Digital Cockpit To Be Mainstream by 2030 Due to Major Restructure of The Connected Automotive Infotainment Architecture

Although still in the early stages, all-digital display-based dashboards will replace analog clusters, making the entire cockpit digital and incorporated into a single Engine Control Unit (ECU). Global tech market advisory firm, ABI Research, forecasts that between 2020 and 2030, 461 million vehicles with head-unit and digital dashboard displays and 115 million vehicles with digital cockpit architecture will be shipped.

Next-generation infotainment will include multiple high-resolution displays with shared content, Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based virtual assistants that provide a personalized environment, digital dashboards, video, and gaming streaming, over the air (OTA) updates, and Augmented Reality (AR)-based Heads-Up displays. “As a substantial amount of information must be processed and rendered to enable these functionalities, vehicles will require robust and flexible hardware solutions with high-performance graphics and communication channels between different tasks and displays. Therefore, modern cars will have digital cockpit architecture with powerful computing,” explains Maite Bezerra, Smart Mobility & Automotive Research Analyst at ABI Research.

In the digital cockpit architecture, infotainment, rear-seat entertainment, instrument clusters, and even ADAS functionalities are incorporated into a single ECU with powerful processors to achieve the computing needs of all the domains and drive multiple high-resolution displays simultaneously. These powerful processors - offered by TI, NXP, Qualcomm, NVIDIA, and Renesas - provide additional capacity for software updates after the car has been sold, enabling monetization of a growing installed base of connected cars. Although digital cockpits are expected to lower production costs in the mid-term, deploying a centralized and upgradable architecture requires considerable up-front investments; infotainment production processes have to be remodeled, and achieving economies of scale and experience takes time. Currently available in a few luxury vehicles (e.g., Mercedes A-Class and TATA Harrier), digital cockpits will start to filter down into lower-tiered automobiles from 2025 and will be featured in 39 million vehicles shipping in 2030. Visteon, Harman, Pioneer, and Continental are among the major Tier Ones offering this architecture. 

From a general perspective, displays are getting larger and resolution is increasing accordingly. In between 2020 and 2025, 105 million vehicles shipped will have displays ranging from 10 inches to 12 inches, and 109 million will have high definition displays. Currently only offered by Tesla, video and gaming streaming will gain momentum with worldwide 5G network deployments - as low latency rendering is a prerequisite for immersive gaming user experience - and the rise of connected vehicles. Announcements from automotive-grade entertainment middleware providers, such as Cinemo and ACCESS,  indicate OEM deployments of the functionality from 2021. ABI Research anticipates that 20% of vehicles with head-unit displays sold in Europe will feature these capabilities in 2030. Augmented Reality heads-up displays will debut in 2021 on Mercedes S-Class 2021, and should remain a niche functionality in luxury vehicles.

 “The next-generation onboard automotive computing architecture will be based on an integrated and interconnected network of processors designed to provide fail-safe support for one another. Moreover, vehicles will be more connected and have more integrated ADAS content into the digital cockpit,” Bezerra concludes.

These findings are from ABI Research’s New Automotive Infotainment Architectures application analysis report. This report is part of the company’s Smart Mobility & Automotive Research Service, which includes research, data, and ABI Insights. Application Analysis reports present in-depth analysis on key market trends and factors for a specific technology.