A unified development approach enables its automotive engineers to collaborate efficiently, accelerate software delivery, and improve in-vehicle digital features.
Modern vehicles now rely on millions of lines of code to deliver features ranging from infotainment to advanced driver assistance. The shift toward the “Software Defined Vehicle” means that much of a car’s value and differentiation now comes from software, not just hardware.
So, as software has become a core component of its in-vehicle driving experience, auto manufacturer Mercedes-Benz eventually started facing increasing software development challenges. This requires coordination among thousands of engineers and the integration of both internal (innersource) and open-source code to address.
Additionally, the firm’s software development processes were being hindered by fragmented tools and workflows, resulting in inefficiencies and slower delivery cycles.
To address these issues, Mercedes-Benz finally decided to adopt a unified development platform. This approach has:
- enabled more than 55,000 developers to collaborate across teams and projects, streamline code management, and automate key workflows.
- benefitted from the introduction of AI-powered coding assistance to further reduce the volume of manual tasks, allowing engineers to focus on problem-solving and innovation.
According to the firm’s Senior Principal Software Engineer, Andy Krieger: “We are digitally transforming as a company. We want to be a software-driven car manufacturer, and this unified platform supports us on our way forward.”
Krieger’s team believe that advanced AI-driven software development tools have the potential to reshape the automotive industry, offering the promise of faster development cycles, enhanced code quality, and greater innovation. With the time savings unlocked by these tools, the network of developers are empowered to spend more time on the tasks they enjoy most: creative problem-solving, innovative projects, and experimentation.
Highlighting their prioritization of open-source engagement, one development team leader added: “You can’t develop software anymore without using open source. We want to be good citizens of the open source world, not just consume and take open source for granted.”
The technology vendor behind this platform, GitHub, has commented: “Having everyone together on the platform is a great advantage for innersource.”
By consolidating its development processes, Mercedes-Benz has improved collaboration, efficiency, and its ability to deliver advanced digital features in its vehicles.
