BlackBerry and electric vehicle (EV) startup Canoo announced on July 28th that the ADAS systems for the company’s membership-based semi-autonomous EVs will be powered by the BlackBerry QNX operating system (OS), including radar sensors, parking sensors and cameras. As part of the agreement, BlackBerry will license its BlackBerry QNX technology to Canoo, including its QNX OS for Safety 2.0 to serve as the safe and secure foundation for the autonomous features within the company’s city-friendly EVs.
Canoo aims to bring its first production vehicles to market with advanced level 2 (or level 2+) autonomous features as standard at the end of 2021. Level 2 features are consistent with partial autonomy, enabling the vehicle to manage acceleration and steering and monitor components of its environment in certain conditions.
“The world’s leading automakers, their Tier 1 suppliers, chip manufacturers and innovative startups such as Canoo continue to put their trust in BlackBerry and our ability to provide them with the safety-certified and secure software on which they can build the next generation of cars,” said John Wall, SVP and Co-Head, BlackBerry Technology Solutions.
“Canoo is pushing the boundaries of AV development, challenging the traditional way of building, offering and using vehicles and we look forward to working with them to achieve their vision of a world in which transportation is affordable, electric, shared and autonomous.”
BlackBerry has a broad portfolio of functional safety-certified software including its QNX Hypervisor, operating system, development tools and middleware for embedded systems. Outside of automotive, the QNX OS is widely used in life and safety-critical systems for medical devices, industrial controls, rail, robotics and aerospace and defense.
BlackBerry’s pedigree in safety, security, and continued innovation has led to its QNX technology being embedded in more than 175 million vehicles on the road today.
“The global autonomous vehicle market is expected to reach nearly $600 billion by 2026,” said Phil Weicker, in charge of Propulsion & Electronics at Canoo. “As these systems become more affordable and available to implement in the mass market, our membership model makes it easy to keep our vehicles up-to-date with the latest in ADAS technology. BlackBerry QNX is the industry standard for safety certified software operating systems, so it was a natural choice for us”.
For more information on BlackBerry QNX products and engineering services for embedded systems, please visit BlackBerry.QNX.com.
About QNX OS for Safety
QNX OS for Safety is an operating system that embedded developers can use to build safety-critical systems. Based on BlackBerry’s advanced and secure QNX Neutrino real-time operating system (RTOS), QNX OS for Safety has been certified to ISO 26262 ASIL D and IEC 61508 SIL3. With a pre-certified microkernel RTOS, the solution enables automakers and embedded software developers in a wide variety of industries to accelerate their development timelines and reduce the cost in moving projects from research to production.
About Canoo
Canoo is a Los Angeles based company creating and offering unique electric vehicles (EV) for membership only. Canoo’s first vehicle will launch at the end of 2021 and was designed for a world in which transportation is becoming increasingly electric, shared and autonomous. For more information, please visit canoo.com and follow the company at @canoo on Instagram and Twitter.