It’s been a while since I wanted to write a long diary-like post, so here we go.

I’ve been developing Adaptive AUTOSAR standard-based platforms for about a year and a half now.

Adaptive AUTOSAR refers to the standard architecture being established by the AUTOSAR consortium, which defines a common architecture for next-generation automotive applications as an open system.

The goal of this technical standard architecture is to paint the big picture that enables sustainable and reusable software applications to operate and be developed in automotive environments.

Sounds difficult?

Of course it is.

Despite all the debates, this AUTOSAR architecture was essentially created by major automotive companies led by Europe (read: Germany), who love standardization, coming together to raise entry barriers in Europe. (I heard this from my father, who worked as an engineer at Hyundai Motor for 25 years and is a living witness to the industry, so it’s quite credible haha)

Europeans really love standardizing things like this.

They form consortiums where all participants think intensively together, capturing optimal words and phrases within common interests - this is the standard that Europeans (Germans) love.

I’ve been researching various standards from multiple standardization organizations since my graduate school days.

Back then, standards felt like laws to me, and I just studied them with a sense of overwhelming weight from the sheer volume.

Time is scary - even an ignorant person like me started asking fundamental questions after encountering various standards continuously.

Maybe because of these deep contemplations, when I encountered AUTOSAR, it didn’t just approach me as a collection of text like before. I let out a sigh of relief knowing I hadn’t wasted all that time.

There probably isn’t a slower learner than me… Anyway.

Standards actually take a tremendous amount of time to establish. They go through repeated cycles of proposal, discussion, more discussion, establishment, and continuous revision.

In a way, the weight of standards created through consensus among massive institutions backed by enormous capital over such long periods is tremendous.

As I mentioned above, Europeans (Germans) really love structuring the world this way and have dominated major companies for nearly a century.

Based on such structured architectures, the automotive industry’s OEMs, Tier-1s, Tier-2s, along with management-perspective bureaucracy, have been the characteristic of automotive groups that have dominated for nearly a century: Volkswagen, BMW, Benz, Toyota, GM, etc.

Among these, Toyota Group’s bureaucracy is such a regular case study of successful management systems at Harvard Business School.

They built a really solid glass ceiling (in modern terms haha)… but someone shattered that glass.

That someone was Tesla.

This broad ecosystem of companies built on extensive technical standards…

The grand plan to see this heaviness as a disadvantage and do everything in one company.

Everyone doubted whether they could pull it off for nearly 15 years, but this company achieved vertical integration.

Although it’s quite distant from the standardization I’ve studied, they approached the automotive industry completely differently from a business perspective and ultimately shattered this thick glass ceiling.

I think this shows the culture of Silicon Valley, which values technical execution, and it’s completely opposite to what Europe aims for.

Among the things Tesla broke, I think the automotive market’s software ecosystem is the most impressive.

Tesla built their innovation based on low-power computer architectures that rapidly developed in the mobile market, open-source operating systems, and open-source applications, earning love from many tech gurus.

The Adaptive AUTOSAR standard began in earnest around 2017, and in my view, the major automotive groups weren’t that urgent back then.

Starting from 2019 and going through 2020-2021, as Tesla received tremendous market valuation and its market cap exceeded the combined value of all automotive groups, each group company has been frantically trying to show innovation in software.

Volkswagen, the world’s largest automotive group, openly declared they would hire 6,500 software engineers by 2025 and wouldn’t be defeated by Tesla with their eyes wide open. Toyota Group is letting go of some of their proud bureaucracy and offering differential salary compensation like the software industry.

Hyundai Motor Group, where I work, is also developing Adaptive AUTOSAR standard-based platforms and applications with advanced teams from Hyundai Motor, Mobis, and Autron coming together.

What’s interesting is that it started as advanced team work, but now it’s become essential work, not just advanced research.

This is because the various functions and ecosystems provided by Adaptive AUTOSAR standard-based platforms are a series of responses to Tesla’s vertical integration.

This challenging work is really fun.

I don’t know if someone like me, who goes slowly, fits in this field where the core is to approach things business-wise based on an enormous range of knowledge and execute with maximum speed…

But I’m confident that I can go slowly and steadily more than anyone else.