Page 30 - EE Times Europe Magazine - June 2025

30 EE|Times EUROPE

AUTONOMOUS DRIVING | SAFETY AND SECURITY
Survey Tracks Sources of Automotive Software

Developer Headaches

By Anne-Françoise Pelé

oftware is pervasive in automotive platforms and components, some autonomous compo-
but its development is not without challenges. For its “2025 nents. Year over year, that
State of Automotive Software Development Report,” Perforce represents a 5% increase in AI
SSoftware surveyed more than 650 automotive development pro- use for autonomy.
fessionals around the world on current practices and emerging trends Geographically, the
within the automotive software industry. EE Times Europe spoke with adoption of AI varies. North
Jill Britton, director of compliance at Perforce Software, for perspective America, the Middle East,
on the facts and figures in this year’s survey. Africa, and Oceania lead the
way in using AI for autono-
QUALITY FIRST mous design. In Europe, Asia,
In 2025, software quality remains the top concern (29%) in automotive and Latin America, AI is more
software development, followed closely by safety and security. Last often used to support specific
year, security outpaced safety overall, but this year, safety (28%) has Perforce Software’s Jill Britton components than to achieve
returned to second place as security (22%) dropped to third place. full vehicle autonomy.
While software quality is a major concern for Asia-Pacific, North With the rise of AI/ML, functional safety standards focused on elim-
America, and Africa, safety takes precedence over quality among inating risks in automotive systems are being revised. ISO/DPAS 8800,
respondents in Europe and the U.K. “Europe is a very mature industry,” “Road Vehicles—Safety and Artificial Intelligence,” was published in
Britton said. “We know that security and safety are important, not October 2024 for systems incorporating AI. The new standard assesses
just quality. And we are very demanding in terms of compliance and the impact on AI of performance shortcomings such as errors due to
requirements.” bias and lack of robustness and insufficiencies in training data. It intro-
When asked about duces an AI safety lifecycle specific to automotive while aligning with
their specific safety the safety lifecycle prescribed by the ISO 26262 standard.
concerns, most “AI is coming into vehicle development, and there are concerns
respondents said, about how safe AI is and how it’s going to be functionally certified,”
“It is difficult and Britton said. “We’ve got to be careful, particularly in the automotive
time-consuming to world, or anything where human life is involved, that we can still verify
fulfill every that whatever comes out of it is safe and suitable for human use—
ISO 26262 require- because in the end, what we’re producing is not for an AI machine to
ment.” However, use. It is for a human to use.”
compared with The majority of the respondents said they did know about the
2024, respondents
in 2025 expressed
a 16% jump in cus-
tomer expectations
for “[complying]
with a safe coding
standard” such as
the Motor Industry
Software Reliability
Quality remains the top development Association (MISRA)
concern, with safety and security close requirements.
behind. (“The 2025 State of Automotive Software And when com-
Development Report,” Perforce Software) paring the results
with last year’s
report, the top security concern has shifted from “unauthorized access
to on-board/off-board systems” (21%) to “[lack of] skills needed to
combat security threats” (24%), an increase of 13% from last year.
“Organizations understand that security is everybody’s responsibility,”
Britton said. “There is now a culture of security in most of these organi-
zations, and more respondents said they’ve had a security training.”
MORE AI FOR AVs
The question is not whether AI will be beneficial to AV developers but
how they will use it, Britton said. Many respondents are actively using AI to design a fully
This year, 42% of respondents said they were actively using AI to autonomous vehicle. (“The 2025 State of Automotive Software
design a fully autonomous vehicle. A further 38% said AI was affecting Development Report,” Perforce Software)

JUNE 2025 | www.eetimes.eu