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Overview

Automotive OEMs are building connected products that continuously generate, exchange, and act on data throughout the vehicle lifecycle. Vehicle and ECU signals, telematics, diagnostics, software state, enterprise systems, APIs, devices, and event streams all contribute to an increasingly continuous flow of operational data.
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Condense provides a real-time data streaming and application platform for these workloads. Built on Apache Kafka, it combines data connectivity, event streaming, stream processing, application development, deployment, scaling, observability, governance, and automotive-specific capabilities in a common platform. This enables OEM teams to build, deploy, and operate real-time automotive services across the vehicle lifecycle, from connectivity and provisioning through diagnostics, vehicle health, OTA and software lifecycle management, engineering analytics, and aftermarket services.

Why Real-Time Matters in Automotive

Connected automotive solutions depend on continuous streams of vehicle, driver, and operational events. The value of these events depends not only on collecting them, but on processing them quickly enough to trigger the required business or operational action. A vehicle event may need to pass through event processing, business logic, enterprise integrations, and application orchestration before an action can occur. When these capabilities are implemented as independent systems, each stage can introduce additional latency and operational complexity. Consider a diagnostic trouble code (DTC):
Condense provides a common event foundation across these stages, allowing automotive data to be connected, processed, and delivered to applications without requiring every stage to be implemented as a separate platform.

Condense for Automotive OEMs

Condense combines an enterprise-grade real-time streaming foundation with an automotive ecosystem. The platform can be understood through four stages:

Connect

Ingest real-time automotive data from:
  • Vehicles
  • ECUs
  • Telematics devices
  • Enterprise systems
  • APIs
  • IoT devices
  • Existing event streams
Automotive-specific connectors, protocols, and integrations can be used alongside general-purpose Condense connectors.

Process

Transform and enrich vehicle events using built-in stream processing. Processing can include:
  • Filtering
  • Transformation
  • Enrichment
  • Normalization
  • Routing
  • Business rules
  • Domain-specific transformations
  • Event correlation

Build

Build event-driven applications and microservices on top of the streaming foundation. Developers can write microservices in their preferred language. The Condense Developer Agent can also generate application logic from developer requirements.

Deploy & Scale

Run applications and pipelines in the customer’s cloud environment with managed deployment and automatic scaling. Condense also provides platform agents such as the Kubernetes Agent and Pipeline Agent for operational workflows and automation.

Automotive Data Architecture

A typical automotive workload can combine vehicle data with enterprise and application data:
The same event foundation can support multiple downstream applications without requiring every application to establish an independent ingestion and processing stack.

Unified Platform for the Automotive Lifecycle

Condense can support real-time automotive services across the manufacturing and connected-vehicle lifecycle.

Connected Vehicle Operations Center

Provide real-time visibility into:
  • Fleet health
  • Service status
  • Vehicle utilization
  • Alerts
  • Operational KPIs
Vehicle events can be continuously processed and delivered to centralized operations applications.

Remote Diagnostics and Predictive Maintenance

Process vehicle health and diagnostic events to support proactive service actions. Typical signals include:
  • DTCs
  • Warning lamps
  • Regeneration events
  • Inducement conditions
  • Vehicle health indicators
  • Engine health
  • Battery performance
A diagnostic event can be enriched with vehicle and operational context before being routed to a service application.

OTA and Software Lifecycle Management

Software-defined vehicles require software and firmware to be managed throughout the vehicle lifecycle. Condense provides the event and application foundation for:
  • OTA campaign management
  • vFOTA workflows
  • Software and firmware updates
  • Campaign tracking
  • Rollout monitoring
  • Software state tracking
  • Software compliance
A typical software lifecycle can be represented as:

Vehicle Health and Performance Analytics

Process continuous vehicle data to understand vehicle condition, performance, and utilization. Typical signals include:
  • Fuel consumption
  • AdBlue usage
  • Battery performance
  • Engine health
  • Critical vehicle parameters
  • Utilization
Processed events can be delivered to analytics, dashboards, applications, and storage systems.

Engineering Intelligence and R&D Analytics

Field data provides engineering teams with continuous visibility into how vehicles and components behave in real operating conditions. Condense can provide event streams for:
  • Vehicle behavior analysis
  • Component performance
  • Software effectiveness
  • Field diagnostics
  • Product performance
  • Engineering analysis
These streams can feed analytics and engineering systems used for continuous product improvement.

Connected Vehicle Provisioning and Compliance

Connected vehicle programs require provisioning and lifecycle management from factory through field operation. Condense can support workflows involving:
  • VIN-IMEI mapping
  • Device onboarding
  • SIM lifecycle
  • Vehicle activation
  • Certification workflows
  • Dealer workflows
  • Compliance processes

Software-Defined Vehicles

A Software-Defined Vehicle (SDV) continuously uses software to enhance vehicle functionality, performance, and customer experiences through remote updates, digital services, and connected applications. SDV programs require a real-time foundation that can connect vehicle events, software state, update campaigns, operational systems, and customer-facing applications. Condense provides:
  • Real-time event streaming
  • Vehicle and device connectivity
  • Event processing
  • Application development
  • OTA and software lifecycle workflows
  • Application deployment
  • Observability and operations
This allows SDV services to be developed and operated on the same streaming foundation.

Aftermarket Services

Connected vehicle data can extend beyond vehicle operations into digital aftermarket services. Real-time data can support:
  • Proactive maintenance
  • Remote diagnostics
  • Service notifications
  • OTA updates
  • Warranty insights
  • Digital aftersales experiences
  • Vehicle uptime workflows
By processing vehicle events continuously, OEMs can move from reactive service processes to event-driven service workflows.

Automotive Ecosystem

Automotive workloads require capabilities that are specific to the industry. Vehicle data can involve different devices, protocols, identifiers, diagnostic formats, enterprise workflows, and certification requirements. Condense extends its core platform with automotive-specific capabilities.
The core platform remains reusable while specialized automotive capabilities can be introduced where required.

Automotive-Ready Capabilities

The automotive ecosystem can provide:
  • Automotive protocol support
  • Device connectors
  • Vehicle data parsers
  • Telematics integrations
  • VIN-IMEI mapping
  • OTA and vFOTA building blocks
  • Device management
  • SIM operations
  • Certification workflows
  • Driver analytics
  • OEM onboarding workflows
  • Connected-vehicle applications
This allows OEM teams to use domain-ready capabilities instead of developing and maintaining every integration and workflow independently.

Pre-Built Applications and Accelerators

Condense can provide application building blocks for common automotive requirements. Examples include:
  • OTA and vFOTA
  • Device management
  • SIM operations
  • OEM onboarding
  • VIN-IMEI mapping
  • Certification workflows
  • Driver analytics
  • Connected vehicle operations
  • Analytics workflows
These capabilities can be combined with custom applications and transformations to address OEM-specific requirements.

Building Automotive Applications

Automotive applications frequently combine real-time events with business logic and integrations. Condense allows teams to build these applications on the same streaming foundation. Applications can be developed using:
  • Custom event-driven microservices
  • Custom transforms
  • Pre-built transformations
  • Automotive-specific capabilities
  • APIs
  • Enterprise integrations
Developers can use the built-in development environment to create and manage application logic. The Developer Agent can assist with generating event-driven microservices. The resulting applications can be deployed and operated through Condense without maintaining a separate application platform.

Deployment and Scaling

Automotive workloads often need to run continuously and handle changes in event volume as vehicle populations, applications, and services grow. Condense supports:
  • Deployment in the customer’s cloud
  • Automatic scaling
  • Application management
  • Pipeline management
  • Kubernetes-based operations
  • Runtime management
  • Platform observability
Condense can be deployed through cloud marketplaces or on-premises infrastructure. A production-ready platform deployment can be completed in approximately 1–2 hours through supported deployment methods.

BYOC for Automotive OEMs

Condense follows a fully managed Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC) model. The platform can run within the customer’s:
  • AWS environment
  • Azure environment
  • Google Cloud environment
  • OCI environment
  • On-premises environment
This model allows OEMs to retain control over their data and infrastructure while Condense manages the platform. BYOC supports requirements around:
  • Data ownership
  • Governance
  • Compliance
  • Data residency
  • Existing cloud investments
  • Infrastructure control

Security, Governance, and Operations

Automotive workloads can be mission-critical and require operational controls beyond basic event processing. Condense provides capabilities for:
  • Enterprise-grade security
  • Access control
  • Governance
  • Observability
  • Platform operations
  • Application operations
  • Runtime monitoring
  • Deployment management
  • 99.95% uptime SLA
These capabilities allow teams to manage the platform and applications as production systems rather than treating streaming infrastructure as a separate operational concern.

Without Condense vs. The Condense Approach

Building a connected vehicle platform using separate technologies can require OEM teams to assemble and maintain multiple layers.

Why Automotive OEMs Choose Condense

Unified Platform

Condense combines streaming infrastructure, data integration, processing, application development, deployment, and operations in a common environment.

Automotive Ecosystem

Automotive connectors, protocols, integrations, and domain capabilities reduce the amount of automotive-specific infrastructure OEM teams need to build and maintain.

Production-Ready Building Blocks

Pre-built capabilities for OTA/vFOTA, device management, VIN-IMEI mapping, certification workflows, OEM onboarding, driver analytics, and connected vehicle operations accelerate application development.

Data Control Through BYOC

The platform runs within the customer’s cloud or supported on-premises infrastructure, allowing OEMs to retain control over data, governance, and compliance.

Enterprise Reliability

Condense provides enterprise-grade security, observability, governance, and a 99.95% uptime SLA for production workloads.

Integrated Development and Operations

Developers can build event-driven applications while platform teams manage deployment, scaling, runtime, and operations within the same platform.

Production Reference

Condense has been deployed for large-scale automotive workloads. One production deployment with Volvo Eicher Commercial Vehicles (VECV) processes data from more than 250,000 connected vehicles and handles more than 150 TB of data per month. The deployment operates with dynamic throughput of 120–500 Mbps, pipeline latency below 500 ms, and a 99.95% availability SLA. Condense is deployed within the customer’s cloud environment using the BYOC model. The VECV deployment demonstrates the use of the Condense streaming foundation for large-scale connected-vehicle workloads and provides a production reference for automotive OEM deployments.

Connected Automotive Architecture

A complete automotive implementation can bring together the platform, ecosystem, applications, and enterprise systems:

Automotive OEM Use Case Coverage


Frequently Asked Questions

What is a connected vehicle platform?

A connected vehicle platform enables Automotive OEMs to collect, process, and act on real-time vehicle data while supporting services such as OTA updates, diagnostics, fleet operations, analytics, and customer-facing applications.

Why is real-time data important for Automotive OEMs?

Real-time data enables OEMs to monitor vehicle health, detect issues proactively, optimize operations, automate service workflows, and deliver connected vehicle experiences without unnecessary delays.

What challenges do Automotive OEMs face when building connected vehicle platforms?

OEMs typically need to integrate vehicle protocols, devices, enterprise systems, applications, diagnostics, software lifecycle systems, analytics, and operational workflows while also managing scalability, security, and ongoing maintenance.

How do Automotive OEMs process vehicle telemetry at scale?

Vehicle telemetry can be ingested through connected devices and enterprise systems, streamed through Kafka, processed in real time, and routed to applications, analytics, and downstream systems. Condense combines these capabilities within a common platform.

What is a Software-Defined Vehicle?

A Software-Defined Vehicle uses software to continuously enhance vehicle functionality, performance, and customer experiences through remote updates, digital services, and connected applications.

How do OTA and vFOTA benefit Automotive OEMs?

OTA and vFOTA allow OEMs to remotely deploy software and firmware updates, manage campaigns, track rollout progress, reduce workshop visits, and support Software-Defined Vehicle programs.

What are the key components of a connected vehicle ecosystem?

A connected vehicle ecosystem typically includes vehicle connectivity, telematics, real-time streaming, diagnostics, OTA management, analytics, enterprise integrations, applications, and operational workflows. Condense provides a common platform across these capabilities and extends it through automotive-specific ecosystem components.

Why do Automotive OEMs use BYOC?

BYOC allows OEMs to retain control of their data and infrastructure, meet data residency and compliance requirements, and use existing cloud investments while Condense manages the platform.

How does Condense reduce connected vehicle platform complexity?

Condense brings data ingestion, streaming, processing, application development, deployment, scaling, observability, governance, and operations into one platform. Automotive-specific connectors, integrations, and building blocks further reduce the need to build and maintain these capabilities independently.

How can connected vehicle platforms improve aftermarket services?

Real-time vehicle data can support proactive maintenance, remote diagnostics, service notifications, OTA updates, warranty insights, and digital aftersales services.

How can Automotive OEMs improve vehicle uptime?

OEMs can continuously monitor vehicle health, diagnostics, fault codes, software state, and operating parameters. These events can be processed into alerts, service workflows, and predictive operational actions.

What should an Automotive OEM look for in a real-time platform?

Key considerations include:
  • Real-time data ingestion
  • Streaming scalability
  • Automotive protocol and device support
  • Diagnostics and vehicle health processing
  • OTA and software lifecycle capabilities
  • Application development
  • Deployment flexibility
  • Security and governance
  • Observability
  • Enterprise integrations
  • Domain ecosystem
  • Production reliability
Condense brings these capabilities together on a Kafka-based streaming foundation.

Summary

Automotive OEMs are moving from vehicles that primarily generate data to connected products that continuously communicate, receive software updates, expose operational state, and participate in digital services. This requires more than a messaging system. OEM teams need a platform that can connect heterogeneous data sources, process events continuously, build applications, deploy them into production, scale them as workloads grow, and operate them reliably. Condense provides this common foundation while extending it with automotive-specific connectors, protocols, integrations, workflows, applications, and ecosystem capabilities.
The same platform can support connected vehicle operations, diagnostics, predictive maintenance, OTA and vFOTA, vehicle health, engineering intelligence, provisioning, compliance, Software-Defined Vehicle initiatives, analytics, and aftermarket services across the automotive lifecycle.