Resource Tag: Electric Vehicles

CarPlay Ultra Meets Altia: The Smart Stack for Safer Cockpits

Posted on by Cheryl Falk

As automotive OEMs race to deliver smarter, safer and more personalized in-vehicle experiences, Apple CarPlay Ultra has emerged as a compelling solution for infotainment and navigation. Its sleek interface, deep Apple ecosystem integration and punch-through UI capabilities make it a powerful tool for enhancing driver engagement. But when it comes to safety-critical functionality, regulatory compliance and brand-specific UX, CarPlay Ultra can’t go it alone.

That’s where Altia comes in.

CarPlay Ultra: A Consumer-Grade Powerhouse with Safety Caveats

Apple CarPlay Ultra offers a visually rich, user-friendly interface that seamlessly integrates with iPhones, delivering navigation, media and communication features directly to the cockpit. However, Apple has drawn clear boundaries around its role in the vehicle:

  • Punch-Through UI for Safety Visibility: CarPlay Ultra allows native vehicle alerts to override its visuals. This ensures any vehicle information can be displayed. OEMs must manage the logic and delivery of these alerts.
  • No Control Over Safety-Critical Systems: CarPlay Ultra cannot modify drive modes, disable traction control or access diagnostics. Apple explicitly recommends OEMs retain native control over these systems to meet ISO 26262 and NHTSA standards.
  • Mirrored Instrument Cluster Display: While CarPlay Ultra can show speed, fuel and ADAS data, it does so as a mirrored display; not as a source of truth. This raises concerns about fallback mechanisms if CarPlay disconnects or malfunctions.
  • Regulatory and Liability Risks: The blurred line between consumer electronics and vehicle control introduces liability challenges. Apple Maps, for instance, while powerful, may not meet ASIL-D safety requirements.

Altia: The Safety-Critical Backbone of the Digital Cockpit

Altia’s HMI software is purpose-built for automotive applications, especially where safety, compliance and brand identity are non-negotiable.

  • ASIL B-Certified for Functional Safety: Altia offers solutions to help OEMs meet ISO 26262 standards, making their solutions suitable for rendering and controlling safety-critical data like PRNDL, speed and fault alerts.
  • Native System Control and Redundancy: Altia enables OEMs to maintain full control over vehicle systems, ensuring fallback and redundancy in case of CarPlay failure. It supports firmware-level alerts and diagnostics that CarPlay Ultra cannot access.
  • Brand Identity and UX Consistency: Altia empowers OEMs to design custom, branded interfaces across all screens—instrument clusters, center stacks, HUDs—preserving visual identity while integrating with CarPlay Ultra.
  • Seamless Coexistence with CarPlay Ultra: Altia can run in parallel with CarPlay Ultra, handling safety-critical functions while Apple manages infotainment and personalization. This dual-stack architecture ensures compliance, safety and user experience without compromise.

Strategic Recommendation for OEMs

To deliver a safe, compliant and premium digital cockpit, many OEMs are investigating a hybrid architecture:

  • Apple CarPlay Ultra for infotainment, navigation and personalization.
  • Altia HMI Software for safety-critical controls, diagnostics and brand-specific UX.

This approach allows OEMs to leverage the best of both worlds: the consumer appeal of Apple’s ecosystem and the automotive production-proven reliability of Altia’s HMI platform.

Altia Announces DeepScreen GUI Code Running on QNX SDP 8.0

Posted on by Cheryl Falk

Altia today announces that Altia DeepScreen-generated graphics code is running on QNX® SDP 8.0. This combination of industry-standard solutions enables embedded software designers to develop safe, secure and reliable graphical user interfaces that deliver pixel-perfect graphics and optimized performance on a variety of production-grade hardware. 

QNX SDP 8.0 is a platform for building high-performance, safety-critical and secure embedded systems. It features a modern microkernel-based operating system designed to fully leverage advanced multi-core processors and future silicon technologies. To meet the demands of next-generation systems, it is crucial to scale workloads and take full advantage of modern hardware with increasing CPU core counts. QNX SDP 8.0 delivers near-linear scalability as cores are added, enabling customers to efficiently expand workloads across any System-on-Chip. 

“Altia is a natural fit for ever-evolving offerings from QNX, making it easier and more efficient for developers to build high-performance, safety-critical user interfaces,” stated Jason Williamson, Vice President of Marketing for Altia. “Together, we’re enabling automotive manufacturers to deliver next-generation embedded experiences—complete with sophisticated 3D graphics, multiple displays and an ultra-intuitive user experience.”    

Altia’s tools are built with safety and security in mind. They support key industry standards like ISO 26262 and ASPICE, which are essential for automotive and other safety-focused applications. Also aligning with ISO 21434, Altia helps developers build GUIs that are secure and ready for today’s connected systems. 

As systems get more complex, many teams are combining Android for rich, interactive displays alongside OSes like QNX for the parts of the system that need to be rock-solid and safe. Altia makes this easier by offering one tool to design and deploy GUI elements across both platforms. This saves time, keeps the user experience consistent and supports the achievement of safety and security requirements. 

Altia also scales well across hardware. Altia DeepScreen generates optimized code that supports a vast array of target hardware. As product requirements evolve or hardware availability shifts, Altia enables developers to reuse their existing GUI assets and retarget them to new platforms with minimal rework, preserving design integrity and accelerating time to market. 

“Altia and QNX SDP 8.0 are a powerful combination of solutions building mission-critical systems,” said Michael Hill, Vice President of Engineering at Altia. “Our customers can now leverage the performance and safety of QNX 8.0 alongside Altia’s scalable, safety-certified GUI development tools—enabling them to future-proof their GUI development programs, delivering beautiful, functional and safe user interfaces for years to come.” 

About Altia 

Altia is a software company that provides graphical user interface design and development tools that can be used from concept to final production code. Our GUI editor, Altia Design, offers development teams the capability to implement a model-based development process enabling clear team communication and accelerated user interface development. Our code generator, Altia DeepScreen, supports a vast range of low- to high-powered processors from a variety of industry-leading silicon providers. Altia generates pure C source code that is optimized to take full advantage of hardware resources. Graphics code generated by Altia is driving millions of displays worldwide – from automotive instrument clusters, HUDs and radios to thermostats, washing machines and medical devices. 

Our mission is to get the best automotive, medical and consumer interfaces into production in the shortest time on the lowest cost hardware. 

Altia was founded in 1991. Its customers include automotive OEMs and Tier 1s like Continental Automotive, Denso, Stellantis, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Renault, Valeo, Visteon and more – plus leading consumer device manufacturers like Electrolux, Whirlpool, Medtronic, NordicTrack and many others. 

For more information about Altia, visit www.altia.com or email [email protected]. 

Follow Altia on LinkedIn, X and YouTube. 

Germany’s Car of the Year May Surprise You. The Tech Inside Shouldn’t.

Posted on by Jason Williamson

When the German Car of the Year awards were announced in October 2024, industry watchers might have been surprised to see an American luxury brand take home the coveted Luxury category title. The Cadillac LYRIQ’s victory marked a significant milestone for General Motors’ premium brand in one of the world’s most discerning automotive markets.

But for those familiar with what powers the LYRIQ’s stunning visual experience, the win wasn’t surprising at all.

When European Standards Meet American Innovation

Germany’s automotive market doesn’t hand out awards lightly. The country that gave us the Autobahn, BMW’s Ultimate Driving Machine and Mercedes-Benz’s engineering excellence has particular expectations when it comes to luxury vehicles. The LYRIQ’s triumph signals that American automotive technology has reached a new level of sophistication—one that European consumers and critics alike recognize as a winner.

At the heart of this recognition lies the vehicle’s commanding 33-inch diagonal LED display, a centerpiece that doesn’t just look impressive but delivers the kind of seamless, responsive performance that luxury buyers demand. This isn’t about flashy graphics for their own sake—it’s about creating an interface that feels as refined and dependable as the vehicle itself.

The Foundation of Excellence: Safety-Critical Software

Behind every smooth animation, every crisp rendering and every instantaneous response lies a fundamental truth that OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers understand: automotive displays aren’t consumer electronics. They’re safety-critical systems that must perform flawlessly under conditions that would cripple standard graphics solutions.

The LYRIQ’s display system, powered by Altia’s embedded graphics software, exemplifies this principle. When you’re designing for automotive applications, you can’t afford the luxury of “good enough.” Every pixel, every transition, every touch response must work perfectly whether the vehicle is sitting in a Helsinki winter at -20°F or baking in a Phoenix summer at 120°F.

This is where the distinction between consumer-grade apps and automotive-grade solutions becomes crystal clear. While consumer devices can tolerate occasional glitches or slowdowns, automotive systems demand unwavering reliability. The software managing the LYRIQ’s visual interface is subject to rigorous testing and validation just like the vehicle’s braking and steering systems—because in modern vehicles, the human-machine interface is equally critical to the driving experience.

Beautiful Graphics That Never Compromise Performance

The LYRIQ’s success in Germany demonstrates something that forward-thinking OEMs already understand: today’s luxury car buyers expect visual experiences that rival mobile phones, but with the reliability standards of mission-critical systems. This creates a unique challenge for embedded graphics tools.

Altia’s approach to this challenge focuses on three core principles that the LYRIQ exemplifies:

Visual Excellence Without Compromise: The graphics must be stunning—smooth animations, crisp fonts and responsive touch interactions that feel natural and immediate. But this visual polish cannot come at the expense of system stability or performance.

Hardware-Agnostic Performance: Different vehicle platforms, different processors, different display technologies—the graphics solution must deliver consistent excellence regardless of the underlying hardware. This flexibility allows OEMs to make platform decisions based on cost, availability and other business factors without sacrificing the user experience.

Deterministic Behavior: In safety-critical applications, unpredictability is unacceptable. The graphics system must behave consistently, with predictable memory usage, reliable real-time performance and graceful handling of edge cases.

The Competitive Advantage of Proven Technology

For OEMs evaluating their next-generation display strategies, the LYRIQ’s German recognition offers valuable insights. In a market where consumers have more luxury choices than ever, the quality of the digital experience has become a key differentiator. German buyers—known for their technical sophistication and quality expectations—validated that the LYRIQ’s interface meets the highest standards.

This validation didn’t happen by accident. It resulted from choosing embedded graphics technology that prioritizes reliability and performance over flashy features that might impress in demos but fail in real-world conditions. The LYRIQ’s success demonstrates that when you build on a foundation of safety-critical software principles, you can achieve both visual excellence and the rock-solid dependability that automotive applications demand.

Looking Forward: The New Standard for Automotive Graphics

The LYRIQ’s German Car of the Year recognition represents more than a single product success. It signals a new baseline for what luxury automotive displays can achieve. As the industry moves toward more sophisticated human-machine interfaces, software-defined vehicles and increasingly complex digital experiences, the fundamental requirements haven’t changed: safety, reliability and performance must come first.

For OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers planning their next-generation vehicles, the lesson is clear: the graphics solution you choose today will determine whether your product can compete in markets that demand both stunning visuals and unwavering reliability. In an industry where recalls cost millions and brand reputation takes years to build, that choice has never been more critical.

The Cadillac LYRIQ’s success in Germany proves that when you start with the right foundation—high-quality, safety-critical embedded graphics software—you can achieve results that surprise even the most discerning markets.

That Altia powers this award-winning experience? That shouldn’t surprise anyone who understands what it takes to succeed in automotive.

Translate »