The AUTOSAR initiative is a global development partnership of automotive OEMs, automotive suppliers and other companies in the software, semiconductor and electronics industries.

Under the slogan “Cooperate on Standards, Compete on Implementation” the members work together with different rights and duties in work groups. While the core partners decide who is accepted into the AUTOSAR Consortium, it is the premium members who define the standard.

AUTOSAR has the following goals:

• Standardization of interfaces between functions of the application software and to basic functions
• Definition of a reference architecture for ECU software
• Standardization of exchange formats for distributed development processes

In reaching these goals, the participating companies hope to achieve benefits such as:

• Ability to optimize the ECU network by flexible integration, relocation and exchange of functions
• Mastery over increasing product and process complexity
• Maintainability over entire product life cycles

The first release used in production ECUs was AUTOSAR Version 3.0.

Naturally, the AUTOSAR standard has its limitations. For example, AUTOSAR does not offer any capability of describing the functional behavior of a software component.

AUTOSAR Initiative

AUTOSAR Initiative Website