Toyota expects its Arene software platform to be running in 10 million new vehicles a year, across 50 models, by 2030, the company said on Friday.
Subaru, in which Toyota holds a 21% stake, told a strategy briefing north of Tokyo that it will launch its own software-defined vehicles in the second half of the decade. They will be built around an integrated control unit whose core chip Subaru developed with AMD. Subaru also aims to cut its development times by about 40%. Reuters reported both announcements.
Toyota is South Africa’s biggest-selling car brand, with almost a quarter of new-vehicle sales in September, according to Naamsa data. What it does with software will shape what South Africans drive.
A typical modern car carries dozens of small computers, called electronic control units (ECUs), each running fixed software for one job: the brakes, the engine, the windows, the radio. A software-defined vehicle replaces most of them with a few powerful central computers and a common software layer. The car can then be updated over the air, like a phone, and the manufacturer can fix faults, improve driver assistance or add features long after the car has left the showroom.
Much of that is good news. A software fault that once meant a trip to the dealership can be fixed overnight in the driveway. Tesla has done this for years, and many Chinese brands designed their cars around it.
But the ability to change a car after it has been sold also gives its manufacturer more say over how it is used, repaired and paid for. South Africa should be thinking about that now, before software-defined models arrive in numbers.
Who controls your car?
After more than a decade of complaints from independent workshops, the Competition Commission’s guidelines for the automotive aftermarket took effect on 1 July 2021. They let owners have their cars serviced and repaired where they choose, and require manufacturers to give independent repairers technical information, including coding, programming and software.
Those software provisions will matter far more as cars change. If the diagnostics, the updates and the ability to code a replacement part all run through the manufacturer’s central computer and cloud, an independent workshop that can’t get access can’t do much of the work. The commission should be asking manufacturers now how that access will work, rather than waiting for complaints.
Chinese brands accounted for more than 19% of new-vehicle sales in South Africa in the first quarter of 2026, according to Naamsa data, and they are among the most software-heavy cars on sale.
In January 2025, the US commerce department finalised a rule barring connected-vehicle software linked to China or Russia from model year 2027, with hardware to follow from model year 2030. Washington’s concern is that a car which talks constantly to its manufacturer’s servers can collect location and camera data, and can in principle be changed or disabled remotely.
South Africa need not share Washington’s politics to take that concern seriously. Europe has dealt with it differently, making cybersecurity and software update management systems compulsory for all new vehicles sold in the EU since July 2024, under UN regulations R155 and R156. Cars built here for export to Europe already have to comply.
Software-defined cars should be safer, and they can improve long after they are bought. They will also reach local showrooms whether regulators are ready or not: Toyota alone expects to put Arene in 10 million new vehicles a year. Deciding who may repair them, what owners can be charged and where their data goes will be much more difficult once those cars are already in South African driveways. — © 2026 NewsCentral Media
