Renesas Electronics Corporation, a global supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, has announced its collaboration with Microsoft to accelerate the development of connected vehicles. Renesas’ R-Car Starter Kit, based on Renesas’ R-Car automotive system-on-chip (SoC), is now available as a development environment for the Microsoft Connected Vehicle Platform (MCVP), the Japanese semiconductor manufacturer said in a statement.

MCVP combines a partner ecosystem with a horizontal platform of Azure cloud, AI and edge services on top of which mobility companies can build customer-facing solutions. Renesas has also been certified for Azure IoT Hub and Azure IoT Edge.

According to Renesas, MCVP helps mobility companies accelerate digital services delivery across vehicle provisioning, two-way network connectivity, and continuous over-the-air updates of containerised functionality. Within the Renesas development environment, customers can utilise MCVP components and Renesas Board Support Package (BSP) in addition to multimedia package for R-Car. In addition, the R-Car Starter Kit is certified as an Azure IoT Edge device.

The Renesas development environment allows customers to develop software in the cloud or on a PC, and then install it on an R-Car SoC to perform a verification before implementing it in applications for vehicles or embedded mobility devices. Identifying potential implementation issues early in the development of connected vehicles makes the design process more efficient. The collaboration with Microsoft will enable Renesas to advance the development of connected vehicles, stimulate the creation of Mobility as a Service (MaaS) businesses, and contribute to the establishment of on-demand businesses quickly, the statement said.

“The burden of software development has become a major issue for connected systems and services developers,” Naoki Yoshida, vice president of Automotive Digital Products Marketing Division at Renesas, said. “Using our Azure IoT-certified R-Car Starter Kit as the development environment for MCVP will allow customers to focus resources on software development that will deliver their own value-add services. I am delighted that our joint collaboration will combine Renesas’ extensive track record in the automotive field with Microsoft’s expertise in connectivity, and help customers accelerate the system development process.”

“Our collaboration with Renesas will help our mutual customers speed up their system development and enable them to deliver innovative mobility experiences more quickly,” Tara Prakriya, general manager, Azure Mobility, Microsoft, said.