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AESIN Conference 2025
The AESIN Conference 2025 brought together thought leaders, innovators, engineers, policymakers, and stakeholders from across the automotive electronics and embedded systems landscape. The event served as a platform for collaboration, knowledge-sharing, and showcasing the UK’s global leadership in connected, autonomous, electrified, and software-defined vehicles.
AESIN Conference 2025 successfully reinforced the UK’s commitment to driving the future of automotive electronics, establishing itself as a must-attend event for industry professionals. Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, with planning already underway for an even bigger AESIN 2026.
Gunny Dhadyalla (Network Director for AESIN) and Professor Alex Mouzakitis (AESIN Industry Chair), highlighted that the UK automotive industry is undergoing rapid transformation, moving beyond just building cars to developing the intelligence that drives them, encompassing electronics, software, AI, and power systems.
The AESIN Conference 2025 brought together thought leaders, innovators, engineers, policymakers, and stakeholders from across the automotive electronics and embedded systems landscape. The event served as a platform for collaboration, knowledge-sharing, and showcasing the UK’s global engagement in connected, autonomous, electrified, and software-defined vehicles.
Keynote Session
Dave Nesbitt
Jeremy Flann
Stephanie Morton
Keynote Session
The evolving landscape of automotive technology was explored through a series of insightful talks and discussions, each shedding light on the industry’s strategic direction and challenges.
Dave Nesbitt from Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) emphasised the company’s shift toward software-enabled vehicles, focusing on enhancing customer experiences rather than simply adopting a “software-defined” label. He described JLR’s organisational structure around three core technology platforms—digital product, energy, and vehicle —underscoring the importance of platform thinking in software development. Nesbitt highlighted the necessity of embedding flexibility into these platforms from the outset to accommodate future use cases and mitigate the risk of accumulating technical debt.
Jeremy Flann of Green Hills Software addressed the growing complexity of automotive software. While hardware challenges have diminished over time, they’ve been replaced by increasingly intricate software systems. This complexity has contributed to billions of dollars in annual recalls, largely stemming from issues in software and electronics. Flann’s talk underscored the strategic imperative for robust software development practices and tools to navigate this new reality.
Stephanie Morton from the Advanced Propulsion Centre (APC) discussed the shifting value perception in the automotive sector. Consumers are now prioritising connectivity, functionality, and hyper-personalisation over traditional powertrain performance. This change, driven by an “impatient economy” that demands continuous updates and seamless digital integration, has led to a dramatic rise in software complexity, with codebases expanding by approximately 10% each year.
A panel session further explored the UK’s position in the global automotive software and electronics market. The conversation centered on the integration of software from diverse sources—a challenge that, while difficult, offers significant benefits. Panellists stressed the importance of collaboration across the supply chain, including partnerships with other OEMs and even non-automotive sectors. Such cooperation is seen as essential for pushing technological boundaries and sharing the risks involved in developing globally competitive solutions.
Software Defined Vehicles
Stephan Janouch
Leo Hendrawan
Andy Birnie
Software Defined Vehicles
The complexity of Software Defined Vehicles (SDVs) was a recurring theme across several talks, each offering a unique perspective on the challenges and opportunities facing the automotive industry.
Stephan Janouch from Green Hills Software addressed a common misconception among OEMs—that SDVs are simply about layering software onto existing mechanical systems to unlock new revenue. In reality, the shift involves deep architectural changes, such as moving from decentralised to zonal architectures. These changes demand scalability, robust connectivity for over-the-air updates and predictive maintenance, and the integration of non-automotive functions.
Leo Hendrawan from QNX emphasised the foundational role of the operating system in managing the growing complexity of SDVs. As vehicles transition to high-performance computing platforms, the OS becomes critical for orchestrating vast hardware resources and ensuring system reliability.
Andy Birnie from NXP highlighted the industry’s move away from rigid, costly architectures toward modular and scalable platforms. He illustrated the challenge with a real-world example: a simple safety feature was abandoned because it required coordination across 50 software and 10 hardware modules from various suppliers—underscoring the need for streamlined integration.
A panel discussion further explored the UK’s position in automotive software and electronics. While the country has strong assets—OEMs, semiconductor expertise, and software talent—the key challenge lies in integration. The panel emphasised the complexity of managing software lifecycles and OTA updates, especially given the uniqueness of each vehicle’s configuration. Achieving reliable testing and functional safety will require cloud-based environments and new validation approaches.
A taste of other talks and topic
Kashif Siddiq
Andrew Banks
Assemgul Kozhabek
A taste of other talks and topic
The conference boasted a range of talks and discussions explored the intersection of advanced mobility, safety, and emerging technologies in the automotive sector.
The Sunderland Advanced Mobility Shuttle (SAMS) trial was presented as a masterclass case study in public autonomous transport, with a strong emphasis on cyber risk assessment. A six-step methodology was used to define system zones—vehicle, network, and remote station—and build a digital model to evaluate vulnerabilities, reflecting the growing complexity of connected autonomous systems.
Kashif Siddiq from Oxford RF Solutions introduced a breakthrough in radar sensing: a solid-state 360-degree system that achieves full beamforming without moving parts. This innovation offers improved reliability, precision, and cost-efficiency compared to traditional spinning lidar or radar technologies, while also reducing environmental impact.
Andrew Banks from LDRA tackled the challenge of integrating Artificial Intelligence into automotive safety frameworks. He pointed out that existing standards like ISO 26262 were developed before AI’s rise and don’t fully account for its unique characteristics, creating gaps in regulation and implementation.
In the IEEE ITSS UK & Ireland Future Talent session, Assemgul Kozhabek shared her PhD research on urban road networks, driven by the pressures of urbanisation and congestion. Her work aims to help local authorities make better planning decisions by analysing both static structures and dynamic traffic patterns.
Towards the end of the showcase
During the evening dinner, Dr Paula Palade from Jaguar Land Rover delighted the audience with her talk looking at a broader societal perspective, using historical analogies to show how disruptive technologies often face initial resistance. She argued that the success of innovations like AI and autonomous vehicles depends not just on technical capability, but on their alignment with societal needs and values.
Finally, Gunny and Alex reflected on the AESIN conference, noting how successful it was in bringing people together around shared challenges in the automotive industry. One of the key takeaways was the importance of collaboration, where they agreed that “whatever challenges we are facing, they cannot be tackled by individual organisations alone.”
