The European Digital Vehicle Ecosystem is a strategic initiative developed through collaboration between INSIDE Industry Association, the European automotive ecosystem and the European Commission. As founding actor, INSIDE helped bring together the electronic components and systems community with automotive manufacturers, suppliers and public authorities to establish a coordinated European approach to the digital vehicle of the future.
The initiative aims to strengthen the competitiveness and resilience of Europe’s automotive industry, addressing growing global competition, increasing software complexity, supply-chain dependencies and the need for new skills and technological capabilities.
At its core are the two technological pillars of the future vehicle, software and hardware. Collaboration on software-defined vehicle technologies is complemented by work on next-generation automotive computing architectures, processors and AI acceleration. Together, these developments provide the foundation for software-defined, connected and autonomous vehicles, linking innovation in semiconductors and electronic systems directly with the future of mobility.
Common AI-enabled software tools and open‑source building blocks for digital vehicles
Automative software
The Software-Defined Vehicle of the Future (SDVoF) initiative brings together European automotive manufacturers and suppliers to advance a common approach to the software-defined vehicle. The initiative focuses on collaboration around software and hardware building blocks, interfaces and development tools, with particular attention to non-differentiating components and open-source development. Its roadmap is structured around the different layers of the software-defined vehicle stack and aims to support the development and integration of reusable building blocks and reference implementations.
The initiative is supported by a governance structure involving representatives from the European automotive industry. A Vision and Roadmap for the SDVoF initiative was developed by the FEDERATE consortium and approved by the SDVoF Sherpa Governance Group in April 2024. The roadmap provides a framework for coordinating research, development and innovation activities across the different layers of the SDV software stack.
Several European research and innovation projects contribute to this ecosystem. One example is HAL4SDV (Hardware Abstraction Layer for a European Software Defined Vehicle approach), a project funded through the Chips Joint Undertaking under Horizon Europe. HAL4SDV focuses on developing a hardware abstraction layer that enables software to be configured independently of specific vehicle hardware. Its work includes standardised interfaces to sensors, actuators, computing resources and persistent storage, as well as reference architectures and software implementations for future software-defined vehicles.
HAL4SDV is part of the broader effort to develop European solutions for next-generation software-defined vehicles. The project addresses both safety-critical and non-safety-critical applications and works towards a scalable SDV platform, modular building blocks with managed interfaces, and a reference architecture based on a logical central computer.
High-performance computing platforms, AI accelerators, chiplets and open-source
standards
Automotive hardware
The second stream of the initiative focuses on automotive hardware and RISC-V-based computing platforms. The European Commission has promoted pre-competitive collaboration around the development of future automotive hardware architectures, bringing together European industry, research and technology organisations, and smaller innovative companies. The objective is to strengthen the development of next-generation automotive computing platforms, including processors and accelerators designed to support increasingly demanding applications such as artificial intelligence.
A European roadmap for future automotive-driven RISC-V developments has been developed to guide these efforts. The roadmap covers four closely connected areas: scalable automotive control processors, high-performance application processors, AI and machine-learning accelerators, and system integration and interfacing. Together, these elements form the basis for future automotive RISC-V reference platforms and are intended to support further innovation in European automotive electronics.
The roadmap also considers the infrastructure required to bring these computing elements together, including system-on-chip and chiplet interconnects. By coordinating development activities and encouraging collaboration, the initiative aims to support a more coherent European approach to automotive hardware development and reduce unnecessary duplication of efforts.
