FORVIA HELLA Accelerates Virtual ECU Testing with TASKING winIDEA

Pow­er­ing FORVIA HELLA’s tran­si­tion to vir­tu­al ECU test­ing with winIDEA and SDK-dri­ven automa­tion.

What is it about

Help­ing FORVIA HELLA unify hard­ware and vir­tu­al ECU test­ing with TASKING winIDEA, enabling ear­li­er val­i­da­tion and sim­pli­fied work­flows.

About FORVIA HELLA

FORVIA HELLA is a lead­ing inter­na­tion­al sup­pli­er of light­ing tech­nol­o­gy and vehi­cle elec­tron­ics. With glob­al engi­neer­ing teams and a long-stand­ing rela­tion­ship with TASKING, FORVIA HELLA is mod­ern­iz­ing its test­ing infra­struc­ture to keep pace with increas­ing auto­mo­tive soft­ware com­plex­i­ty. To accel­er­ate develop­ment and reduce depen­den­cy on phys­i­cal hard­ware, FORVIA HELLA is tran­si­tion­ing from hard­ware-based test­ing to vir­tu­al ECUs (vECUs). This shift sup­ports a “shift-left” strat­e­gy where soft­ware is val­i­dat­ed ear­li­er - long before phys­i­cal hard­ware becomes avail­able.

Testing Challenges

As part of their trans­for­ma­tion, FORVIA HELLA aimed to:

  • Pre­pare and val­i­date soft­ware early with­out wait­ing for hard­ware avail­abil­i­ty
  • Reduce the cost and main­te­nance effort asso­ci­at­ed with HIL setups
  • Sim­pli­fy work­flows and increase test reusabil­i­ty by using vir­tu­al devices that are eas­i­er to repli­cate and share

These goals required a test­ing envi­ron­ment that could sup­port both vir­tu­al and phys­i­cal tar­gets with­in a uni­fied tool­chain.

How TASKING Helped

To sup­port the tran­si­tion to vECUs, FORVIA HELLA adopt­ed TASKING winIDEA for vir­tu­al ECUs (vECU) along with the winIDEA SDK.

Togeth­er, these tools enabled FORVIA HELLA to:

  • Use the same famil­iar debug­ger for both phys­i­cal hard­ware and vir­tu­al tar­gets
  • Build an end-to-end test­ing work­flow with high con­sis­ten­cy and min­i­mal tool frag­men­ta­tion
  • Auto­mate tests via winIDEA SDK, sup­port­ing con­tin­u­ous inte­gra­tion and con­tin­u­ous deliv­ery (CI/CD)
  • Stream­line the test­ing envi­ron­ment and reduce tool­chain com­plex­i­ty

This uni­fied setup allowed FORVIA HELLA to val­i­date embed­ded soft­ware ear­li­er and more effi­cient­ly dur­ing develop­ment.

Results & Benefits

By inte­grat­ing TASKING winIDEA into their vECU work­flow, FORVIA HELLA achieved:

  • A sim­pli­fied and uni­fied test envi­ron­ment
  • Reduced depen­den­cy on HIL sys­tems
  • Reuse of test cases across both vir­tu­al and real ECUs
  • Greater automa­tion capa­bil­i­ty through SDK inte­gra­tion
  • A more pre­dictable, effi­cient path to pro­duc­tion soft­ware

These improve­ments sup­port faster time-to-mar­ket and bet­ter uti­liza­tion of engi­neer­ing resources.

“A vir­tu­al ECU allows the reuse of test cases across vir­tu­al and real tar­gets, there­by enabling faster time-to-mar­ket. TASKING winIDEA sup­ports embed­ded soft­ware debug­ging on both vir­tu­al and real tar­gets with­in a holis­tic test­ing tool­chain.”

- FORVIA HELLA

Looking Ahead

TASKING and FORVIA HELLA will con­tin­ue to col­lab­o­rate to fur­ther opti­mize vir­tu­al test­ing work­flows. Next steps include enabling advanced event-sequence mea­sure­ment on a Level 3 vECU - push­ing vir­tu­al val­i­da­tion capa­bil­i­ties even fur­ther.


Curious what this could look like for you? Great results start with the right tools.

Let’s explore how TASKING can sup­port your next project and make your next step eas­i­er.

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