Driven by new entrants to the market and rapidly changing customer demand the automotive industry is in the midst of a transition to be more software-centric - the same forces triggered major changes in the personal computer software industry in the 80ies, the mobile phone app industry in the 2000s and the cloud movement in the 2010s. There is no question that modern software technologies, patterns, and communities were key enablers.
The Software-defined Vehicle activity is following the playbook and is based on a portfolio of open source components that provide an in-vehicle application runtime environment that revolves around a set of common APIs for accessing vehicle data and services. It builds on standard, widely used technology to benefit from a huge developer talent base and productivity best practices. It is therefore a good fit for the automotive ecosystem within the Eclipse Foundation.