Aug. 15, 2013—The number of OEM-installed connected car infotainment systems with multiple OS architectures will reach 34.2 million units shipped worldwide by the end of 2018, according to ABI Research forecasts. Secure container-type units will account for about 57 percent of shipments and virtual machine-type units accounting for 43 percent.
The need for electronic processor consolidation is being driven by the rapidly growing, sophisticated multimedia in cars and the complexity of other electronic systems such as ADAS technologies.
As a result, the automotive world is moving toward mixed systems in which real-time safety and security components must co-exist with other less critical components on the same platform.
Linking vehicles to the Internet and allowing software to be downloaded to an infotainment system can make vehicles susceptible to security breaches. Malicious software could be installed that causes infotainment systems to crash, or more seriously, affect other parts of the vehicle such as the safety systems.
“The high degree of fragmentation and the use of proprietary computing and electronics in cars today offers good protection against cybercrime, which is probably why no major incidences of car hacking have been reported yet,” said Gareth Owen, in-car infotainment analyst at ABI Research. “However, the adoption of open source platforms such as those based on GENIVI and Android is likely to increase vulnerabilities in the future as more of these platforms are deployed in the market place.”
