An EE Times article “Standard proposal to simplify car software design“ reports on a proposal from the German mobilSoft project to standardize variant handling in automotive software development. Variants arise through different vehicle characteristics, different OEM requirements or different legal or environmental constraints in the end-user country.

By standardizing variant handling the group hopes to simplify the automotive software development process and make it more reliable. The aim of the proposal is to create a common data platform to streamline the development process over several product lines.

The pure::variants product we distribute is being investigated by the mobilSoft research group - see here for a brief description of this research.