In response to the automotive industry's transformation to manufacture electric vehicles and accelerate the development of software-defined vehicles, Intel announced the launch of a new complete vehicle solution during CES 2025.
This solution covers integrated applications related to high-performance computing, discrete graphics cards, AI, power management, and zonal controllers. It also collaborates with AWS to develop an automotive virtual design environment (VDE). This will reduce vehicle manufacturing costs and alleviate the challenges of expanding vehicle performance, allowing automotive companies to develop and deploy software-defined vehicles more quickly, efficiently, and profitably.
Unlike traditional automotive architectures that adopt a decentralized design and result in lower efficiency, Intel's proposed complete vehicle solution significantly reduces costs and improves performance by optimizing the vehicle's electrical and electronic architecture.
To support this platform, Intel also launched the ACU U310 Adaptive Control Unit (ACU) designed specifically for electric vehicle powertrain and regional controller applications.
When applied to electric vehicle powertrains, the ACU U310 supports advanced algorithm solutions that reduce battery energy consumption and automatically adapt to high voltage and control frequency based on driving habits and road conditions.
In addition, the ACU also reduces the cost per kilowatt. By improving energy efficiency, the vehicle can recover up to 40% of the powertrain energy loss, and can achieve an efficiency improvement of 3% to 5% under the Worldwide Harmonized Light Vehicles Test Procedure (WLTP).
Compared to traditional methods, the ACU can achieve higher driving range, faster charging and a more responsive driving experience, while significantly reducing the bill of materials (BOM) cost, electric motor size and battery cost per vehicle.
The ACU's programmable nature makes it the first software-defined regional controller, capable of adapting to different vehicle topologies and applications. This flexibility accelerates the transition to software-defined vehicles while simplifying the supply chain and reducing vehicle BOM complexity.
Separately, Intel announced the upcoming second-generation Arc B-series automotive graphics cards, which are expected to begin mass production by the end of 2025. This solution provides the high-performance computing required to support more advanced in-car AI workloads, next-generation human-machine interface (HMI) engines, immersive in-car experiences, and AAA gaming.
Intel has partnered with AWS to launch the Intel Automotive Virtual Development Environment on the AWS cloud platform, achieving true hardware and software consistency from the cloud to the vehicle, solving various challenges in the vehicle development lifecycle and allowing engineers to switch smoothly between virtual and physical hardware configurations.
This virtual environment integrates Amazon EC2 instances based on Intel Xeon processors and, for the first time, includes Intel's automotive SDV SoC in an AWS virtual environment. This eliminates the need for expensive Electronic Control Unit (ECU) simulators or development boards, accelerating innovation, reducing R&D costs, and shortening time to market through a unified solution.
