Delivering Safer Cars Faster with Continuous Delivery

As smart cars, pre-loaded with millions of lines of code, are becoming the norm in the automotive industry, the topic of safety has come to the forefront of the conversation in a big way. Most consumers remember several large-scale recalls in the past few years, and it’s left some a bit wary of software glitches that could affect driver safety.
The automotive industry has always been bound by strict safety regulatory certifications and compliance rules, designed to ensure the safety of the vehicle and the software embedded in it. However, despite industry efforts to put best practices in place, the rate of issues and software failures has been increasing.
In his recent article for Automotive World , Andreas Dharmawan discusses the key regulations and compliance guidelines that the automotive industry is required to meet:

1. MISRA (Motor Industry Software Reliability Association) - aiming to facilitate code safety, portability and reliability in the context of embedded systems.

2. ISO26262 - a functional safety standard that guides automotive development phases, covering specification, design, implementation, integration, verification, and production release.

3. SPICE (ISO/IEC 15504) - a set of technical standards for software development process and related business management functions.

While the necessary standards and guidelines are available, their implementations and tracking are spotty and incomplete. For each one of the the above guidelines, Andrea outlines the day-to-day challenges faced by both automakers and suppliers when trying to implement and enforce safety and security practices in order to meet these regulations. He then explains how Continuous Delivery and automation solutions are helping automotive manufacturers address these challenges while improving the overall quality of the vehicle and its underlying software and electronics system.
For more on this topic, read the entire article here .