Committed to open-source software: CARIAD joins the Eclipse Foundation

Wolfsburg | June 22, 2022 – CARIAD, the automotive software company of the Volkswagen Group, has joined the Eclipse Foundation open-source community as a strategic member of the Software Defined Vehicle (SDV) working group. For the first time, CARIAD will actively collaborate on open-source software and contribute projects and code itself for further development within the community. By joining the Eclipse Foundation, CARIAD is pursuing the goal of more efficient development of basic software for use in vehicles. Together with developers from all over the world, CARIAD strives to create innovations and open standards for automotive software. 

“Open cooperation within the developer community is central to a functioning digital ecosystem. The software-driven car, as the most complex mobile device, benefits in particular from the cooperation of the open-source community. As one of the leading software companies in the automotive sector, we advocate open cooperation and will promote innovations within the framework of the Eclipse Foundation to set standards in the automotive basic software. At the same time, we are also increasing our attractiveness as an employer and enabling our developers to make their work more efficient, effective and sustainable,” said CARIAD CTO Lynn Longo.

“The Eclipse Foundation welcomes CARIAD and their contributions to the Software  Defined Vehicle Working Group” says Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation. “The entire automotive software ecosystem is undergoing rapid and fundamental change. A shared platform and tooling, which the entire industry can both use and co-develop, is needed to accelerate this transformation. Eclipse SDV’s vision of a code-first, open-source platform for the software defined vehicle will radically change how the automotive industry develops automotive software.”

CARIAD will contribute individual software components of the VW.OS operating system and the VW.AC automotive cloud as open-source software, which are part of the uniform and scalable software platform on which up to 40 million Volkswagen Group cars will be driving by 2030. These are, for example, basic functionalities that enable fast communication between different components in the vehicle and can be used modularly, as well as efficiently scaled within the industry.

The company will be presenting the first project that CARIAD is publishing for open-source development on June 30 at the Eclipse Foundation's SDV Contributor Day in Friedrichshafen. Other projects will follow in the coming months.