• Reduced system test bench costs by 50% with standardized virtual infrastructure
• Improved internal and third-party collaboration with remote test bench access
• Improve test bench setup time from days to hours

Simplifying and automating component testing for electric vehicles

The Volkswagen Group (VW) is the largest car manufacturer in Europe. The group's mission is to create sustainable mobility solutions for current and future generations, with a focus on electric vehicles, digital mobility services and autonomous driving.

The Electric Development department, part of the VW Group’s Passenger Cars Research and Development (R&D) department, tests and enhances the technologies that support intelligent, connected vehicles. The department uses test benches, environments used to verify designs or models, to test and adjust electronic control units (ECUs), the embedded systems that control a vehicle’s electrical systems or subsystems.

However, several factors made it challenging for the VW Group’s teams to complete this work. Each time an ECU is updated or added, all related tests must be repeated and integration becomes more complex. Additionally, a lack of on-demand provisioning for integration test environments created delays. 

After defining a long-term project vision, gathering base requirements, and investigating different technical approaches, the group turned to Red Hat, a trusted vendor, for a solution. 

The group engaged Red Hat Open Innovation Labs through a 12-week hands-on residency where Red Hat consultants and VW employees developed and tested the core of VW’s future software integration platform. This platform supports early integration testing of software functions at scale using Red Hat OpenShift, an enterprise Kubernetes container platform. The new architecture also includes several other Red Hat technologies. Red Hat Quay enhances OpenShift with a private container registry that stores, builds, and deploys container images. Red Hat Runtimes provides a comprehensive products, tools, and components to effectively develop and maintain cloud-native applications. Messaging is managed by Red Hat AMQ, a lightweight platform for real-time integration. The group uses Red Hat Virtualization, a software-defined platform, to virtualize workloads running in Red Hat Enterprise Linux, a consistent operating system foundation for hybrid cloud and traditional infrastructure. 

To help the VW Group’s teams learn more about these new technologies and related concepts, Open Innovation Labs includes Red Hat Learning Subscription, an all-access pass to Red Hat Training.

This new approach includes a continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) pipeline that improves efficiency and has helped the group reduce test bench costs by 50%. Additionally the VW Group has simplified this complex processes to speed provisioning of complete testing environments from days to hours, anyone at the VW Group around the world can take advantage of the test benches hosted at the Wolfsburg testing center.

The success of the project led to the VW Group’s recognition with a 2021 Red Hat Innovation Award.