The phrase “software-defined vehicle” implies a car that behaves like a coherent software platform. But under the hood, a modern car is dozens of computers — historically each running its own code, speaking its own protocol, wired point-to-point. Turning that fragmented mess into a platform requires something prosaic and essential: a common language for the software to talk in. A 2023 Harman grant is about exactly that plumbing.
The record: on December 5, 2023, Harman International Industries, Incorporated was granted US11838375B2, a “Universal software communication bus.” The CPC classes are software-and-networking classes — H04L 67/51 (service discovery), G06F 8/34 and 8/61 (software composition and installation), and H04L 41/0853 (configuration). The word “universal” is the point: one bus that any component can speak on.
Here is the mechanism, in plain terms. A software bus is a shared channel where components publish messages and subscribe to the ones they care about, instead of being wired directly to each other. A “universal” bus adds discovery — a new software service can announce itself and find the others without being hard-coded to them. The result is loose coupling: components can be added, updated, or moved without rewiring everything around them.
Why is this foundational to the software-defined vehicle? Because the whole promise — update features over the air, add capabilities, run third-party software — depends on components not being rigidly bolted together. If every piece of software is hard-wired to specific others, you cannot change one without breaking the rest. A common bus is what makes the car's software modular, and modularity is what makes it updatable.
That an audio-and-infotainment heavyweight like Harman holds this is telling. Harman sits at the integration layer of the car's electronics, where many systems meet. A universal communication bus is infrastructure for that layer — the connective tissue that lets the car's software behave as one system rather than a federation of isolated boxes. It is unglamorous and load-bearing in equal measure.
The caveat: a granted communication-bus method is architecture, not a feature, and it does not by itself make a car “software-defined.” But it is the kind of foundational plumbing the buzzword rests on. The software-defined vehicle is not one big feature; it is an architecture in which software is modular, discoverable, and updatable — and a common bus, like Harman's 2023 grant describes, is the channel that makes that architecture possible.