Q&A: Envorso Wants to Help OEMs Make Better Software In-House

Company’s chief product officer says automakers’ history of divvying up work on systems leads to slow, change-averse software development.

November 4, 2024

Chris Clonts

Automobile manufacturers have been slow to develop the staff and skills necessary to produce whole-system software. (Unsplash)

At the Reuters Automotive USA 2024 conference in Detroit, SAE Media had the opportunity to speak with Stuart Taylor, chief product officer of Envorso, a software consultancy with a mission to help OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers write better software by doing it in-house. Companies have been plagued with issues around software written both in-house and via outside contractors.

Stuart Taylor is Envorso's chief product officer. (Envorso)

Q: There is still a debate around just what “software defined” means in “SDV.” Is there a solution that would get everyone on the same page?

A: If you think back to what we did when we were defining the ADAS levels [one through four], that’s what software defined vehicle now needs. It says, okay, you are this, you are at this point along the journey, and your next step is this. And I think the industry needs to come together and actually think that through, so that we will have a clear understanding. And of course, the concept, from my view, is not new. In fact, we've been doing it in the industry for many, many years, as long as I've been in the industry.

Q: Part of the problem we see in these new-to-OEM segments, such as the battery industry, is that the companies need to learn faster and iterate faster.

A: And I think to a certain extent, you know, we say, fail fast is kind of an industry trend word. But the reality is, when you're working in those smaller, cash constrained OEMs – a startup environment -- they are willing to take risk but fail early in the process so they can pivot to doing the next thing, and instead of it being a straight long shot to the outcome, they jig backwards and forwards, and they get to the answer much quicker. And we need that thinking in the traditional OEMs and the traditional tier ones to be able to deliver exceptional products.

Q: Is part of the OEM difficulty that development has traditionally been done in pieces and subsystems, rather than as a whole?

A: Conway's Law is a great one, if you know computer science from the1960s, [It states that your product or software will end have the structure of the organization producing it.] He was a networks engineer, so he kind of nailed it. If you don't have a systems level of thinking, then it's very hard to integrate. So what we're seeing from an industry standpoint is that the challenge is much bigger compute centers, so better silicon, higher powered compute, allowing you to consolidate much more of the in vehicle decision making at a higher level, and allowing those software stacks to be well integrated and to work very effectively with each other. The challenge of getting to that place is a shorter path for the startups, because in their mind, that's the logical outcome. The OEMs have a high dependency on the technical capability of those suppliers, and then they have the challenge of integrating that again. So, the speed is constrained by the thinking up front, the traditional trying to move from that place, and they've done it by hiring more and more capability in house.

What has happened in the industry is they've hired many of those good software engineers from their tier ones and their teams have struggled. So, resetting some of that and making sure that we talk a lot in electronics about architecture, settling on an architecture that is going to be capable now and in the future and building your software around that, happens at startups much faster than for the traditional OEMs. And getting out of that is the challenge.

Q: What’s different about the way you approach software consulting?

A: The reason I joined Envorso after so many years of doing what I was doing, was we're in there with that OEM or with that tier one supplier. Getting our hands dirty and having those difficult discussions as a team is an essential part of driving towards a better outcome. I think where a lot of traditional consulting companies fall short is they'll give you a beautiful pattern book of “just follow this playbook, and you'll be fine in the report.” The reality is that every business has nuance. It has characters. It has aligned goals or misaligned goals. And I think being there at the table, working on it, with the customer, is essential, particularly in something this complicated, because you can get to have those difficult discussions then and get to a better outcome. And the nice part about doing this is you can celebrate the outcomes even if there were no sales in the room. Right? Because you actually can see the results.”