Modernizing the Development Process for SDV Through Virtualization and Collaboration

RemotiveLabs’ CEO and co-founder, Per Sigurdson & CTO and founder(left), Aleksandar Filipov in front of the team at the offices in Malmo, Sweden.

INTERVIEW Per Sigurdson, CEO & co-Founder of RemotiveLabs

‘Enabling integration testing from day one to reduce hardware dependencies, allowing developers to perform faster iterative testing, providing powerful solutions, and embracing the latest software development practices.’ This may sound familiar, but it perfectly sums up the mission of RemotiveLabs, a Swedish startup accelerating SDV transformation with roots in Volvo Cars. Because this is the answer. RemotiveLabs has already added Volvo and major U.S. OEMs to its client list, collaborates with companies like Capgemini and AVL, and is an important member of COVESA. AEM spoke with Per Sigurdson, CEO & co-founder of RemotiveLabs.

written by Han_ han@autoelectronics.co.kr
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Where and how did the company start? How important is the company in the SDV industry? Please provide a brief introduction. 
Sigurdson        RemotiveLabs was founded with a clear mission: to simplify and accelerate automotive software development. The company’s roots trace back to Volvo Cars, where our CTO, Aleksandar Filipov, experienced firsthand how traditional tools often fall short for software engineers in automotive in general: “I am a software guy - I love to iterate. But there was nowhere I could deploy my software."

RemotiveLabs’ focus is to modernize the development process through virtualization and collaboration. By enabling integration testing from day one and reducing dependencies on hardware, we empower developers to iterate faster, deliver robust solutions, and embrace modern software practices. Within SDV development, we champion a shift toward agile, virtual and software-first development in an industry that traditionally has been dependent on hardware. 





RemotiveTopology enables integration testing to occur from day one using low-fidelity mocks. Software engineers can test directly on their Linux-laptops and build, reusable test suites in common CI pipelines to constantly increase integration coverage. By finding as many errors as possible ahead of moving to costly hardware, the dependency on HIL rigs is reduced, and “integration hell” can be avoided. 



RemotiveLabs emphasizes a ‘software-first approach’ in the automotive industry, which implies that the industry is still struggling to fully embrace SDVs. What is the current state of the automotive industry, and what challenges need to be overcome?  
Sigurdson        The lack of transparency and interoperability in current toolchains hinders the automotive industry’s ability to fully embrace Software-Defined Vehicles (SDVs). Many companies are still in the early stages of developing software capabilities, facing challenges not just in tooling but also in mindset, organization, and software competence. While they now recognize the need to take ownership of their software and undergo a transformation, fragmented development environments with siloed tools make collaboration difficult, leading to inefficiencies, duplicated efforts, and increased risks.

At RemotiveLabs, we provide tools that support this transformation by enabling left-shifting of integration testing, rapid iteration with immediate feedback, and seamless collaboration across silos - such as bridging Software-in-the-Loop (SIL) and Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL). Our virtualization and collaborative simulation platform empowers developers to work consistently and reuse tests across development phases. With a software-first approach, we facilitate end-to-end workflows, allowing teams to validate and refine software efficiently throughout the process.





RemotiveLabs tooling has already been adopted by industry leaders like Volvo Cars, using RemotiveTopology to virtualize vehicle testing and speed up development.



RemotiveLabs highlighted RemotiveTopology at CES. Before introducing this innovative solution, I thought it would be better to talk about RemotiveBroker first. Is that correct, or not? What is RemotiveBroker, and what does it mean for the company and the automotive industry? 
Sigurdson        The RemotiveBroker is an abstraction layer between automotive technology and modern software development. It handles the complexity of automotive protocols, allowing automotive software engineers to focus more effort on the challenges at hand. 
It is the core building block in our two main products on the market today; RemotiveTopology and RemotiveCloud, which together enable engineers to simulate, test and develop entire vehicle platforms collaboratively.  

With RemotiveTopology, we’ve taken a major step in helping developers left-shift integration testing, iterate faster, and remove hardware dependencies through simulation and virtualization. It’s a developer-centric platform where everything you see can be scripted, making it easy to integrate in CI pipelines and with other tools.

RemotiveCloud complements this by enabling teams to collaborate on vehicle data. Together with RemotiveTopology it creates a modern ecosystem where developers can work efficiently throughout the entire vehicle development cycle - allowing designers and UX teams to innovate with real data in the cloud, faster in-vehicle prototyping, run tests on central computers on their laptops, mixing software and hardware nodes and run everything in central CI pipelines, including the ability to do collaborate debugging in the cloud. 

At CES, we showcased how these tools come to life in practice. Aleksandar Filipov, CTO of RemotiveLabs, explains: “RemotiveTopology provides the ability to mock entire vehicle platforms collaboratively, running multi-ECU simulations directly on laptops. We provide engineers with the freedom to innovate and develop software faster, bridging the gap between software and hardware development with an environment from mocks and simulations in software all the way to hardware.” The demo underscored how our development platform enables seamless transition from SIL to HIL, making software-first development a reality for the automotive industry.


What kind of solution is RemotiveTopology? What is its core? What value does it offer to customers? Also, how does it relate to RemotiveBroker and RemotiveCloud?      
Sigurdson        RemotiveTopology is a developer-centric platform that enables the virtualization of entire automotive systems, allowing engineers to mock and test vehicle platforms, at an early stage, in a soft environment. This facilitates early integration testing without the need for physical hardware, enabling developers to start testing on their laptops or integrate software in CI pipelines. 
At its core, RemotiveTopology allows for the creation of executable specifications, enabling system architects to define functionality in code rather than relying on static requirement documents. 
This creates a runnable, shareable platform that supports collaboration across development stages, ensuring that teams can specify, verify, and collaborate from the start. 

By utilizing RemotiveTopology, customers can:

- Accelerate Development: Begin testing vehicle platforms for day one; removing hardware bottlenecks, and enabling teams to iterate fast to reduce development time and improve overall platform quality.
- Enhance Collaboration: Share virtualized platforms with relevant stakeholders, removing the usual scarcity associated with access to hardware platforms.
- Ensure Flexibility: Transition smoothly from virtualized environments to physical environments. Since simulated nodes/ECUs communicate in the exact same way as hardware nodes, mixing simulated ECUs with production hardware ECU is a breeze.  

RemotiveBroker: Serves as an abstraction layer/software ECU/cloud-connected logger that reads and writes to all vehicle buses supporting automotive protocols, it serves as a component within RemotiveTopology and can be used on its own - for example providing all the necessary interfaces for prototyping new ECUs.

RemotiveCloud: Offers a collaborative environment to analyze and manage vehicle signal data. By enabling teams to upload and playback recordings, stream them to other applications like ProtoPie and Android Automotive, transform and share signals, and co-debug errors, fostering seamless collaboration internally and externally.

RemotiveLabs demo at CES2025 shows how software engineers can start testing their platform earlier - from mocks to behavioral models to production and on to hardware.  



From what I hear, RemotiveLabs’ solutions seem to focus on the early stages of SDV development. Therefore, I assume the competition with well-known vehicle network and ECU development tool companies must be intense. Is that true? What solutions are you competing with, and how do you differentiate? What competitive advantages do you think you have? Also, which solutions in the SDV development toolchain work well with RemotiveLabs’ products?  
Sigurdson        Traditional tools are typically geared toward later stages of development, like hardware integration and verification, and often involve steep learning curves and rigid processes. RemotiveLabs differentiates itself by prioritizing developer-centricity and early virtual testing, starting from day one. This reduces hardware dependencies, accelerates feedback cycles, and allows teams to reuse test cases throughout platform development, fostering ownership and speeding up the development process.

While we don’t replace all late-stage hardware testing tools like those from Vector or dSPACE, we left-shift much of the testing that traditionally relies on expensive hardware. With our tools, teams can collaboratively mature the vehicle software platform at the system level in a software-first environment, then seamlessly transfer fully tested software to the physical twin—the vehicle hardware platform.

This approach represents a significant shift in automotive development, bridging the gap between the digital and physical worlds and equipping engineers with the tools to succeed in the era of Software-Defined Vehicles.


Big-name customers like Volvo are critical for a startup like RemotiveLabs. How has their adoption impacted RemotiveLabs in terms of technology, experience, and business? What other OEMs and Tier 1 companies are your key customers? 
Sigurdson        As a spin-out from Volvo Cars, their continuous support has been pivotal for RemotiveLabs. Adoption of our tooling by Volvo Cars software engineers has not only validated our vision but also provided invaluable feedback that has shaped our solutions. Collaborating with industry leaders ensures that our tools address real-world challenges while incorporating fresh, innovative ideas. 

Besides Volvo Cars as one of the pioneer users, we also have one of the large American OEMs on the customer list,  we also have close collaborations in infotainment software development and testing (Profilence partnership & P3 use case) as well as collaborations with large established actors including autonomous test solutions with Capgemini and AVL automated testing. We are an appreciated member of the COVESA community where we together with actors like BMW and Bosch align on key initiatives to enable SDVs such as the Vehicle Signal Specification. This collaborative ecosystem is key to together with partners bring forward new de-facto standards in the industry shaping the future of SDV development and fostering an open, transparent approach to vehicle software.







In the end, can we summarize it as ‘shortening the development cycle’ while ensuring safety? How much progress are customers seeing with your solutions? 
Sigurdson        We are a young company so have not yet been through the entire platform development cycle but as we are solving some of the hard problems in the industry we are seeing significant improvements in collaboration and development speed in all of our customer engagements. 
Much of the problems that “legacy OEMs” are facing today, that postpones SOPs, are related to that platform integration happens late and due to silos leading to lack of collaboration. An example of this is that SIL and HIL are quite often separate organizations, with separate toolchains and limited communication. 
Our philosophy is simple: provide tools that empower developers, reduce dependencies, and bridge the gap between hardware and software development.
We are excited to expand our collaborations in 2025 and continue enabling the industry to embrace a software-first future.


What are RemotiveLabs’ roles and expectations for collaborations with OEMs, Tier 1 customers, and SDV standardization initiatives like COVESA? How do these differ?     
Sigurdson        In a traditionally slow-moving industry, our focus at RemotiveLabs is to empower software engineers to deliver results, whether they’re part of an OEM, a Tier 1 supplier, or a tech company. We design our tools to reduce dependencies, streamline workflows, and foster collaboration, enabling teams to overcome the common challenges of automotive software development.

When it comes to community initiatives like COVESA, we see it as more than just a forum - it’s a collaborative space where meaningful conversations happen with people who not only understand software and automotive challenges but also have the influence to drive change. For us, COVESA provides an invaluable opportunity to work with a diverse group of stakeholders to address industry-wide hurdles and help establish new de-facto standards for SDVs.

While our collaborations with OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers focus on addressing their specific development needs and accelerating their software-first transformation, our role in initiatives like COVESA emphasizes collaboration and innovation across the industry, ensuring our solutions align with emerging approaches and fostering interoperability.


Speaking of COVESA, I just thought of it could you share any methodologies that might be overlooked, like RemotiveLabs’ and Profilence’s efforts?  
Sigurdson        Certainly! The collaboration between RemotiveLabs and Profilence exemplifies the synergistic effect of combining expertise - 1+1=3. By integrating Profilence’s long-term quality assurance solution with RemotiveLabs’ platform, we can efficiently recreate real-world user interactions and incorporate vehicle signals into infotainment quality assurance processes. 
This partnership enables comprehensive quality analysis, allowing for continuous stability and performance evaluation. Our joint efforts set a new benchmark in infotainment quality testing, ensuring that manufacturers can deliver superior-quality in-vehicle infotainment systems with confidence. 





Profilence & RemotiveLabs sets a new benchmark in infotainment quality testing: Combining user behavior with vehicle signals. RemotiveLabs demoing together with tech partner Profilence at CarHMI a new benchmark for quality infotainment testing - and find those errors that normally only occurs in long-term use. RemotiveLabs tooling can feed recorded or live vehicle data into your preferred environment, app or system to speed up early testing, prototyping and UX design verification using real data. 



What is the roadmap for major products in the near future? 
Sigurdson        Our roadmap focuses on enhancing our major products, RemotiveTopology and RemotiveCloud, to further empower developers and streamline software-first development in the automotive industry. This means adding features, integration to other tooling and simplifying deployment, configuration and usage. 

The roadmap, with a slightly longer horizon, includes enabling OEMs to develop entire SDV platforms virtually and collaboratively. This includes being able to test and experience the platforms virtually before any hardware is available. We want the produced vehicle to be the “physical twin” of what has been created in our platform and not the other way around, as it is today.

We’re committed to driving standardization and interoperability and we are adding features such as LLM supported data-science to support faster development for our customers. Our products will continue evolving to bridge the gap between traditional and modern automotive development, enabling faster innovation and better software quality.


Finally, do you have a message for AEM’s readers in Korea? 
Sigurdson        Korea is at the forefront of innovation, and we’re inspired by the country’s leadership in both automotive and other tech industries. At RemotiveLabs, we believe the future of mobility is software-driven, and our mission is to empower developers with tools that simplify and accelerate the transition to Software-Defined Vehicles (SDVs).
To AEM’s readers: embrace the opportunities that modern software practices bring to the automotive industry. By prioritizing collaboration, early testing, and virtualization, we can collectively drive innovation, improve quality, and bring bold ideas to life faster than ever.
We look forward to collaborating with the visionary minds in Korea to shape the future of SDV development together!

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