Why the Industry Needs a New Conversation About Vehicle Software

Introduction

JOHN: Today, we have a special episode of The Garage introducing our new podcast series. Let’s go! Hello, and welcome to The Garage. Our season one of The Garage has completed, and we’ll be resuming Season Two very soon, and we look forward to sharing with you new episodes to come. But for now, we have something special. We’re launching a new podcast series called Driving Innovation, and I wanted to introduce the host of that show and tell you a little bit more about what we’ll be doing in that podcast.

Meet Sanjay Khatri

JOHN: Joining me today is the host of Driving Innovation, my good friend and colleague Sanjay Khatri. Sanjay, welcome to The Garage.

SANJAY: Hi, John. I’m glad to be here.

JOHN: Thanks, Sanjay. And we’re, I’m thrilled to work with you, and I know you very well, but for the purposes of our guests, I’d love you to tell us a little bit about yourself and your background.

SANJAY: Well, I’m originally from Nepal, I moved here about 30 years ago. My background is in computer engineering. I also have an MBA. And over those 20 years of my professional career, I’ve been working in and around communications technologies, software, cloud, connected devices, and lately, I’ve been working in the field of connected cars. And now, more recently, around software-defined vehicles. So I’m super excited about the whole technology trend that’s happening in the automotive industry.

JOHN: It’s been wonderful to work with you. You have such a fantastic and diverse background. You’re a huge asset to us. I also challenge my guests to tell us something, some interesting fact about themselves, so we get to know you a little bit. Give us some interesting nugget of fact about you.

SANJAY: Well, I’m a huge mountain biker, and I’ve been biking all around these hills here in the Bay Area, up in Tahoe, and more recently, I went on a super biking trip in Nepal, and actually biked in the foothills of the Himalayas.

JOHN: It’s funny, because when we talked about this the other day, and you said the foothills of the Himalayas. Well, we think that what you call the foothills of the Himalayas, we call a mountain in this country. It’s pretty funny.

SANJAY: Yes, they are very steep, and typically we’re talking about nine or 10,000 feet. Yeah those are mountains here. Yes, yes. Well, we consider them foothills of the Himalayas.

JOHN: It’s all relative.

SANJAY: Yes.

JOHN: Fantastic.

Introducing the Driving Innovation Podcast

JOHN: So I’d love you to tell us about this new series we’re kicking off, which is called Driving Innovation. Tell us where we got that name, and what are the kinds of things we plan to cover on that? And why are we creating a different series?

SANJAY: Well, we want to go a little bit behind the covers and take a look at some of the key technologies and solutions and even products that are helping fuel this drive towards software-led innovation in vehicles.

JOHN: Yeah, in The Garage, we try to talk about high-level topics and some big picture thought-leadership things, but we try not to get too into the weeds. But we realized there’s a need to cover some of these deep technical topics, and we wanted to make a space for that. What are some of the topics you expect to cover in Driving Innovation?

SANJAY: Well, we’re trying to connect all of the different dots that make up this new phenomenon called software-defined vehicles. So everything from modern networking technologies, to new ways of using data for insights to drive product improvements, to drive new user experiences, and also using the flexibility and the malleability of software to create new experiences very, very quickly, which traditionally hasn’t been the case in the automotive industry.

JOHN: In these episodes, sometimes you’ll be the main speaker but in other cases, we’ll also bring expert technical guests from Sonatus and other places.

SANJAY: Absolutely. Just here at Sonatus alone, we have an embarrassment of riches in terms of the people, the technical background, and just the personalities that they bring to the table, so we’re hoping to tap into that rich resource to be able to bring some of these topics to life.

JOHN: It’s exciting. We’ve had a fantastic response to The Garage, and we’re really excited to kick this off, and I’m so excited to have you as our host. I know you’re going to do a fantastic job.

Summary

JOHN: Our first episode will be landing soon, and so look for that. And I hope you’ll be very excited when you see the episode because we have a fancy new opening sequence, which really kind of talks about this idea of looking under the covers, and that’s really the metaphor we’re using for this series of Driving Innovation. So glad to have you Sanjay, and I look forward to this series.

SANJAY: Thank you.

JOHN: Thank you for joining us in this special mini-episode of The Garage. Season Two will start up again soon and we look forward to sharing new content with you, but until then, check out Driving Innovation on Sonatus’s YouTube channel or wherever you get your podcasts.