What is FOTA in Automotive Industry?

FOTA comes from Firmware Over The Air, and is a clear trend that all OEM's will follow because it will be more and more Software in cars, and it will be more updates.

As of today, updates are done for Infotainment ECU's, or for GPS Maps for example, but for deeply embedded ECU's like Safety or Cryptography Hardware, this is not done yet.

The demands for Software Update Over the Air is driven by some major market trends so by 2025, 98% of the cars that are sold will be connected. The increasing level of Automotive Driving functions in the car will need connectivity, in example to keep Environmental Data in the vehicle up to date or to add move functionality without visiting a car service.

In the way that Software Architecture will change in the future, the value creation of a car will change as well. Today the value creation is roughly:

- 10% Software

- 85% Hardware/Mechanics

- 5% Content.

In the future this will move to around:

- 40% Software

- 40 Hardware/Mechanics

- 10% Content.

This means on one hand that Automotive Suppliers need to deliver not only Hardware and Functionalities then rather need to supply complex solutions combining Hardware and Software.

In the present day, the common requirement is that such update should usually not bother the end user of the car, still is known that depending on the way of updates that has to be executed, there cannot be performed an update during driving. In this moment most of the updates are performed in a safe condition of the car, that is usually when the car is parked. So this is still a limitation for this concept.

FOTA Concept will evolve every day, will be faster, will be available on every Electronic Component Units from a car, and it will improve the drivers quality of driving.