Nexteer Expands Strategic Software Investment

BANGALORE:
Nexteer Automotive expands its strategic software investment and global software team by announcing intention to open a Software Center in India.
The Software Center will be the latest addition to the Company’s global software team that operates under one digital roof with locations in Saginaw, US; Tychy, Poland; and Suzhou, China. Nexteer Automotive presently has centres Pune and Gurgaon. In addition to this, Nexteer is also planning to set up a plant in Chennai for manufacturing of Electronic Power steering which is expected to be functional by 2018 Q3.
Nexteer’s Global Technical Center in Saginaw – in tandem with regional Technical Centers in Tychy and Suzhou will continue focusing on upstream software development and R&D innovation. Meanwhile, the new Software Center in India will focus on downstream software production and validation ensuring quality and compliance with regulations. The company has invested over 2 Million USD for overall activities for the fiscal year 2019. Nexteer is planning to hire around 50 people to start with for India Software Centre and will go up to 100 – 200.
“Nexteer’s software business model and our enhanced global team structure is based on delivering innovative software solutions with speed, flexibility and seamless vehicle integration for our global automotive OEM customers. The role of software in vehicles – and especially in safety-critical steering – is evolving quickly. Consequently, automotive OEMs’ need for Nexteer’s smart software solutions to their complex challenges has grown exponentially,” said Geoff Krieger, Executive Director of Electronic Systems and Software, Nexteer Automotive.
NEXTEER CAPITALIZES, INVESTS IN GROWING SOFTWARE TREND
Nexteer views its software and electronics capabilities among its key differentiators and expects market demand for its software expertise to grow. Consequently, Nexteer is scouting locations in India for its Software Center and will continue investing in software capabilities over the next several years.
Industry analysts agree. “Electronics and software are key differentiators in future growth areas… The ADAS and AD automotive component market will strongly grow providing an increasing revenue pool mainly for software focused suppliers…intelligent systems integrated with ADAS are expected to offer growth potential within respective domains (e.g., steering…),” LAZARD Roland-Berger’s Global Automotive Supplier Study 2018.
Pricewaterhouse Cooper’s 2018 report, Five Trends Transforming the Automotive Industry, concurs – highlighting companies that invest in software applications will be “rewarded with strong growth.”
SOFTWARE’S ROLE IN NEXTEER’S SAFETY-CRITICAL STEERING SYSTEMS
Nexteer’s software plays a safety-critical role – including cyber security – in its products such as Steer-by-Wire (SbW) and Electric Power Steering Systems (EPS) that are key gateway technologies for advanced safety functions and automated driving.
“It’s all about safety and performance. As vehicle technology evolves to include varying levels of advanced safety features and increasing levels of autonomous driving, our steering software ensures the safety net is ‘always on’ in our Steer-by-Wire and Advanced Electric Power Steering Systems. In addition to our hardware redundancies, our software is built for simultaneous, multi-path processing to strengthen this safety net,” said Krieger.
“Software also plays a key role in cyber security. We not only design hardware modules on the semi-conductor level for cyber-secure steering, we also design software structures with multiple layers that identify and authorize information and command flow between the steering system and other controllers. As vehicles adopt more advanced electronics to enable automated driving, internet connectivity and V2X communication, Nexteer’s cyber-secure steering technologies become even more critical.”
As Nexteer continues adding functionality and advanced safety features to its steering systems – the number of lines of code required is astounding: 14.3 Million lines of code required in Nexteer’s SbW; and 4.3 Million lines of code required in Nexteer’s EPS – compared to 400,000 lines of code required in the first space shuttle.