Code on Wheels! Driving the Future of Cars | KPIT’s Dr. Manaswini Rath

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00:00:10 ADITYA JHA
Welcome to this edition of India Means Innovation, where we discuss the technologically complex innovations coming out of India. Today we are talking to Dr. Manaswini Rath of KPIT, senior vice president in charge of software defined vehicles. KPIT is the Tier 1 innovation partner of choice for global manufacturers of software defined vehicles. Welcome, Doctor Rath.

00:00:39 DR. MANASWINI RATH
Thank you.

00:00:40 ADITYA JHA
We live in a software defined everything world. SDX and the cars are the best example. They are now code on wheels. So can you tell us a bit more about software defined vehicles?

00:00:56 DR. MANASWINI RATH
Today the vehicles, be it car Oregon trucks are driven by millions of lines of codes which runs on a high performance computers. Until now, these softwares are distributed into so many small small electronic units called ECU's. Now, in the era of software defined vehicles, the application and software gets consolidated, the EC use and hardware gets consolidated, and the entire software that drives the vehicle runs on this combination of a high performance computer and few small computers called zonal computers. That is how the architecture of the whole vehicle has been changed.

00:01:51 ADITYA JHA
Central compute architecture. Can you tell us about that?

00:01:54 DR. MANASWINI RATH
It is complex. First it deals with huge amount of lines of code. The software starts from personalization to give a experience to the user autonomy which drives the car by itself. Connected the vehicle has to communicate to the cloud and the key element of the software defined vehicle is software updates. Eventually software defined vehicle will provide updates by something called Feature on Demand. When you need some applications, you ask for it and you will have an update to download the new application into your vehicles.

00:02:38 ADITYA JHA
What it will mean is that companies can monetize a lot of stuff. A lot of new services can be offered through this throughout the life of the car, not just at the time you purchase the car.

00:02:54 DR. MANASWINI RATH
That is the motivation behind the software defined vehicle, if I may say so. When you own the car, the industry is bringing more and more features and applications right which you cannot even imagine moving forward. Through Software Defined vehicles you will be given the option, you pay for the applications you need and that is how more and more applications will be available and the OEM's will make money out of these applications.

00:03:27 ADITYA JHA
So one important impact area of a central compute architecture of a software defined vehicle sustainability, increase sustainability. Can you tell us about that?

00:03:39 DR. MANASWINI RATH
Software defined vehicle also is contributing towards sustainability by reducing the processing power, the power consumption and reduction of the number of silicons, number of hardware inside the vehicles. At the same time it is reducing the entire huge amount of components and replacement that goes to the after sales services and maintenance, lot of updates and diagnostics and repair and all these things are done through software by downloading the new updates or repairing it. So all the hardware has been eliminated.

00:04:21 ADITYA JHA
Wow. And this entire complex central compute architecture has been created by KPIT.

00:04:28 DR. MANASWINI RATH
Yes, we are one of the early movers in this space and we initiated such design architecture concepts how the software layers run in the high-performance computing, consolidation is not only happening at the hardware but all the software is consolidated. So there is a middle Ware called vehicle OS. Then on top of it lot of applications run there. So we have been conceptualizing how this software architecture should be, how the network architecture should be, and how the entire EE, the electrical and electronics architecture in the vehicle should be.

00:05:12 ADITYA JHA
Times have changed. Now you are telling car maker this is how it should be and you are creating the use cases. You are doing the design, you are doing the architecture, right.

00:05:26 DR. MANASWINI RATH
Now it's lead versus being laid. That's the concept. So we lead how the architecture should be, how the design should be, how the software should be written, how integration should happen, how validation should happen. So we go and take the first steps to lead these concepts and work together with them. So it is more leadership than being LED.

00:05:50 ADITYA JHA
This is a great example of India means innovation. Congratulations and thank you.