After a three-year effort, Phase I of development of the AUTOSAR (AUTomotive Open System ARchitecture) software standard will conclude on schedule at the end of 2006 with the publication of release 2.1. The first production vehicles containing AUTOSAR elements are expected as early as 2008, and by 2010 all the core partners will have implemented AUTOSAR software in their new electronic control unit or vehicle generations.

Release 2.0, containing definitions of the operating system, communication, hardware abstraction and the runtime environment, has been available as a free download since May and software that meets the 2.0 specification is undergoing validation tests. Companies that join the AUTOSAR development partnership can use the released specifications.