EV Software Stacks Are Going Open-Source — The Real Landscape of AGL, Eclipse SDV, and COVESA
AGL, Eclipse SDV, and COVESA are building the open-source EV stack automakers now share. Here's what standardized diagnostic APIs mean for EV owners.
The push toward open-source automotive software has produced three overlapping initiatives that now represent the most substantial collaborative effort in the industry. Automotive Grade Linux (AGL), the Eclipse Software Defined Vehicle (SDV) working group, and the Connected Vehicle Systems Alliance (COVESA) each target a different layer of the vehicle software stack. The underlying premise: shared infrastructure — CAN bus abstraction, FOTA update orchestration, diagnostic APIs — costs less to maintain collectively than in parallel proprietary implementations, and no single manufacturer gains a competitive edge from keeping these layers closed.
The Three Initiatives: What Each Targets
AGL (Automotive Grade Linux), hosted under the Linux Foundation, counts over 150 member organizations including Toyota, Denso, Renesas, and Panasonic. Its main deliverable is a standardized Linux-based platform for in-vehicle infotainment and connectivity. AGL IVI (In-Vehicle Infotainment) is in production in Toyota and Subaru vehicles, making it the most deployed open-source automotive OS by volume.
Eclipse SDV, launched in 2022, targets the connectivity and software-defined vehicle layers above the OS. BMW is a founding member alongside Bosch, Continental, and Microsoft. Its Kuksa Vehicle Signal Specification (VSS) — a standardized tree of vehicle data signals — is the piece most relevant to EV diagnostics: apps and fleet management tools built against VSS can read battery state, charge history, and powertrain telemetry without manufacturer-specific SDKs, provided OEMs implement the interface.
COVESA (Connected Vehicle Systems Alliance) focuses on data standards and APIs for connected vehicle services, complementing the OS and middleware work of AGL and Eclipse SDV.
Why It Matters for EV Owners
Today, third-party battery health monitoring tools, charge optimization apps, and fleet management platforms must negotiate separate data access agreements with each manufacturer and maintain separate SDKs that break when OEMs update their stacks. A VSS-compliant diagnostic layer across brands would eliminate that fragmentation — the same way standardized web protocols eliminated the need for separate tools for each website. The path from working group specification to production vehicle is long. The first VSS-implementing vehicles are only beginning to appear in market, and the tool ecosystem that builds on top will follow years behind them. But the direction across the industry is clear.