Cummins announced a collaboration with Bosch Global Software and KPIT to launch a new open telematics portal — an open-source project for commercial vehicle telematics.

It will be launched as part of the Eclipse Software Defined Vehicle project. 

Reduced Costs, Better Fleet Intelligence

This is a part of the broader Open Telematics initiative to reduce the costs required to develop telematics applications in commercial vehicles.

“Cummins is partnering with two industry experts on this project, Bosch Global Software and KPIT, two companies that have extensive expertise in vehicle telematics and CAN communications,” said Brad Sutton, executive director, powertrain engineering, Cummins. 

“Our combined expertise and experience enable us to innovate and create new solutions faster than we could individually, creating real value for our customers and their businesses.”

Eclipse CANought creates industry-specific capabilities focused on standardizing and securing access to the CAN (Controller Area Network) bus to more easily enable features, such as over-the-air software updates. 

A CAN bus is a serial communications network that interconnects vehicle ECUs (Electronic Control Units), acting as the central nervous system for the vehicle. 

These capabilities significantly reduce the time and cost required to develop connectivity applications that access and update vehicle ECUs. This greatly simplifies software integration work for OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) and suppliers. 

“This collaboration among industry leaders is just one more example of how the open-source model fuels innovation in the automotive sector, making advancements accessible industry-wide,” said Mike Milinkovich, executive director at the Eclipse Foundation. 

“CANought is particularly exciting as it merges open-source collaboration with established industry standards and architectures such as CAN and SAE J1939, accelerating the development of Software Defined Vehicle applications." 

CANought Telematics Platform Coming to Market in 2025

Eclipse CANought provides standard and secure access to vehicle ECUs for telematics applications. 

It complements an existing project, Eclipse Kanto, which provides a hardware-agnostic solution for running containerized applications across any variety of telematics hardware.

“At Bosch Global Software, we believe that coordinated software updates are crucial for the commercial vehicle industry as more countries implement new regulations for cyber security,” said Pracheth Rao, senior director of SDV programs, BGSW. 

“This new collaboration will enable customers to more effectively deploy software updates to all of the vehicle systems simultaneously,” added Sven Kappel, VP, product portfolio and architecture SDV, ETAS. 

“By establishing standard interfaces, our update systems can easily connect with OEM and Tier 1 ECU software update mechanisms.”

Open-Source, Standardized Solution: 'Game-Changer' in Commercial Vehicle Space

Over the next few months, Cummins, Bosch BGSW, ETAS, and KPIT will continue to contribute to the Eclipse CANought project. These contributions will be analyzed and improved by the larger Eclipse SDV community as they are made production ready. 

KPIT has been a software partner to Cummins for more than 20 years, noted Anup Sable, CTO, KPIT Technologies. 

“This open-source, standardized solution, backed by Eclipse Foundation, will be a game-changer in the experience for engineering and service professionals in the commercial vehicle space.”

Eclipse Kanto and Eclipse CANought will be incorporated into telematics offerings being brought to market starting in 2025.