The automotive industry is experiencing the most rapid changes in its evolution toward semi- and fully autonomous vehicles. Software is driving the car, augmenting or replacing the human driver. Possibly this is the only book that covers the whole breadth of contemporary automotive software engineering. It is timely and relevant technical literature for automotive engineers, as well as software engineers from other domains. It presents industry practitioner-oriented practical content relevant for those developing embedded software. Those looking for details of the software architecture of modern cars such as Tesla will find very little direct material here.

Author Staron observes the convergence in architectural styles and patterns across application domains. His work starts by tracing the advances from the early application of software-controlled electronic systems in cars for performance optimization, safety, infotainment, and now for connected vehicles. It then dives deeper, describing important elements of automotive architecture such as electronic control units (ECUs), their logical and physical organization, functional architecture, use-case modeling, and so on.

There is a dedicated chapter on the AUTOSAR (short for automotive open system architecture) initiative that is developing a standardized software framework for intelligent mobility. AUTOSAR is gaining more relevance as vehicles get connected and software starts to control more vehicle functions. The dedicated chapter introducing the ISO/IEC 26262 standard on software functional safety densely covers all aspects of building safety-critical software. These two chapters are highlights for practitioners. Both these chapters provide guidance on where to begin learning these vast domains and how to discover the pathways.

What makes the book self-contained are the chapters that introduce architectural principles and elements of the software engineering process covering detailed design, implementation, and testing. These brief chapters summarize a lot of information for a newcomer to the discipline. Brief descriptions of architecture styles reaching up to service-oriented architecture serve the purpose of providing an overview of these styles. The detailed design chapter introduces Simulink modeling, which is widely used in the industry. It also covers other key details such as communication protocols.

There is a detailed treatment of assessing architecture quality in longer intervals and monitoring continuously using effective measurements. Relevant ISO/IEC standards are introduced.

The chapter on recent trends could be deeper considering the timing for the introduction of this book. The foreword written by Christof Ebert sets up the context remarkably well.

There are fewer insights and practice experiences for architects. Those looking for techniques from experience, wisdom from experts, or theoretical foundations for creating software for mission-critical domains will be disappointed. This book does not attempt to make the reader a better architect or designer.

The presentation curates all of the information concerning automotive software engineering in one volume. That is the key contribution of this book; it covers the vast breadth and depth concisely. The chapters are articulated in such a way that they can be read independently.

An experienced software architect could read the book over a weekend due to the excellent organization and lucidity of the writing. This is a perfect reference and companion book for a short course or workshop on automotive software engineering for software professionals transitioning to the automotive industry from other sectors.