The investment is in. Over the past few years, the automotive software and electronics market has grown to become a multi-billion-dollar segment. According to BCG and the World Economic Forum, OEM revenues from software and electronics alone are on track to nearly triple by 2030, reaching $248 billion. The ambition across the industry is clear. What comes next is both the hardest and the most valuable part: turning that engineering investment into an experience customers genuinely love, and a business model that keeps delivering long after the sale.
The vehicle has become a platform and the opportunity is huge.
Software-defined vehicles (SDV), AI, autonomous driving aren’t incremental upgrades. They fundamentally change what a vehicle is. The intelligent cockpit becomes a “third place to live”: somewhere to relax, work, entertain, … and buy. The business model shifts from a one-time transaction to an ongoing relationship with features-on-demand, subscriptions, and over-the-air (OTA) updates that improve the product over time, and sustain the residual value of the vehicle.
That last part is where things get interesting for OEMs. The infotainment and digital aftersales market is projected to reach nearly $14 billion by 2030, according to Oliver Wyman’s 2025 Infotainment Survey. Roughly half of the consumers already say they’d pay for at least one in-vehicle digital feature. For OEMs who master the end-to-end user experience, the reward is recurring revenue at scale, genuine customer loyalty, and a brand that actually gets stronger with every software update.
The smart cockpit is where complexity converges.
The challenge is real. An SDV smart cockpit isn’t a single product, it’s a system of systems. Dozens of modules developed in parallel, across multiple teams, with thousands of interactions that all need to work together seamlessly. When a customer sits down for the first time, none of that complexity should be visible. The experience should feel intuitive and coherent from the first touch.
That’s a high bar. And right now, the gap between the UX that gets designed and the UX that actually gets delivered is where significant value is being left on the table.
The good news: this is a solvable problem, and the root causes are well understood. UX design and systems engineering often work in silos. Specifications are too vague early on. Integration happens too late. Trade-offs get made without a full view of the system. Naming these clearly is the first step to fixing them and the teams who fix them first will own the market.
It’s worth keeping three things in mind here. Decisions made upstream cost 10–100× less to fix than those caught late in development. Post-sale software services represent a massive and still largely untapped revenue opportunity. And a user experience that genuinely improves over time is fast becoming the new engine of customer loyalty.
Design upstream. Deliver continuously. Win on experience.
The decision to “shift-left” is clear: move key decisions earlier, simulate the vehicle HMI and the full intelligent cockpit behaviour before production, and catch inconsistencies early, when it’s cheap and not when they’re costly and customer-facing. Every issue resolved upstream is time and money saved downstream.
After launch, the software-defined vehicle gives OEMs something no previous vehicle could offer: real usage data. The ability to measure, iterate, and improve the user experience continuously. A strong UX isn’t one that peaks at launch, rather it’s one that earns customer trust over time.
Setting-up an agile environment powered by AI and XR where 3D and UX designers, Systems & Software engineers work seamlessly on the same model, and where requirements, changes and tests are orchestrated traceable is a key success factor to design, develop and validate the Next-Gen SDV UX.
In a Software-Defined Vehicle, value isn’t just created in the code. It is realized and grown in the experience of using it.
More to come in the new series about the automotive digital cockpit and the SDV user experience : stay tuned !
Prodatta is the Industry Marketing Leader of the Transportation & Mobility Industry team. She's been with DASSAULT SYSTEMES since 6 years working on different automotive topics. Originally from India, she grew up in Canada and the US, and came to France in 2016. She has an MBA in International Business Development and worked previously in the fashion and publishing industry.