Volvo Cars and ZF Friedrichshafen are among the legacy companies struggling to blend hardware and software as they manage the tough transition toward software-defined vehicles (SDVs).
The challenge of merging hardware and software is not merely technical, said Peter Holdmann, ZF's incoming board member for its Chassis Solutions division.
"You need both hardware and software, and you need to find a way for them to work together. And to be honest, that has been hard for us," Holdmann told Automotive News Europe. "Finding the way of managing a program-driven, traditional mechanical driven world with a product-driven super software strategy which deploys to vehicles but where the core of the development is not done in the vehicle program – getting those two to work together is the art. That is the big challenge."