To shape the industry-wide effort to build a vendor-agnostic, open source ecosystem focused on creating the foundation for a new era in automotive, HARMAN today announced it has joined the Eclipse Software Defined Vehicle (SDV) Working Group at The Eclipse Foundation.

The automotive industry is undergoing a profound shift towards a true SDV-driven design process. This transformative approach introduces a myriad of benefits, including faster time-to-market, new sources of revenue, and innovative service models. The Eclipse SDV Working Group is at the forefront of this evolution, providing a vendor-neutral forum for individuals and organizations to collaborate. Members are actively working together to create open-source software to support comprehensive in-vehicle and around-the-vehicle systems development, including immersive in-cabin experiences. The Eclipse SDV open-source foundation model offers flexibility, agility, and cost-savings in a collaborative environment, uniting a diverse set of leaders from the automotive, software, and cloud industries.

Backed by decades of experience in both the automotive and consumer tech spaces, HARMAN Automotive is uniquely positioned to foster this software-driven transformation. The introduction of cloud-native technologies to vehicles is a key milestone to shape a new era of Consumer Experiences. Automotive Grade. HARMAN, with its unique positioning in intelligent cockpit solutions, can play a key role in empowering industry leaders to adopt these technologies and sharing best practices within the Eclipse SDV Working Group. Initially, HARMAN will be contributing to various Eclipse SDV Working Group projects, like Eclipse Ibeji, which provides the capability to express a digital representation of a vehicle state through an extensible and dynamic architecture to model and access the vehicle hardware, sensors and capabilities. Furthermore, HARMAN is preparing to publish unique contributions like automotive-grade container runtimes and cloud services for connected experiences.

“We are thrilled to join The Eclipse Foundation’s SDV Working Group, which will play a key role in influencing the next generation of vehicles,” said Heiko Hüttel, Vice President of Software Products at HARMAN. “Thanks to our unmatched relationship with Samsung to develop the experiences consumers want from their vehicles, HARMAN is the only automotive technology company with the expertise to guide innovation and deliver consumer experiences at an automotive grade. Together, with the Eclipse Foundation and other participants, we look forward to collaborating across industries to accelerate the transformation of Software Defined Vehicles.”

“It's difficult to overstate the industry momentum behind the Eclipse Software Defined Vehicle Working Group,” said Mike Milinkovich, executive director for the Eclipse Foundation. “The diversity of our members is a big part of our strength and lends itself to our capacity for delivering industry-wide innovation. Technology vendors, cloud providers, system integrators, and automotive giants are working together to transform how automotive software is built. HARMAN's leadership in connected technologies will be critical in achieving our shared vision.”

With The Eclipse Foundation being at the forefront of open source-based developer experiences and playing a key role in shaping the unique opportunity with the SDV Working Group, HARMAN is committed to building world-class in-vehicle experiences and helping its customers to thrive in such ecosystems where collaboration is key to future success.

“As a founding member of the SDV working group, this is a full circle moment and an initiative that is close to my heart,” Hüttel added. “The Software Defined Vehicle is not a trend — it’s a reality — and HARMAN is positioned to lead the transformation of automotive software efforts forward.”

To learn more about HARMAN’s involvement with the Eclipse SDV Working Group, visit developer.harman.com.