Subaru wants to make your car smarter over time with phone-like software updates
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What if your car could pick up new tricks the same way your phone does? That’s exactly what Subaru has in mind. At a development strategy briefing held on Sunday at its research centre in Sano, north of Tokyo, the automaker revealed plans to launch software-defined vehicles (SDVs) in the second half of this decade.
What does this mean for Subaru drivers?
Reuters reports that Subaru’s SDVs will get over-the-air updates covering driver-assistance, automated driving, and vehicle performance. Speaking at the briefing, managing executive officer Eiji Shibata said the company wants to keep improving its cars through updates over the years people own them, Daily Sports reports.
The good news is that Subaru isn’t chasing flashy features. “We want to make SDVs convenient to use, rather than pack them with extremely advanced features,” Shibata said at the briefing, as reported by Jiji Press.He added that Subaru hopes to price these cars affordably so more people can buy them.
At the heart of this plan is a new integrated electronic control unit (ECU), which Subaru will add to its lineup gradually. Nikkei reports that this single ECU brings together Subaru’s EyeSight driver-assistance system and the controls that manage how the car moves. Its core chip was co-developed with AMD, and Reuters notes that the same electronic platform will be shared across electric, hybrid, and gasoline models.
How will Subaru build cars faster?
Subaru wants to shorten development time by around 40%. It plans to lean on digital simulations and handle design, testing, and production preparation at the same time instead of one after another. The approach has already paid off on a test vehicle for Subaru’s next-gen EV, where one development stage shrank from two years to just one. Subaru will spend the saved time fine-tuning performance and quality on real cars.
Why is Subaru skipping Toyota’s software?
Even though Toyota owns a 21% stake in Subaru, the company said that it currently has no plans to adopt Toyota’s Arene software platform. Toyota expects Arene to land in 10 million new cars a year by 2030. Subaru is clearly going its own way, and if it delivers, owners could enjoy smarter, more affordable cars that get better with age.
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