News

AWS Helps 'Software-Defined Vehicle' Specialist Further the Tech with AI

• By David Ramel
• 01/10/2025

As cars morph into mobile computers, the software-defined vehicle (SDV) movement has grown, with Amazon Web Services (AWS) now furthering the tech in collaboration with a prominent industry player, HERE Technologies.

SDVs are often described as transformative shift in the automotive industry, where vehicle functions are increasingly controlled and enhanced through software rather than traditional hardware components. This evolution enables continuous updates, personalized user experiences, and the rapid deployment of new features, positioning vehicles as dynamic, adaptable platforms. It has grown with the rise of increasingly autonomous vehicles.

This week, during the big CES event, HERE announced a 10-year, $1 billion cloud infrastructure agreement with AWS to support AI-powered, live streaming map and location services for automotive, transportation, logistics, and mobility companies globally.

The company said the collaboration will advance SDV development and combine AWS technologies with HERE mapping solutions to help accelerate the development of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), Automated Driving (AD), and new digital car experiences.

"Working with HERE, we will help automakers pioneer new ways to improve the driving experience by leveraging the global scale, reliability, and AI capabilities of AWS to power AI-driven mapping applications and features," the company quoted AWS CEO Matt Garman as saying in a news release.

AWS maintains a Software-Defined Vehicle site that lists its solution's benefits:

It also lists use cases including:

• Vehicle Data Collection: Build innovative applications that improve vehicle quality, safety, and autonomy with solutions that collect, transform, and transfer vehicle data to the cloud in near real time while optimizing cost.
• Cybersecurity: Log and monitor all security events and apply updates as soon as threats are discovered.
• Over-the-Air Updates: Maintain the integrity of software and perform upgrades at any time, even during unfavorable scenarios like low battery life, slow network speeds, or a lack of network access.
• Virtual Engineering Workbench: Reduce carmakers' dependence on prototype hardware, accelerating the software development cycle with a development environment in the cloud.

The company last November published "Adoption of Software-Defined Architecture in the Commercial Vehicle Industry," which explores SDV challenges, industry learnings, and proposed solution accelerators that the commercial vehicle industry could adopt and extend to fit unique use cases.

HERE, meanwhile, celebrated its nearly 10-year relationship with AWS, now being boosted by cloud AI.

"Using the highly accurate and continuously updated map data from HERE HD Live Map along with AWS natural language processing (NLP) and generative AI services, including Amazon Bedrock, automotive developers can now quickly locate and export HERE HD Live Map data into scenes for testing," the company said. "This new solution reduces the time, effort, and cost required to prepare new simulations for ADAS and AD testing, helping the automotive industry develop and deploy these driving technologies faster and more efficiently. These simulations will help improve ADAS and AD systems, reducing the cognitive load on drivers and enhancing vehicle responsiveness to road conditions."