In 2019, Volkswagen decided to create a car OS—how’s that going?

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson)

In 2019, Volkswagen Group had a bold plan. After proving that it made sense to use a few common architectures to design a varied range of vehicles across multiple different brands, it decided to apply that same approach to software. It set up a new division and moved the entire VW Group’s software development under that roof, with a mandate to create a new unified automotive operating system for future VW Group EVs.

In fact, the division had to work on three different systems simultaneously. Called E³ for end-to-end architecture, E³ 1.1 would be the software to run on VW Group’s MEB platform for mass-market EVs. Cars using this software are now on the road, including the VW ID.4, Audi Q4 e-tron, and of course, everyone’s favorite, ID. Buzz. E³ 1.2 is destined for more upmarket EVs from Audi and Porsche, using the upcoming PPE platform. And that unified OS, called E³ 2.0, would show up mid-decade in a new, unified platform across the entire VW Group.

It hasn’t exactly gone smoothly. In 2020 VW replaced Christian Senger as the head of the division—called Car.Software.Org, now called CARIAD—with Dirk Hilgenberg. By 2022, problems with CARIAD’s development and buggy software for the launch of the ID.3 and ID.4 EVs saw VW Group fire its chairman, Herbert Diess, along with multiple reports of delays to future group vehicles, including the electric Porsche Macan. The division cost VW Group more than $2 billion last year in the process.