DesignCon 2025 Drive World Sessions You Won’t Want to MissDesignCon 2025 Drive World Sessions You Won’t Want to Miss

The upcoming DesignCon show at the Santa Clara Convention Center, January 28 through 30, includes 16 Drive World sessions that discuss technical issues of specific interest to the auto industry.

They are conveniently all located in the adjacent ballrooms G and H and run consecutively, so that there are no scheduling conflicts between them.

There is a broad choice of topics to discuss finely detailed subjects such as the process for degassing holes in BGA package design and for testing ripple current for design considerations.

A few of the panels stand out as especially noteworthy, so I point those out here:

EV Options: BEV vs HEV vs EREV

4:45 PM Tuesday, January 28 

There has been quite a bit of debate recently on the pros and cons of Battery EVs (BEVs), Hybrid EVs (HEVs), and Extended Range EVs (EREVs). What use cases are best suited for each of these types of EV?  How should EV manufacturers divide their product offerings between these three technologies?  Will one of these technologies come to dominate the EV market?  Or is there a place for all three in the future of EVs? This panel discussion will gather experts to share their opinions and predictions on these questions and more.”

This panel is moderated by Clint O'Conner, co-founder, Business Development at True Balancing LLC. O’Conner has a 35-year career managing the development of new products and technologies across a broad spectrum of industries from consumer electronics to automotive to medical to aerospace.  For the past seven years, he says he has been living, eating, sleeping, and breathing battery management technology.

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Accelerating Next-Gen Vehicle Design through a Standardized Architecture

8:00 AM Wednesday, January 29

The automotive industry is rapidly evolving towards the era of the software-defined vehicle (SDV). This shift is heavily influenced by innovations from new Electric Vehicle (EV) providers, who use efficient modern architectures to enable unique functionalities and bring vehicles to market faster. 

Yet the transition from traditional to modern vehicle design is massively complex: Large numbers of ECUs in the vehicle coupled with the corresponding surge in processing code, plus requirements for backward compatibility to work with specific legacy platforms and applications as well as future-forward updates. The level of customization needed to accommodate multiple software platforms connected across many ECUs has slowed down progress. 

System designers can follow the lead of EV innovators who have adopted a standards-based architecture that can streamline development, simplify access to critical interfaces, and enable interoperability between components and suppliers. This architecture is based on the open Data Distribution Service (DDS) standard which enables code portability and system scalability. 

Related:Upgrade Your Engineering Know-How at DesignCon

This talk will discuss the challenges of using traditional development approaches in modern vehicle design. It will introduce a standards-based architecture that is popular in EV production programs, and provide an introductory technical overview of how it can be applied to modern SDV development.

This panel is moderated by Stan Schneider, CEO at Real-Time Innovations (RTI). RTI is the world’s largest software framework provider for autonomous systems.  RTI software runs nearly 2000 projects including the largest power plants in North America, the Canadian Air Traffic Control system, NASA's launch control system, nearly all Navy ships, GE HealthCare's hospital device networks, Siemens wind turbine farms, trains, and metro control systems, and over 250 autonomous vehicle designs. Stan serves on the board of the Autonomous Vehicle Computing Consortium (AVCC) and the board of the Teloperation Consortium.

Solving the Challenge of Software Interoperability in Autonomous and ADAS Systems

11:15AM Thursday, January 30 

Modern vehicles consist of a multitude of complex software systems that control everything from basic engine functions to advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). This diversity creates significant interoperability challenges, as each component often uses different protocols, standards, and data formats. Interoperability issues are costly and can significantly delay development timelines. 

System interoperability requires the timely, accurate exchange of data between software components. Ineffective software system communication can result in suboptimal performance, or worse, safety-critical failures.  

One approach that is rapidly gaining traction for vehicle software system interoperability is through a data-oriented communication architecture using DDS. Data Distribution Service (DDS) is an international open standard that enables data interoperability through a data bus that abstracts away the physical connectivity details, allowing software components to communicate regardless of the underlying hardware. This approach decouples the data from the applications, providing flexibility, portability, and scalability.  

This session will discuss the challenges of software system interoperability and introduce data-oriented communication architecture so that software components can be developed independently, updated incrementally, and sourced from a supplier ecosystem. It will include case studies that show how the approach can enhance the functionality, safety, and efficiency of ADAS systems. 

The moderator is Rajive Joshi, Principal Solution Architect at Real-Time Innovations (RTI). Dr. Joshi is also Chair of the Software Portability Working Group at AVCC and Chair of the Communications Task Group at the IIC. He loves building software systems and has contributed to RTI’s products, open-source software, customer projects, and several patents. His expertise includes software system architecture for safe and secure autonomous systems, distributed real-time embedded systems, robotics, sensor data fusion, software development, and project leadership.

Resurrecting “Dead” Tesla Batteries with Advanced Battery Management Technology

3:00PM Thursday, January 30

A set of used Tesla Model Y battery modules had states of health ranging from “pretty good” to “dead”.  Applying an advanced battery management technology to the Tesla modules increased the SOH of the modules and, most notably, resurrected the “dead” modules – bringing them back to a viable SOH and significantly extending their life. This technology can be applied to any battery to improve SOH and extend life. Clint O'Conner, from True Balancing, LLC also moderates this panel.

These panels look fascinating, so you won’t want to miss them, but also be sure to check out the dozen other panels on various automotive topics that are conveniently in the same rooms at the convention center.