June 9, 2017—At the TU Automotive 2017 Connected Car Conference and Expo, Excelfore unveiled the eSync Alliance, a global automotive initiative to drive multi-company solutions for over-the-air (OTA) updates and diagnostic-data in the automotive electronics eco-system.
The eSync Alliance consists of automotive suppliers working cooperatively to provide eSync Compliant components. Designed to support full vehicle OTA solutions, as well as vehicle diagnostics and telematics data-management with end-to-end security, the eSync Alliance aims to reduce the time and risks of developing and deploying fully connected cars.
"The automotive industry has a history of multi-vendor initiatives which often drive the emergence of de facto standards," said Greg Basich, associate director of automotive service at the market research firm Strategy Analytics. "OEMs are actively looking for ways to facilitate the integration of devices from multiple vendors for their connected car solutions. The eSync Alliance is the first such initiative in the automotive OTA and diagnostics space," he added.
Modern cars now incorporate dozens if not hundreds of software-driven sensors and controllers. The ever-increasing need for automakers to be able to update software over-the-air for feature improvements, recall avoidance, and security patches is well established. However, to date, only a small number of proprietary solutions serve the automotive market. The eSync Alliance specifically addresses this by creating a community of companies that cooperate to provide standardized and interoperable OTA and diagnostic-data solutions.
"The eSync Alliance allows companies across the automotive value chain to offer OTA-capable products. A common mechanism for cloud connectivity among many innovative companies means OEMs are no longer limited to proprietary single-vendor solutions," Shrinath Acharya, Excelfore CEO said. "That's crucial because OTA support has increasingly become mandatory for automakers, driven primarily by the explosion of infotainment, automated driver assistance and autonomous driving technologies."
eSync Alliance members will be able to brand their solutions as eSync Compliant if they meet the program requirements, which include criteria for conformance to APIs and specific features. The eSync Compliant mark will ensure a common OTA data path reaching all the different electronic devices in the car, streamlining integration and testing efforts. The eSync Compliance program provides not only the path to push software updates to the devices in the car, but also to pull diagnostic data from those devices in the car.
