Virtual cars, QNX, and Mopars

Yesterday, Stellantis, BlackBerry, and Amazon announced a virtual cockpit to “transform vehicle software engineering.” The combination uses QNX’s hypervisor (virtualization software, which creates a virtual computer) delivered on Amazon Web Services (AWS) to provide a virtual cockpit, claimed to be the first of its kind. Stellantis claimed that this would speed up development cycles by up to 100 times.

The goal of this system is to provide a realistic virtual version of the car’s controls and systems that act as they would normally—without having to run them locally on the current hardware. Engineers can act “in the cloud” (on networked servers) from anywhere in the world, to collaborate or simply to write and test their software more quickly.

Does this mean that Android is being ejected for a return to QNX, which originally powered UConnect when it was often rated as the best telematics system? (QNX was a  hardened BSD UNIX-based setup for automotive and other special uses.) The Android-based UConnect setup has generated complaints of crashes and general bugginess, though these may be completely unrelated to the underlying operating system. The answer appears to be “maybe, but probably not.” Amazon’s “cloud” system will run the “QNX Hypervisor,” but that can presumably run Android operating systems as well as QNX itself.  An inquiry to the communications contact was not answered.

Photo: current UConnect system

David Zatz

David Zatz started what was to become the world’s biggest, most comprehensive Mopar site in 1994 as he pursued a career in organizational research and change. After a chemo-induced break, during which he wrote car books covering Vipers, minivans, and Jeeps, he returned with Patrick Rall to create StellPower.com for daily news, and to set up MoTales for mo’ tales.

David Zatz has around 30 years of experience in covering Chrysler/Mopar news and history, and most recently wrote Century of Chrysler, a 100-year retrospective on the Chrysler marque.