The market for continuous vehicle software deployments is growing due to an increasing need to handle software versions, validate integrity, and deploy patches over-the-air (OTA). This helps in avoiding data theft as well as to remain safe, secure, and competitive in the market with the increased complexity in electronic control units (ECUs), high-performance computing (HPC), and more complex electronic architectures in vehicles. The key factors for the demand for these solutions can be attributed to the combined needs for electrification in vehicles, autonomous driving solutions for vehicles, and a "smartphone-like" experience inside the vehicles. As cars contain more than 100 million lines of code, the update mechanism based at the dealerships is no longer feasible. Therefore, the automotive industry is observing a significant increase in investments from the OEMs as well as Tier-1 suppliers in CI/CD solutions designed for the highly safe ecosystem needs specific to the automotive industry.
The shift to SDVs across the board is the key factor behind the rising demand for vehicle software deployment. In the new model, the software controls the car's properties, powers, and operations, regardless of the hardware's life cycle. SDVs are gaining demand in the entire automotive industry, and this creates a quick and huge requirement for platforms that can manage the volume and frequency of updates for systems such as ADAS and engine management that are complicated, just like the powertrain. With this transition, car manufacturers can separate hardware from software development, thus speeding up the introduction of new features to the market.
Stringent Governmental Regulations: A significant vital force is the tough rules imposed by the governments, mainly the UNECE R155 and R156 regulations that are now in place. These laws that have been applied to all new cars from July 2024 require that all manufacturers use a Software Update Management System (SUMS). To keep their cars authorized in the EU, Japan, and South Korea, car makers need to show that each software change is processed in a secure, verifiable, and auditable way. This legal requirement has turned continuous deployment into a necessity for compliance rather than a competitive point, thereby increasing the need for third-party platforms that come with regulatory documentation and cybersecurity features as part of the package.
Along with the development of Electric Vehicles (EVs), there is also a notable push for more such devices that are heavily powered by software for various essential tasks—like Battery Management System (BMS), thermal regulation, and charging optimization. Software updates are quite common to extend the range, shorten the charging time, and increase the efficiency of motors during the lifetime of the vehicle. Since electric vehicles are often the main product platforms for the new digital architectures, the rapid acceptability of electric mobility is projected to continue at very high double-digit rates until 2030, thereby directly linking up with the demand for solid and uninterrupted deployment infrastructure.
Growing Shift towards subscription models: The transition to customer-based revenue and subscription models is prompting OEMs to use continuous deployment. With the support of FoD (Feature-on-Demand) capabilities, for example, the unlocking of heated seats or the performance increase through software, the manufacturers can sell their product even during the vehicle's operational life. This model needs a perfect deployment mechanism that can activate or deactivate features at the individual vehicle level in tune with the consumer's subscription. The potential for high-margin software revenue is drawing the attention of traditional car manufacturers, who are now giving it the highest priority to create reliable deployment pipelines that can facilitate these features securely.
One of the major challenges that the market has to grapple with is the complexity of the architecture and the legacy systems. The majority of the vehicles are still equipped with a mixture of different architectures where dozens of distributed ECUs from different suppliers are involved, which makes it extremely difficult to carry out synchronized deployment. This complexity increases the duration of the software regressions and also the risk of system failure during updates.
Nevertheless, this challenge brings a big opportunity for middleware providers and centralized computing platforms. The automotive industry is slowly moving towards zonal architectures, and that means there will be an increased need for unified deployment solutions capable of hiding the hardware differences, thus letting developers develop once and deploy on multiple vehicle variants and, in that way, reducing operational friction and cost.
February 2025: Samsung and Hyundai Motor reported the successful trial of RedCap (Reduced Capability) in a 5G network, being the first-ever industry partner to achieve this. This is expected to open up new avenues for the deployment market since it will provide a faster and less power-consuming option for data transfer. This can be applied to real-time vehicle diagnostics and software validation, especially in factory and fleet situations.
The market is segmented by vehicle type, deployment model, application, and geography.
By Application: Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems (ADAS)
The ADAS segment represents the most critical application for continuous software deployment due to its direct impact on safety and liability. As ADAS features evolve from Level 2 (partial automation) to Level 3 and above, the software requires frequent updates to refine sensor fusion algorithms, improve object detection in edge cases, and patch security vulnerabilities. The demand for continuous deployment in this segment is driven by the safety-critical nature of the code. A bug in an emergency braking system requires an immediate, fleet-wide fix. Continuous deployment platforms specifically designed for ADAS must support "silent" updates, where software is downloaded in the background and verified before activation to ensure that the vehicle remains operational and safe throughout the update process.
By Vehicle Type: Passenger Vehicles
Passenger vehicles dominate the demand for continuous software deployment, accounting for a significant share of the software-defined vehicle market. This dominance is fueled by intense consumer competition and the rapid adoption of Connected Car technologies. Unlike the commercial sector, where the focus is on utility and uptime, the passenger segment prioritizes the user experience (UX). OEMs use continuous deployment to push infotainment updates, new UI themes, and smartphone integration enhancements to keep the vehicle feeling "new." Furthermore, the high volume of passenger vehicle production allows for better amortization of the fixed costs associated with building a global deployment infrastructure, making it the primary testing ground for next-generation OTA technologies.
In the North American region, there is a great demand for continuous software deployment for vehicles, which is mainly due to the existence of companies such as Tesla that are quick to adopt new technologies, along with GM and Ford's increasingly advanced digital-first approach that is increasing. This has led to a situation where there is a lot of expenditure in research and development for autonomous driving and the selling of services related to cars that are connected to the internet.
The regional market is giving significant attention to the cybersecurity measures. The NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) is becoming more involved in the monitoring of recalls based on software related to safety. All of that has led to the emergence of a market for deployment platforms that can show slow response times for fixing important weaknesses. The trade war between the US and China is also contributing to the trend of shifting towards the use of domestic or US-friendly software and hardware so that the supply chain is not disrupted for a long time.
Continuous software deployment is becoming one of the main drivers of the South American market, along with Export Requirement Compliance. Countries like Brazil are the leading manufacturers in the region, giving the auto market a lot of potential to grow. However, one of the factors for this growth is not as high as it could be is the underdeveloped infrastructure. Demand is concentrated mostly on the modernization of telematics and fleet management systems for agriculture and logistics, which are the most important sectors of the Brazilian economy. Regional OEMs are increasingly looking for solutions that would either be optimized for low-bandwidth or deploy the "differencing" technology to minimize the size of the data transmitted.
The European countries like Germany and France's automotive landscape continues to be the hub of European innovation, with VW, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz carmakers driving forward with software-defined architecture technologies. UN 155/156 standards drive demand in the European automotive sector, with a high percentage of German manufacturers' output exported to regions where such standards apply. There’s high interest in functional safety designed around ISO 26262 standards, with an interest in integrating the pipeline with existing stringent engineering practices in the automotive sector. The regional car owners demonstrate a clear interest in the dual nature of a hybrid model with the flexibility of the cloud and the safety of an on-premises data center with engineering data.
The Middle East and Africa market is currently experiencing an influx in the requirement for sophisticated vehicle technologies as part of the government development schemes like the “Vision 2030” program, including smart cities and autonomous vehicles. The requirement for continuous software deployment is related to the region's development efforts for high-tech infrastructure and domestic EV production (such as Ceer). The market is generally driven by demands for high-performance infotainment solutions and connected services that would specifically serve the regional needs related to the target languages and cultures. Publicly supported development for high-frequency OTA updates using 5G would also contribute to the growth.
The Asia Pacific region represents countries that are among the world’s biggest EV and software-defined vehicle markets collectively. This is due to highly competitive automotive markets like China, Japan, and South Korea that feature technology-integrated brands such as Hyundai, NIO, XPeng, and BYD. The automotive industry sets an extremely fast pace in terms of software development and update cycles, where some manufacturers deliver software updates per week. This results in an substancial demand for highly automated, scalable deployment pipelines. Another significant factor in this region is the regulatory requirements that stipulate all data related to vehicles, such as software update records, must be maintained on local servers. This has resulted in regions fostering a distinct parallel ecosystem of deployment tools and cloud suppliers that operate solely under Chinese regulatory requirements.
List of Companies
Sibros
Sonatus
Aptiv PLC
Continental AG
Geotab Inc.
Robert Bosch GmbH
NXP Semiconductors
Aurora Labs
The competitive dynamics are divided between traditional Tier-1 suppliers developing their software expertise and software orchestration companies. The industry is undergoing a phase of consolidation where traditional firms are taking over software start-ups to overcome the cloud-to-vehicle divide. The strategic imperative is to be able to offer an end-to-end and un-brickable software update solution that adheres to universal safety regulations.
Aptiv PLC
Aptiv has leveraged its leadership position in the migration to SDVs with its Smart Vehicle Architecture (SVA) line. Aptiv concentrates on the so-called "full stack" technology, offering solutions for the high-performance computing hardware and software orchestration layer. Aptiv's competitive edge comes from the capability to combine software deployment and electrical architectures. Since it acquired Wind River, Aptiv has greatly enhanced its competence in mission-critical edge software. This has enabled Aptiv to deploy software that is both very resilient and equipped to manage updates across various operating systems such as Linux, QNX, and Android Automotive.
Continental AG
Continental AG is primarily working on the Automotive Edge Platform (CAEdge), which is an open hardware and software platform that has been jointly developed with Amazon Web Services (AWS). This allows the OEMs to develop, test, and deploy software solutions in vastly less time when compared to conventional solutions. Continental's solution is to provide the workbench for the developers, which will integrate the cloud-based development tool directly into the vehicle fleet. Continental is enabling the use of the virtual twin paradigm to test the software update in the virtual world before it is executed in the physical vehicle, thus avoiding the risk of deployment failures.