Accelerating Innovation with Agile Development and Powerful Technologies

The motto of this year's VDI ELIV Congress is „Accelerate Innovation“. In your opinion, how well is the German/European automotive industry currently doing in terms of accelerating the pace of innovation? 

Dr. Minea Schwenk: „Accelerate Innovation“ is a very timely motto. From a Tier 1 perspective, the German and European automotive industry has incredible engineering expertise and a strong supplier ecosystem, but innovation cycles can still be slower than in markets like China or the US. Long decision-making processes, strict regulations, and traditional development approaches often extend timelines.

The shift toward the Software-Defined Vehicle is changing how we innovate, especially in ADAS. Hardware will always matter. But increasingly, it’s the software and services that differentiate — because they can be updated, scaled, and monetized over the vehicle’s lifetime.

One example is our Bosch Connected Map Services, where data from vehicles, infrastructure, and weather is fused in the cloud to create predictive insights. This gives vehicles a broader horizon than onboard sensors alone, improving both safety and comfort. It also illustrates how services can continuously evolve as more data becomes available.

To accelerate innovation, the industry needs to be faster in decision-making, more open to collaboration, and more consistent in building modular, scalable architectures. Partnerships — whether with startups, tech providers, or across OEMs — are essential to share costs and bring solutions to market more quickly.

In the end, success will come from combining strong engineering with agile software and service development, so that innovative features can reach customers faster.

In your opinion, what developments and innovations will define Software-Defined Vehicle over the next five years? Where is the journey headed, e.g., with more powerful AI, smarter networking with infrastructure, V2X communication, and new sensor principles?

Dr. Minea Schwenk: If I look at the next five years, I see three big developments shaping the software-defined vehicle.

First, AI will play a huge role. We’re moving from traditional rule-based approaches to much more powerful models. At Bosch, for example, we’re already working with end-to-end learning and transformer-based architectures. That allows vehicles to better understand their surroundings and respond more intuitively in complex situations.

Second, connectivity and predictive services will take center stage. With smarter networking, V2X, and cloud integration, vehicles won’t just react — they’ll anticipate. Take, for example, the road hazard services. That’s an early sign of how vehicles will communicate with infrastructure, with other vehicles, and with cloud platforms to warn drivers ahead and avoid risks. I expect that kind of service — combining local sensing with sharing and prediction — to become widespread.

And third, none of this works without data. Training AI systems and making predictive and ADAS services reliable requires enormous amounts of high-quality, diverse data. This is where Bosch’s global presence is a real strength — we can gather and apply insights across regions and continuously feed them back into our models.

For us as a Tier 1 supplier, the challenge and the opportunity is to make all of this scalable — across different vehicle segments and markets — through modular architectures, standardized platforms, and by really making use of our worldwide data footprint.

What role does open-source software play in realizing “Accelerate InnovaIon”? For example, the S-Core project led by the Eclipse Foundation?

Dr. Minea Schwenk: If we really want to accelerate innovation, we first need a solid software base that the entire industry can rely on. Developing company-specific base software, whether at the OEM or Tier 1 level, consumes enormous engineering resources — resources that the industry simply cannot afford anymore if we want to move faster.

This becomes even more critical with microprocessor-based high-performance computers. Here, a cross-industry, scalable base software layer is absolutely essential — not only for cost efficiency, but also for security and time-to-market reasons. That’s exactly where open source plays a key role.

Projects like the S-Core initiative with the Eclipse Foundation — where Bosch and ETAS are active contributors — show the way forward. Open source provides the common foundation, but because open source by itself comes without liability or long-term support, Tier 1 suppliers like Bosch will play a crucial role in providing industrial-grade distributions. That includes liability, vulnerability management, and long-term maintenance to make these platforms truly usable in series production.

In short, open source can be key enabler to accelerate innovation. It allows us to focus our efforts where it matters most — on differentiation and innovation — while sharing the burden of the non-differentiating base software across the entire industry.

What are your general expectations for this year's ELIV?

Dr. Minea Schwenk: As this is my first ELIV, I’m really looking forward to the exchange. The congress brings together the entire automotive electronics and software community, and my expectation is to gain new insights into how others are tackling shared challenges like accelerating innovation and shaping the software-defined vehicle. At the same time, I hope to contribute Bosch’s perspective and take away ideas we can build on together. At a time when the industry is undergoing such rapid change, this kind of forum is invaluable.