The aim of ACHILES is to develop a more efficient E/E control system architecture optimized for the 3rd generation of EVs by integrating four new technological concepts. Firstly, a new wheel concept design will be equipped with full by-wire braking, including a new friction brake concept. Secondly, a centralized computer platform will host the e-drive functionalities and reduce the number of ECUs and networks while fulfilling safety & security requirements. It will support centralized domain controllers required to implement high automation and autonomy concepts, a key requirement for smart mobility. Thirdly, an out of phase control that will allow to intentionally operate the electric motor inefficiently to dissipate the excess of braking energy in case of fully charged batteries. As a fourth concept, a new torque vectoring algorithm will significantly improve the vehicle dynamics. The advances proposed will reduce the total cost of ownership by 10% and increase the driving range by at least 11% while increasing autonomy. ACHILES will be tested and verified in a real demo vehicle and in a brand-independent testing platform. The project consortium is another major asset. Audi, one of the technologically most advanced OEMs, will integrate these technologies to a next generation of EVs prototype. As a leading supplier, Continental will contribute by the innovative brake system. Elaphe, a leading technology company for e-motor design, will develop the suitable motor technology. TTTech, known for its future oriented network technologies for AI and autonomy-based systems, will be responsible for the networking technology. The academia team consists of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Coordinator), Tecnalia, Ikerlan and the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft. It will provide the technological basis, the modelling and the algorithms for this challenging endeavour. Finally, Idiada will conduct the testing and evaluations verifying and proving the achievement of the promised innovation.

The automotive industry faces tremendous challenges in addressing decarbonization through electrification, developing future solutions for inclusive, safe and affordable mobility. Many of these changes require a radical re-thinking of existing development processes, with the share of software in modern mobility solutions continuously increasing. The rising importance of the software layer results in the so-called software-defined vehicle (SDV). Automotive software will be developed and adapted in continuous cycles. Therefore an abstraction from the underlying hardware needs to be implemented. As a result, the automotive industry is transitioning to an agile software development process. The dramatic increase of software and complexity, along with the advances of international competition in this domain, calls for an approach, in which non-differentiating software is developed jointly as open source. To address these challenges, the EU, together with industry, governments, and research institutions, have launched the European SDV Ecosystem. To turn this into reality, this proposal outlines the vision and activities for a Coordination and Support Action. FEDERATE (Software-Defined Vehicle Support and Coordination Project) aims to bring together all relevant stakeholders to accelerate the development of an SDV Ecosystem, to foster a vibrant European community and orchestrate the SDV R&D&I activities. The consortium of FEDERATE is formed by major European OEMs, automotive tiers, semiconductor companies, relevant industry associations and industrial SDV initiatives, including the Eclipse SDV WG, and supported by a scientific board. FEDERATE will work towards a common understanding on the vision of the SDV program and create an orchestrated advice for current and future projects in the SDV program. In addition, recommendations for future calls are prepared in alignment with a Roadmap and Joint Vision Document for accelerated SDV R&D&I, created as part of the CSA

The HAL4SDV proposal aligns with the EU Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda 2022 on Electronic Components and Systems. It aims to pioneer methods, technologies, and processes for series vehicle development beyond 2030, driven by anticipated advancements in microelectronics, communication technology, software engineering, and AI. HAL4SDV envisions a future where vehicles are fully integrated into smart cities, intelligent highways, and cyberspace, blurring the lines between inside and outside the vehicle. Assumptions include data-centricity, code portability, efficient data fusion, unlimited scalability, real-time capabilities, and robust cybersecurity. The objectives encompass unifying software interfaces, creating a hardware abstraction framework, enabling Over-The-Air (OTA) updates, designing platform architectures, ensuring hardware abstraction and virtualization, offering hardware support, automating integration, supporting safety features, harnessing edge computing, implementing security measures, and providing essential development tools. By focusing on these objectives, HAL4SDV aims to establish a unified ecosystem for software-defined vehicles, positioning Europe's automotive industry for continued leadership post-2030 while leveraging existing results and technologies to accelerate progress.

Electrification and autonomy drive the rapid evolution of modern vehicles, requiring increasing computational capabilities, coupled with safety and efficiency. The classical, decentralized multi- Electronic Control Units (ECU) architecture has significant drawbacks when it comes to scalability, and it is becoming untenable. The dominant megatrend pushes for an increasing number of key functionalities to be software-defined, with the direct implication that the software content (lines-of-code) in a vehicle will grow by 10x in just 5 years, to 1 billion by 2030. From a hardware viewpoint, increased complexity and autonomy requires a more centralized approach to on-board computing to curtail cost, latency and bandwidth bottlenecks of the in-vehicle network. Centralizing the E/E architecture requires merging multiple Electronic Control Units (ECUs) into powerful, fully programmable Domain Control Units (DCUs) or Zonal Control Units (ZCUs). To address this paradigm shift, the Rigoletto project will establish the foundation for a next-generation Automotive Hardware Platform based on the open RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA), bolstering and securing Europe's leading role in the automotive electronics industry. The project aligns with the high-level goal of EU Chips Joint Undertaking and the of the industry-led Vehicle of the Future initiative: namely, the creation of a RISC-V based automotive hardware platform strongly linked with the formation of an open, software-defined vehicle ecosystem led by European automotive manufacturers and suppliers. Rigoletto aims at developing RISC-V intellectual property (IP) components, including processor cores, accelerators, interconnects, memory hierarchy and peripheral subsystems. A wide range of performance profiles will be targeted for next-generation DCUs and ZCUs, to enable increasingly electrified, automated, and connected vehicles.