The Dispatch: Week 37
This week in SDV: Qualcomm & BMW team up for hands-free driving, VW Group invests €500M in AI, Aston Martin to adopt smart tires, and HERE partners with AWS.
SDV Insider | September 11, 2025
SDV momentum hit both the show floor at IAA Mobility 2025 and the cloud this week — from hands-free driving at scale to new AI-driven partnerships and toolchains that shrink time-to-value for vehicle software. 🚗
🚀 Top Story
Qualcomm teams up with BMW for hands-free driving
BMW debuted Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Ride Pilot in the Neue Klasse iX3 — a Level 2+ system validated across 60+ countries and 300M real-world test miles. Crucially, Qualcomm is making the platform available to other OEMs and Tier-1s, not just BMW, signaling a push toward shared ADAS stacks.
Insider Take: A global, safety-validated off-the-shelf ADAS stack will certainly pressure vertically integrated OEMs and speeds standardized SDV feature delivery.
📈 Industry Pulse
Aston Martin adopts Pirelli Cyber Tyre tech — Embedded sensors feed real-time tire data into vehicle systems, bolstering performance, safety, and software-driven feature sets.
Hyundai launches Next Urban Mobility Alliance — A Seoul-based public–private alliance to co-develop AI-powered mobility ecosystems, linking with Hyundai’s Shucle platform and Autonomous Vehicle Foundry. Shows how city-scale SDV pilots hinge on shared data and ops frameworks.
Komatsu taps Applied Intuition for unified autonomy platform — A central brain for next-gen mining equipment enabling OTA delivery and autonomy from assist to full self-drive; highlights off-highway as a proving ground for SDV economics.
VW Group invests in AI to reshape mobility — A €500M push into AI-enabled development, with SDV applications spanning intelligent assistants, design automation, and mobility services.
Qualcomm and Harman partner on generative AI — Collaboration integrates on-device LLMs with cockpit platforms, aiming to personalize in-car experiences and speed feature deployment.
Telenor IoT launches “IoT Drive” — New connectivity suite tailored to SDV lifecycles, ensuring OTA reliability and subscription service continuity.
🤖 Tech & Innovation Spotlight
HERE and AWS roll out SDV Accelerator — Pre-integrated cloud and mapping stack designed to cut prototyping cycles and improve safety of connected rollouts.
Cadence acquires Hexagon’s D&E unit for $3.16B — Expands multiphysics simulation tools critical for SDV design and validation.
👀 What We’re Reading
Capgemini: Software in Automotive report — Explores how software is redefining the vehicle lifecycle, stressing cloud-native development and agile ops as core differentiators.
SDV market trends shaped by industry shift — Report highlights rapid OEM and Tier-1 investments, forecasting double-digit CAGR as SDV architectures displace legacy E/E stacks.
👏 That’s a Wrap!
SDV momentum is broadening: from AI-powered alliances to safety-validated stacks and smarter tires. The road to software-centric mobility is accelerating. Got thoughts or scoops? Reply here or email us: editor@sdvinsider.com.
Until Next Time,
— The SDV Insider Crew 🚗