Not too many years ago, cars started appearing at technology trade shows like MWC in Barcelona and CES in Las Vegas as a result of the increasing electronics content in vehicles – from connectivity to cockpits.
However, last week, at the IAA Mobility show in Munich, it was evident that the automotive ecosystem has its own dedicated show, and there’s no need to ride on the back of mobile communications or consumer electronics shows. In Munich, the entire ecosystem, from chips to batteries to tier ones and car OEMs, was all there.
If you wanted cars, you could see the latest cars from OEMs like BMW, Mercedes, Volkswagen, BYD, XPENG and others; if you wanted chips, you could talk to a handful of the key chip companies like Qualcomm, Infineon Technologies and STMicroelectronics; and then there were the platforms like AWS and Google in their quest for growing their automotive market dominance, plus everything from displays to batteries.
And among the visitors, there were both trade visitors and families. I happened to hear one father and young son walk up to AWS booth staff and ask them to explain to his son what was going on here, referring to a graphic panel showing the cloud to car infrastructure.
It really took me back to the heady days of visiting car shows with my father back in the 1970s and 1980s, and being in awe of the latest cars and their aerodynamics and performance, whether they were Lamborghini, Lotus, or Ferrari. Now the kids are in awe of the technologies within the cars, such as the IVI (in-vehicle infotainment) systems.
The backbone of future mobility: SDVs and data-driven insights
A major theme I took away from the many conversations at the show is that the backbone of future mobility is the software-defined vehicle (SDV) and data-driven insights that help deliver better user experiences. On the latter, users can benefit if automakers and their tech providers understand that customer experience and not get carried away with tech for tech’s sake. As Nakul Duggal, Qualcomm Technologies’ group manager for automotive, said during a media briefing at the show, “You can build all the tech in the world, but the customer experience is most important.”
At the show, vendors talked about addressing the complexity of integration of hardware and software, the cybersecurity risks from being connected, enabling safe over-the-air (OTA) updates and feature enhancement, reliability and testing, and consumer acceptance. Integration is quite a challenge, given the complexity of vehicle development today, with the compute and AI needed at the edge AI to deliver ADAS, IVI, and driver experience features more efficiently.
In a briefing at the show, Anshuman Saxena, VP for product management at Qualcomm Technologies, noted, “Not everyone understands integration of the system.” He said that this was the reason solutions like its Snapdragon Ride Pilot automated driving system, co-developed with BMW, provide a way forward for other automakers to implement automated driving. And at the show, Qualcomm and Valeo announced an expansion of their collaboration to integrate Qualcomm’s SoC and AD (automated driving) software stack into production-ready solutions for ADAS features and SDVs.
Conversational AI demo
One of the most impressive demos I saw at the show was on the Cerence AI booth, where they demonstrated conversational edge AI for automakers running its CaLLM Edge embedded small language model on SiMa.ai’s Modalix machine learning SoC. While some conversational edge AI systems can appear hit and miss, this one seemed to respond to a barrage of questions in real-time quickly.
According to Cerence’s press release, its xUI’s multi-modal capabilities allow in-car AI assistants to understand the world around the vehicle and seamlessly process a broader range of user input. “Powered by CaLLM, Cerence xUI enables drivers and passengers to interact naturally through voice and touch, combined with input methods like vision detection – even using multiple video feeds in parallel.”
Around the show: conversations with NXP, Arm, Sonatus, Valeo, Samsung Semiconductor
I had many conversations at the show, such as with Andrea Gallo, CEO of RISC-V International who seemed very pleased with the advances of RISC-V in automotive and SDVs that were talked about at the co-located RISC-V Automotive conference in Munich (see article here), and Sameer Wasson, CEO of MIPS, on some of the progress they are making and what’s coming up in physical AI.
The ones I captured on video are shown below.
Lars Reger, CTO, NXP Semiconductors, on future mobility and robotics
Lars Reger talks about the critical role of semiconductors in modern vehicles, particularly in enabling advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) and vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication. He stressed the importance of security and reliability in automotive-grade chips, given the increasing complexity of software-defined vehicles. Reger also touched on the need for scalable solutions to meet the diverse needs of automakers.
Dipti Vachani, SVP for automotive, Arm, on the importance of ecosystems and partnerships
Dipti Vachani discusses Arm’s role in the automotive ecosystem, particularly in smart mobility and SDVs, as well as global trends in the deployment of automotive ADAS and systems that are driving the industry towards higher levels of smartness and autonomy. She also discusses the growing demand for compute power in vehicles, driven by AI workloads and autonomous driving, and the importance of open ecosystems and partnerships to accelerate innovation in mobility.
Jeff Chou, CEO and co-founder, Sonatus: using AI to unlock new revenue streams
Jeff Chou discusses how automotive companies and their suppliers integrate products like those from Sonatus into their vehicles to deliver new features, unlock new revenue streams, improve reliability, achieve predictive maintenance, capture valuable data, and improve the automotive experience for their customers. He also talks about the company’s latest product, Sonatus AI Director, a platform that enables OEMs to deploy AI at the vehicle’s edge. The new product provides OEMs and suppliers with an end-to-end toolchain for model training, validation, optimization, and deployment, while seamlessly integrating with vehicle data, executing models in isolated environments, and providing cloud-based remote monitoring of model performance.
Derek de Bono, vice president for SDVs, Valeo: collaboration with automakers is key
Derek de Bono discusses Valeo’s announcements at IAA Mobility, including those with Qualcomm, Momenta, and Capgmini, and what key things he and his company see in the SDV ecosystem around the world. He talks about Valeo’s focus on electrification and ADAS technologies, emphasizing their commitment to sustainability and safety, and highlights the company’s innovations in lidar sensors and thermal management systems, which are critical for electric and autonomous vehicles. De Bono also stressed the importance of collaboration with automakers to bring these technologies to market.
Zin-U Pak, Samsung Semiconductor on automotive OLED displays
Zin-U Pak, vice president and head of the display business at Samsung Semiconductor, talks about Samsung’s new automotive OLED displays, which debuted at IAA Mobility 2025. He presented a futuristic “digital cockpit” featuring multiple OLED applications, from moving cluster displays to rooftop screens. He also talks about some of the challenges of deploying OLED displays in automotive applications
9/15/2025 | Elektrik - Elektronik Mühendisliği
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