Changing Lanes Quickly and Safely with Automotive ALM

Automobiles are everywhere.

And consumers expect a lot out of new vehicles. Expedient travel from place to place. Better fuel economy year-over-year. Added safety features to making the road more secure.

So, manufacturers need to strike a balance. On one side, they need to provide cost-effective hardware improvements. At the same time, they need to meet evolving requirements of style, safety, and compliance. 

The State of Automotive Development

The automotive industry is evolving — and the stakes have never been higher. Software and hardware must integrate. Project source code must be traced and linked among teams. Industry regulations must be followed. 

That’s because consumer demand is scaling rapidly. Buyers look to pair their automobiles with the same feature-rich technologies they leverage off the road. Just as phones, watches, and televisions have become “smart”, so too must automobiles.

The number of networked cars (vehicles actively connected to the internet) will rise 30 percent a year for the next several years, with one in five cars connected by 2020.

This is the new landscape that the modern automaker faces. And it's made even more complex with compliance standards.

Learn more about the automotive software development process with these additional resources >>

3 Recent Automotive Recalls

The auto industry has seen record highs in auto recalls, first in 2014 and again in 2015. 

In 2015, 1.4 million Jeep Cherokees were recalled. The FCA determined the built-in entertainment system was vulnerable to hackers seeking system control remotely.

Jaguar Land Rover also recalled 65,000 SUVs in 2015. A glitch in the keyless entry software caused some of the vehicles’ doors to swing open unexpectedly, creating unsafe operating conditions.

General Motors recalled 30 million cars worldwide, starting in February 2014. Ignition switch failures caused resulted in 124 deaths and $900 million in a federal prosecution agreement.

Great Expectations for Automobiles

Car manufacturers must innovate the brains and the bodies of new vehicles at the same time. That means providing:

• Safer braking
• Steering
• Suspension systems

At the same time, they need to integrate:

• Danger-warning applications
• Traffic information services
• Infotainment software

But this rising complexity for automakers is NOT reflected in the “sticker price” seen by consumers. The automobile price-cost gap has narrowed steadily for 20 years, with an industry analysis showing flat inflation-adjusted prices for 76 vehicle models since 1998.

More features, added competition, and stricter regulation has created a net decline in profit per vehicle. But OEMs, and the industry at large, have survived by increasing efficiencies and quality in their workflows. 

A Better Automotive Development Process...

With Perforce tools, you'll have a better automotive development process. 

Between the Perforce versioning engine and ALM tools, you'll be able to trace everything in the development lifecycle:

• Requirements
• Code
• Tests
• Bugs

So, if you discover a defect, it's easier to find the problematic code and fix it. 

Get Started With Automotive Solutions

Make your automotive development process run smoothly. See how Perforce can help.

Explore Automotive Development