong enough to run autonomous driving systems, send video to the dashboard, and transfer data about driving behavior, charging habits, battery life, and other tasks back to VW was displayed as the vehicle of the future.
Volkswagen is now in a transitional phase. Software that has been implemented enables remote software updates for its “ID” electric vehicles to address what Hilgenberg referred to as “teething difficulties.”
