Its purpose is to develop and establish an open and standardized software architecture for automotive electronic control units (ECUs).

The objectives are scalability to different vehicle and platform variants, transferability of software, consideration of availability and safety requirements, cooperation between different partners, sustainable use of natural resources and maintainability during the product lifecycle.

The work on the AUTOSAR Classic Platform can be divided into three phases: In 2013, the AUTOSAR consortium introduced a continuous working mode for the Classic Platform to maintain the standard and provide selected improvements (including releases R4.2, and 1.0 of acceptance tests).

[10][11] AUTOSAR aims to establish a global standard for software and methodology, enabling open E/E system architectures for future intelligent mobility.

AUTOSAR provides specifications for basic software modules, defines application interfaces, and builds a common development methodology based on a standardized exchange format.

[12][1] The motivation behind AUTOSAR is to manage the increasing complexity of software and E/E systems as their functional scope expands.

Enhancing scalability and flexibility in the integration and transfer of functions is a key objective, aiming to improve the quality and reliability of software and E/E systems.

The goals of AUTOSAR include addressing future vehicle requirements such as availability, safety, software upgrades, updates, and maintainability.

Communication between software components and access to BSW happens via RTE, which represents the full interface for applications.

This virtual bus is an abstract set of RTEs that are not yet deployed to specific ECUs and decouples the applications from the infrastructure.

[22][23] Only by standardizing concrete interface contents in their physical and temporal representation allows achieving the needed integration compatibility.

In comparison to the Classic Platform, AUTOSAR develops an implementation to shorten the validation cycle and illustrate the underlying concepts.

[33] The Steering Committee manages day-to-day non-technical operations and admission of partners, public relations and contractual issues.

[36][37] Premium Partner Plus companies support the project leader team in the various technical, organizational and everyday processes.

Premium and Development members contribute to work packages coordinated and monitored by the Project Leader Team established by the Core Partners.

Furthermore the AUTOSAR Open Conference (AOC) is planned every year to network and give an overview over the newest achievements.