Eclipse SDV and Germany’s Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA) have expanded a cross-industry memorandum on open-source software for software-defined vehicles to 32 companies, up from 11 when the group launched in June 2025, as carmakers and suppliers chase lower costs and faster development cycles.
The expanded collaboration was announced at CES in Las Vegas today, where the industry is pitching software and AI as a route out of slow product progress and rising complexity.
Under the enlarged MoU, participants back an “automotive-grade” open-source ecosystem housed within the Eclipse Software Defined Vehicle (SDV) Working Group.
The stated goal is to reduce duplicated effort on software that does not differentiate brands, while improving interoperability across suppliers and vehicle platforms.
Eclipse SDV and VDA said the initiative targets up to a 40% reduction in development, integration and maintenance effort for non-differentiating software, and up to 30% faster time to market through shared components.
“The growing participation in this collaboration reflects a clear global shift toward open innovation in the automotive industry,” Eclipse Foundation executive director Mike Milinkovich said, arguing that trusted open-source foundations are increasingly seen as necessary for safe, connected vehicles.
VDA managing director Dr Marcus Bollig said joint development of non-differentiating software should allow manufacturers and suppliers to concentrate spending and engineering time on “unique, customer-centric experiences”.
New signatories named by Eclipse SDV included Stellantis, Traton, Schaeffler, Infineon and Qualcomm, alongside a broader list spanning consultancies, Tier 1 suppliers and software firms such as Accenture, Capgemini, Elektrobit, LG Electronics, QNX and Red Hat. Founding participants include BMW, Bosch, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen and ZF, among others.
At the centre of the work is Eclipse S-CORE, described as an open-source reference software stack and tooling environment intended to support certifiable, production-ready automotive software.
Eclipse SDV said S-CORE reached its first public release (version 0.5) in November 2025, with a fuller release planned in 2026 aimed at vehicle programmes that are expected to reach the market by 2030 at the latest.
Eclipse SDV said the broader aim is to create a sustained, vendor-neutral development model that reduces fragmentation, improves long-term maintainability and lowers the burden of building safety-critical software across the supply chain.
