Steve Crumb of COVESA

0:00 Introduction to The Garage Podcast

Today in The Garage, recording live from the COVESA all member meeting in Berlin, Germany, we have Steve Crumb from COVESA. Let’s go! Welcome to The Garage. I’m John Heinlein, chief marketing officer from Sonatus.

We’re recording live at the COVESA all member meeting in Berlin, Germany. And my guest today is the executive director of COVESA, Steve Crumb. Steve, welcome to The Garage. Thank you.

Glad to be here. You know, Sonatus has been a longtime member of COVESA, and we’ve known each other for a long time. I’m excited that we were able to record here. So by the way, thank you for hosting us and excited to have you on the podcast as well.

Absolutely. My pleasure. Yeah. So what start by telling us about you personally,

and then we’ll get into COVESA as well.

0:47 Introducing Steve Crumb

Well, I’ve been the executive director of COVESA for since its inception, when it was the GENIVI Alliance sixteen years ago. I helped start it, and I’ve been the, executive director, ever since. And, it’s been a great ride. It’s been a privilege to serve the automotive industry, over those sixteen years and to see an organization like COVESA, you know, grow and prosper and and really impact the automotive industry.

That’s great. Tell us about your background a little bit. Yeah. Well, I started out in in computer science like, most people my age that were interested in something new.

And and, I jumped into a a number of different programming jobs in the early days, big mainframes, you know, back then. And and, eventually, I had the privilege of of, going to work for a friend of mine at the University of Illinois in the supercomputer center, and that got me at kind of the bleeding edge of of the Internet. I didn’t invent the Internet, but I was kind of there when it was being invented. Yeah.

And, that allowed me to, to to move around not only in academic circles, but also in corporate circles. Ended up, working at Motorola for a number of years. Yeah. And you have to tell us a fun fact about you.

Well, the fun fact is related to Motorola, and it does date me quite a lot, because I was the person that, installed the very first Internet based, email server for Motorola Corporation. So that that really dates me. A little bit, but that’s that is a fun that is a fun fact. And my fun fact – I always try to have a fun fact back to our guest – My fun fact is when I was at Stanford, in getting my Ph.D.

at Stanford, my office mates were two guys named Jerry Yang and Dave Filo, who were the founders of Yahoo. Okay. So there was a period of time when I had the root password to the Yahoo machine. And so I thought that maybe that was a fun fact.

That is a fun fact. That is a fun fact. But, anyway, had had I gone with those guys, we would be retired on my boat and having wine right now, but I didn’t do that. So thank you for joining us.

2:41 Overview of COVESA and Its Mission

So now tell us about COVESA a little bit more, about the mission of COVESA and, kind of who the members are and so on. The mission of COVESA is very simple. We’re we’re all about accelerating the value of of connected vehicles today and and in the future. We do that in a number of ways.

We built a a global collaborative community. We’re we’re we do everything in the open. We’ve strongly believe and and have a had a fifteen year history of open collaboration, open source licensing of all of our, deliverables. We feel like that is the way to stimulate innovation, to push technologies out into the industry, to impact, things like regulatory issues and and things that are happening in in Europe, such as the the EU data act and so forth.

And so COVESA is is decidedly open. It’s it’s a it’s a community of of great members like Sonatus and and others who come together. And and, first of all, think about business challenges. We do not create technologies just for the sake of creating technology.

Whenever we charter a new group or a new project, we always say, what is the business challenge that we’re trying to solve? And then we launch the technology project after that. And and and most often, we do solve it. And so COVESA is all about, business and technology, hand in hand, solving challenges for the connected vehicle ecosystem.

Yeah. We’ve had some incredible sessions here at the member meeting, both business and technical kind of running in parallel. Some great discussions. We’ve talked about AI.

4:06 Vehicle Signal Specification Explained

We’ve talked about data. We’ve talked about connected services, many other things. One of the things that is so important to Sonatus and, one of the key initiatives you’re working on is the vehicle signal specification. I wonder if you can kind of introduce that to us and say what problem you’re trying to solve.

Sure. Yeah. Vehicle signal specification is solving a very big business problem, and that is the, that every OEM in the world has a different way of describing their vehicle data in their vehicle and even in the cloud. And even some OEMs across that are multi brand OEMs, they even describe vehicle data differently brand by brand.

So what that does is it just introduces a level of complexity, a level of cost, a need for translation layers to get the data into a usable form that they can build insights around, develop new features, and and and connected services around. So what vehicle signal specification is, very simply, it’s a common language. It’s a way of describing consistently vehicle data such as engine speed, in a consistent way that can be deployed across any adopting OEM, across any adopting brand, and even in the fleet context to be able to use as a way of normalizing data flowing from multiple OEMs and multiple vehicle types, commercial vehicles, fleet vehicles, two wheelers, anything.

The heterogeneity is such a problem, and, you know, we see it firsthand. Even with within a single OEM, you can have differences, and so there’s a real value in creating that. We’ve adopted VSS. We’ve been using it for a while now.

And right now, at the expo and this year, we’ve been showing off a number of AI applications as well. That benefit from the ability to, describe, for example, signals of interest. In natural language and using VSS as an intermediary language to allow you to take that common inquiry common query and use it across different vehicles. Its very powerful.

Yeah. No. I think so. And and it’s it’s funny because, you know, we might get into adoption in the adoption question here in a bit, but it’s rare that I I do not get a phone call each week from a new organization in the in the ecosystem.

And as I begin to explore what they’re about, what they’re doing with their products and services, they say, yeah. We’ve we’ve been using VSS for a long time. And so there’s all of these, you know Hidden. Hidden adapters out there, you know, ranging from telematics service providers to, you know, even silicon providers.

I went into a a private demonstration of a very large and well known silicon provider, at at the CES show earlier this year, and they were they said, “Oh, you’re COVESA. We love VSS.” And so it’s like, okay. If we let’s keep doing what we’re doing.

So, yeah, so on adoption, what what’s your sense of the adoption level, and what are the next opportunities you see? I I think the the the opportunities, are as as our board likes to likes to say or some of the OEMs on our board like to say, there’s there’s the producers of data and there’s the consumers of data. The consumers of data love VSS Yeah. Because they all they have to do is talk one language.

Right? The producers of the data would like to get there, but it’s a challenge because they have pretty big anchors of legacy information. We’ve always described our our vehicle data this way. Right.

And and it’s actually overhead to instill a new way of or a new language of describing that vehicle data even though if they think midterm, long term, it’s gonna save them money over time because it does things like ease development cost lower development costs. They do not have to they can go out and they can get a new developer off the market, and that developer does not have to understand everything about the vehicle. They just need to understand the data abstraction of how they they you can you can hit on, signals like like like vehicle, speed or or braking or all sorts of things like that.

So it just simplifies things. And the design of it is really is really intuitive. I think having it hierarchical in terms of the kinds of vehicle subsystems is there. Mhmm.

And I think it’s also you know, one might fear that that kind of thing is constraining, but the reality is it’s designed in an way that OEMs still have freedom of action, to use use things common where it’s common, but also use things special for them when they need to. And I I hope that that’ll help, ease adoption as well. Oh, I completely agree. And and the interesting pickup that we’re getting, is from the heavy duty truck OEMs who are facing, especially the European ones, are facing a antiquated fleet management standard of that describes their data in their their heavy duty trucks and in their buses.

And they’re needing to to to take a quantum leap forward Yeah. In the evolution of that. They’ve they’re looking seriously at at using VSS as that quantum leap to bring their data management into the into this into the century. Yeah.

8:59 COVESA Initiatives in Commercial Vehicle Management

I mean, VSS is not broadly applied into heavy heavy vehicles to date, but we’re seeing a lot of, interest in that as well, and I think there’s a huge opportunity. Yeah. Huge opportunity for sure. What are some other initiatives that COVESA is working on that you’re you’re focusing on?

Well, I mentioned, commercial vehicle and fleet management. There’s a lot of pull from fleet organizations who have to, at the end of the day, pay to get that vehicle data in all these different formats and make it into something that’s useful to them. And so instead of doing something in a proprietary way, they’re saying, let’s open let’s let’s adopt an open way of doing this. And so they they see the attractiveness of VSS, for sure.

And and the the commercial and and fleet, management expert group is is working with those fleet managers. They’re working with the heavy duty, and commercial vehicle, OEMs, and they’re saying, look. Let’s let’s pave a way for the future. It may be painful in the short run, but let’s let’s get there.

9:55 AOSP for Android Development

And so that’s another significant initiative. How can we maximize the potential of VSS in the commercial vehicle and fleet management space? Another main activity that we’re doing isn’t so much data related, although there is a relationship to data, and and that is the Android Automotive AOSP automotive AOSP, app framework expert group. And there it’s a very simple mission.

If I’m a Spotify and I want to write an application, that can be, be deployed in any OEM without having to rewrite it. Right. Today, I can’t do that. Right.

Today, I can I can put it in the Android store for those who are adopting Android, but that’s only available for or for OEMs who are adopting Google Automotive Services, which there are more and more OEMs who are not doing that? And now those OEMs have to get Spotify to write that same application many different ways. So what that group is trying to do is let’s get rid of the fragmentation. Let’s make it simple for app developers to produce really quality apps Right.

That that works safely in an automotive context. Right. I mean, you say it’s kind of a cousin of data. It’s not directly data, but it’s this portability aspect, once again, of how do we do better reuse.

It’s really important. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. And and the the data component is important as well because Android makes available their their vehicle properties as as sort of their data model.

Right? We’re in the process of mapping data properties to VSS. Right. And so, if we do that successfully, then, we can use the same, applications and the same APIs that hit on VSS for Android applications as well.

That’s great.

11:33 Future Plans and Global Expansion of COVESA

The all member meeting is there’s tons of people here, and you have events all around the world. What’s next for COVESA? What are you focusing on coming up?

What are you focusing on? Well, yeah. I mean, we’re we’re actually in the in the midst of planning to do a all member meeting in Asia. We’ve had a lot of pull, but we’ve never done that before.

Well, we’ve done it when we were in we’re Genevieve, but not since we have have rework rescoped into into COVESA. We’re excited that Honda just recently joined joined our board of directors. Nissan joined as a member. We’re getting some some nibbles from other large OEMs in in Japan and and suppliers.

And, also, Hyundai Motor had has been a a long standing, member of ours. And so we feel like it’s, it it’s time to to consider going and having a presence there, engage the community there. So that’s kind of a new thing for us, and we’re excited about that. We don’t have the date yet, but, that that’s coming down the pike And we know that VSS is a great tool and a great approach, but we’re also actively seeking input from the OEMs for gaps that they see in VSS that need to be bridged or need to be overcome in order to position, VSS as an adoptable, model for production vehicles.

12:49 Gathering Input for VSS Improvement

And so we’re working very, very hard with OEMs to gather that input. We had a great, gap document from Ford that we’re working through and other OEMs that we’re we’re trying to to bring in that that useful information to make VSS even more a valuable offering in the marketplace. That’s fantastic. To find more about COVESA, your website is covesa.global

That’s right. So it’s a little confusing. So make sure you go to COVESA dot global. You can find out more.

13:16 Conclusion and Call to Action

There’s specifications online, tons of information, and the many, many, meetings, throughout the year and regionally and in all member meeting. Steve, thank you for joining us. Again, my pleasure. Thank you for having me here.

If you like what you’re seeing on the garage, please like and subscribe to see more episodes like this. We want to thank COVESA for letting us film at their event, and we look forward to seeing you in another episode of The Garage very soon.