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In 2019, Volkswagen Group had a daring plan. After proving that it made sense to make use of a number of widespread architectures to design a diversified vary of automobiles throughout a number of totally different manufacturers, it determined to use that very same method to software program. It arrange a brand new division and moved your entire VW Group’s software program improvement beneath that roof, with a mandate to create a brand new unified automotive working system for future VW Group EVs.

In actual fact, the division needed to work on three totally different techniques concurrently. Known as E³ for end-to-end structure, E³ 1.1 could be the software program to run on VW Group’s MEB platform for mass-market EVs. Vehicles utilizing this software program are actually on the highway, together with the VW ID.4, Audi This fall e-tron, and naturally, everybody’s favourite, ID. Buzz. E³ 1.2 is destined for extra upmarket EVs from Audi and Porsche, utilizing the upcoming PPE platform. And that unified OS, referred to as E³ 2.0, would present up mid-decade in a brand new, unified platform throughout your entire VW Group.

It hasn’t precisely gone easily. In 2020 VW changed Christian Senger as the top of the division—referred to as Automotive.Software program.Org, now referred to as CARIAD—with Dirk Hilgenberg. By 2022, issues with CARIAD’s improvement and buggy software program for the launch of the ID.Three and ID.Four EVs noticed VW Group hearth its chairman, Herbert Diess, together with a number of stories of delays to future group automobiles, together with the electrical Porsche Macan. The division value VW Group greater than $2 billion final yr within the course of.