2026 State of Automotive Software Development Report

Welcome to the 2026 State of Automotive Software Development Report

This year, over 450 automotive development professionals around the world provided responses to questions regarding current practices and emerging trends within the automotive software industry.

Our findings show that quality continues to be the leading key area of concern for automotive software professionals. High-quality software contributes to both safety and security, which are the second and third leading concerns in 2026. The trend toward vehicles that are software-driven puts these issues into overdrive, highlighting the need for tools and best practices that keep automotive software safe and secure — while empowering teams to innovate.

Automotive professionals are addressing these challenges in a number of ways. While C, C++, and Python are still the major programming languages used by automotive developers, the use of Rust is steadily increasing. Rust is advantageous for automotive applications because its memory safety features are baked into the language. Currently, there is no published coding standard for Rust specifically, so tooling must be reviewed and adapted to cover code quality. As 55% of survey respondents are already using a static analysis tool, this makes it a natural choice to help meet functional safety requirements for code written in Rust.

AI continues to emerge as a key driver of innovation, transforming the future of software-defined vehicles even amid the uncertainty it poses around safety and security. Already, 71% are using AI in their product design and 45% are using it not just in development as a tool or assistant but also as a part of the end product. To help mitigate risk introduced by AI while keeping development velocity high, lifecycle management is key. Automotive developers need tools that ensure continuous, end-to-end traceability and static analysis to identify vulnerabilities and assist with compliance to both coding and functional safety standards. Teams can also benefit from built-in AI remediation assistants that provide contextual fix suggestions for identified vulnerabilities. 

As organizations navigate the leading economic and geopolitical market conditions — with leaner teams and fewer new locations opening — teams eager to innovate can compete by modernizing. To maintain global industry competitiveness, which was a challenge for 57% of the survey respondents, automotive development teams with increasingly distributed workforces must apply toolchain modernization. This includes unified version control, automated traceability, governed reuse, and static analysis for optimal verification/validation, shift-left, and DevOps automation.

Proving compliance with coding standards and functional safety standards is more important than ever this year — not just checking rules, but providing traceability, provenance, and documentation. Ensuring compliance with established and emerging standards helps prevent software vulnerabilities and costly recalls down the line and also helps with the safer inclusion of AI in automotive development.

We hope this information will help your development teams innovate faster and improve quality — while maintaining compliance for safety and security.

Thank you to everyone who participated in the survey!

Jill Britton
Director of Compliance
Perforce, Inc.