CASE 2.0: Life-Cycle Integration for the SDV

The future belongs to the software-defined vehicle, the SDV. The SDV holds great promise and this promise has spawned another acronym: CASE, representing the qualities of Connected, Autonomous, Shared, and Electrified. While the SDV is the overarching idea, CASE is about purposes to achieve and applications to realize with the SDV. Taking a closer look, it becomes clear that CASE is composed of rather disparate terms. 

An electrified vehicle doesn’t necessarily have to be connected, nor does an autonomous vehicle need to be shared. A vehicle-sharing scheme, moreover, could be operated with old-fashioned cars and a dispatch via telephone with schedules on paper. However, electric vehicles will greatly profit from connection, for example, to improve battery performance. Vehicle sharing will obviously be streamlined and optimized with connected vehicles and apps. And autonomous cars do, in fact, need connection and can make a major contribution to car sharing.

Whatever the interdependencies, the opportunities that come with the SDV and CASE are vast. Applications like car- or trucking-as-a-service, like advanced fleet analytics with data drill down to individual sensors, or recall and warranty claim avoidance by over-the-air software updates will change the overall business model of the automotive industry. They already create a race to make CASE a reality. But the implementation of CASE has not turned out to be a trivial matter at all.

The Next Level of CASE: CASE 2.0

The realization of CASE is a complex and far-reaching endeavor. Not only will vehicles have to connect over the whole life cycle, but the connection of entire fleets and shared vehicles will require considerable degrees of automation. Numerous sensors from production vehicles will generate a constant stream of data, and the execution of device provisioning, software updates, remote diagnostic commands, and other processes will have to be ensured. These capabilities are foundational for CASE because they need the functionalities of Connect, Automate, Sense, and Execute—the basis of CASE 2.0—for production SDVs to be effectively managed at the global scale.

To look at the relationship between these two frameworks from a functional point of view, CASE 2.0 is about the means, while established CASE is about the ends. CASE 2.0 is a software-driven concept that applies to all connected mobility products and devices, and for any sort of purpose. This makes CASE 2.0 of fundamental interest (if not necessity) for OEMs who are building next-generation connected products. CASE 2.0 enables CASE; it is foundational for the software-defined vehicle and can only be achieved with a holistic and integrated ecosystem approach to vehicle data management.

The Platform for CASE 2.0

Consisting of Deep Logger, Deep Updater, and Deep Commander, Sibros’ platform supports connect as an initial step, linking any given vehicle, device, or component to the cloud seamlessly and securely, and from first provisioning to eventual decommissioning.

A vehicle is first provisioned by establishing a secure connection with the Sibros Cloud and generating and registering a certificate, using the vehicle’s unique identifier. The artifacts then move to persistent storage and the vehicle can establish a secure connection with the Sibros Cloud throughout its lifetime.

Examples of more use cases and benefits are:

Use Cases

• Replacement of various vehicle components

• Device de-provisioning to securely dispose of device credentials

Benefits

• Faster prototype sign-off

• Vehicle software is at the latest version at dealerships

Automate

The next major step for the now-connected vehicle is to automate workflows for future data collection and software update campaigns or remote commands. Automation is of great importance because such processes will have to reach any individual electronic control unit (ECU) even in large fleets and automation will significantly reduce effort and complexity for OEMs and fleet managers. This is achieved by pre-configuring vehicle software models, data collection parameters, and command sequences, either in the cloud or by APIs—these then become reusable automation templates.

More examples of use cases:

Use Cases

• Trucking-as-a-service with trip data, monitoring, and connected diagnostics for remote/assisted repairs

• Service scheduling with targeted alerts based on vehicle health status and auto-schedule of maintenance

Benefits

• Scalable software rollouts to any set of vehicle groups and trims saving time in the future

• Logging of only the most useful data under precise conditions

To log data is an imperative task—to put it simply, the better the logging, the better the SDV will be, which brings us to the next category: sensing, which generates the data.

Sense

An important sector for the application of sense is fleet analytics, with the option to connect various vehicle makes and models across multiple brands and regions on the same platform, to gain product usage insights and yield a centralized view of fleet health and monitoring. 

Additional use cases and benefits include:

Use Cases

• Reductive design to improve or eliminate features, using product usage insights

• Recall/warranty avoidance with detection of common component defects

Benefits

• Noise reduction - less effort to clean up the data and faster and easier consumption

• Easier to dual source ECU hardware components

The three capabilities discussed so far create a state for a vehicle or device in which it is provisioned, software is (automatically) updated, and its data is logged. The remaining cornerstone is to have the means to execute these processes and data, improve product performance, upgrade functionality, and offer differentiated or personalized user experiences. 

Execute

To achieve proper execution, it must be possible to manipulate ECUs in vehicles directly. There are numerous use cases for execution: dispatching a new software update or remote commands and diagnostics are important areas.

There are a great many more uses, such as:

Use Cases

• Personalization/Preconditioning

• Software bug fixes

• Command scheduling and automatic retries

Benefits

• One-stop shop for remote commands

• Commands are sent regardless of the changes made today or in the future

• Single source of truth for all vehicle diagnostic file workstreams

The execute stage is not limited to what can be performed between the vehicle and the cloud. It also relates to how OEMs can act on new data insights gathered in the sense stage, such as if an automaker discovers from usage analytics they have over (or under) sized a component (such as an electric battery) to take corrective action in future product design cycles.

Deep Connected Platform

Sibros delivers for CASE 2.0 and the SDV, with an integrated system that is designed for automotive OEMs and fleet managers from all sectors. For these purposes, Sibros’ Deep Connected Platform (DCP) provides workflows via SaaS or APIs to connect vehicles and automate previously complex workflows with configurable data logging and software updates. Of the three pillars of DCP, Deep Logger collects high-resolution data across the fleet at depth and scale to sense issues and opportunities, while Deep Updater and Deep Commander execute required updates, upgrades, and commands to improve the overall customer experience.

Created as a hardware-agnostic solution that can run on many vehicle software architectures, the Deep Connected Platform maximizes value by leveraging embedded connectivity across the full product life cycle. Data and feedback are available in close to real-time and can thus  help accelerate product build times, reduce costs, add value, and improve post-sale customer experience and satisfaction.

To embark on the journey of CASE 2.0 and exhaust the possibilities of CASE and SDV for your devices and vehicles, talk to us today.