SOAFEE Blueprints Show Path to Future of Automotive
October 16, 2025
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In a recent fireside chat, I sat down with Robert Day, SOAFEE’s Marketing Steering Committee Chair, and John Penn, SOAFEE’s Technical Steering Committee Chair, to talk about their Blueprints program and Software Defined Vehicles (SDV).
For those who don’t know, SOAFEE's is an organization focused on the automotive industry and is offering a standardized open architecture for software-defined vehicles.
To help the industry understand its path forward to SDV, SOAFEE has unveiled a series of Blueprints, partnering with members, to talk about how the standard works.
In our talk, Penn said the standardization efforts are looking at system ready, vert IO, and PSA, while also focusing on new areas like cloud-native tooling, CICD, and MLOps, looking at the whole entire end-to-end developer workflow.
When making a new standard for new technology, he said, “you need to get some code out there, build up the knowledge base, get experience, and then go into building the standards.”
Enter the blueprints. They help the organization and its members see what works, and what doesn't. They act like technical validation and more importantly, education. Once everything is well understood, then blueprints become standards.
Day added, “Value-approved blueprints are giving tangible proof of what's working and how these code examples could be actually used by automotive software developers. And what we're seeing is that the companies that submit these blueprints are proving this is not just theory, this is not just slideware.”
They agreed that the collaborative nature of the blueprint process is accelerating development of the standard. They’re getting more and more examples of workloads and technologies that show the next generation. They’re also seeing how SOAFEE could be applied to other verticals, like autonomous machines, commercial fleets, and industrial automation.
All kinds of software can be part of the SOAFEE standard, Penn says. Security on device, using ML to amplify security, functional safety, Digital Cockpit, ADAS are all on the table. And what’s next is virtual platforms and ML Ops. Members are already debugging and designing virtually, and there’ seven more coming, Penn and Day said.
SOAFEE’s dual approach of advancing the technology and the standards at the same time is resulting in the automotive and SDV industries growing and advancing. This standard is very exciting, and the blueprints are really showing the way. There's going to be a lot more to come from SOAFEE in the next few years as the automotive industry goes through its own digital transformation, and as mobility expands and autonomy expands.
The whole conversation goes into so many more details, so make sure you watch it here.
Ken Briodagh is a writer and editor with two decades of experience under his belt. He is in love with technology and if he had his druthers, he would beta test everything from shoe phones to flying cars. In previous lives, he’s been a short order cook, telemarketer, medical supply technician, mover of the bodies at a funeral home, pirate, poet, partial alliterist, parent, partner and pretender to various thrones. Most of his exploits are either exaggerated or blatantly false.
