Elektrobit, Qt Announce Turnkey Development Solution for Next-Gen Automotive Digital Cockpits

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Elektrobit, a visionary global supplier of embedded and connected software products for the automotive industry, and The Qt Company, announced a collaboration to make it easier for carmakers to cost-effectively develop next-generation digital cockpits. The companies’ combined solution brings together the Qt Device Creation framework and the NXP i.MX 8 Series Applications Processor with Elektrobit’s EB tresos software for AUTOSAR development and user interface engineering services. The offering provides a unique, turnkey approach for carmakers seeking to develop state-of-the-art human-machine interfaces (HMIs) using off-the-shelf software and hardware.

As driver demand for immersive digital experiences and advanced features grows, the digital cockpit has become a vital and very appealing component in automobiles. The market is expected to realize a compound annual growth rate of 13 percent through 2027, according to research firm Mordor Intelligence, and all automakers are seeking more efficient and affordable approaches to develop advanced in-vehicle experiences.

The Qt-Elektrobit offering is one of the first commercial solutions enabling HMI runtime on the AUTOSAR architecture. It eliminates the costs, complexities and time requirements of using a hypervisor, and can run on a single, multi-core processor. This streamlined approach helps accelerate the overall development process and speed time to market of advanced HMIs. The Qt Device Creation framework enables the creation of rich user interfaces for embedded platforms. The EB tresos AUTOSAR architecture stack adds to it the latest security and safety capabilities, supporting requirements up to ASIL-D on limited-resource microcontroller units, as well as on multi-core SOCs. The offering includes access to Elektrobit’s highly experienced user interface engineering services team. Furthermore, additional functional software from Continental Automotive can be integrated, such as Linux Instrument Cluster, software defined Radio, Driver Monitoring and eTravel Companion, just to name a few applications.

“We are pleased to collaborate with Elektrobit to provide a unique solution that integrates our HMI development software with Elektrobit’s field-proven AUTOSAR software and integration expertise,” said Miao Luo, Head of Automotive and Design Tools, The Qt Company. “This pre-integrated approach provides the fastest and easiest way to produce software-defined vehicles.”

“Elektrobit is proud to bring our decades of deep experience in AUTOSAR, along with our ECU software and services to this collaboration with Qt,” said Jörg Scherer, director of user experience, Elektrobit. “Together, we’re offering commercial solution that brings HMI runtime into an AUTOSAR, making it easier for OEMs to develop advanced cockpits for their next-gen vehicles.”