The ‘new car’ of the future isn’t from a showroom—it’s your old one updated like an iPhone

It is that time of year again—award season—and for the fifth time, I am a juror for India’s most prestigious automotive award, the Indian Car of the Year, or ICOTY. We had the jury round earlier this week. While I genuinely have no clue which car will take home the award, it did strike me that in our shortlist of eight vehicles for ICOTY, three were pure electric vehicles—the BYD eMax 7, the MG Windsor, and the Tata Punch.ev.

In fact, if you consider that the Tata Curvv was also in contention, and that it comes in both internal combustion and EV avatars, you could argue that three-and-a-half contenders were electric. Sure, EVs are still a small fraction of the Indian car market, but seeing the lineup of electric vehicles set to launch next year—including the new Mahindra models I drove recently—they could start playing a bigger role in the Indian market.

One is that awards, and car evaluation on the whole, are becoming ‘drivetrain neutral’. It makes no difference what powers a vehicle, although the way the battery or engine delivers power, and what a vehicle does with that power, still matters.

The other point is the rise of the concept of the ‘software-defined vehicle’ (SDV). This is something I hear from the management of every carmaker I meet. And it’s a concept that won’t just upend the car market. It could change the very definition of a ‘new’ car. With a software update, your old car could have a whole new personality.

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Same-same, but different

Think about it: when you make a significant operating system update on your smartphone, whether it’s Android or iOS, the entire performance of your device can change. The last time I upgraded iOS on my iPhone, it was like learning to use a new device. Despite the hardware, like the camera, remaining the same, tweaks in the software changed not just the app but the resulting photographs.

And that’s what an SDV is all about. It’s not about the motor or the engine or the battery. Earlier, if you wanted a new car, you pretty much had to go out and buy one. But with vehicles like the BMW iX50, which I’ve been driving over the past few weeks, an over-the-air (OTA) software update from BMW could change the way it performs. The battery management software could be tweaked to regenerate or deliver power differently. Modifications could be made to the advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) or even the seat massaging function.

Not just that, everything could change—the user interface, the fonts, and the displays. You could effectively have an all-new car, even though it looks the same and still has the same scratches on the paintjob.

Of course, a lot of this will be hardware-limited, just like you wouldn’t expect a five-year-old iPhone 11 to perform like or even load the latest iteration of iOS. Maybe in six or seven years, a car bought today won’t be able to run the latest software and, therefore, be obsolete. As I wrote earlier this year, the rapid development of electric vehicles and software updates has made them more like consumer technology. Their value depreciation isn’t like that of a petrol or diesel car, but like that of a smartphone or laptop.

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The future of ‘new’ cars

This brings me to another point I was discussing with some of my fellow jury members—would this fundamentally change what a ‘new car’ is? How would we evaluate a ‘new car’? Would there be small, incremental hardware changes and dramatic software updates every year that redefine performance? Until, of course, one day there’s a major hardware design update, or, like the MacBook laptop, the looks remain the same while the insides change.

Then there’s the concept of subscription services. On a vehicle. For example, Tesla offers its high-performance ‘Ludicrous’ mode if you pay for it. Mercedes-Benz provides seat heating and massage functions for an extra fee, at least in the US market.

Will we start treating cars like Netflix subscriptions, upgrading or downgrading according to our usage? How do you evaluate a car where everything is there, but nothing is enabled?

I have always been fascinated by the increasing encroachment of technology into cars. The complete digitisation of navigation, for example, and the fact that most of us now use streaming music services in our cars. But this is something else, something more fundamental. It’s only a matter of time before we start hearing about Artificial Intelligence (AI), and maybe even generative AI, in newer cars. I actually discussed this very issue in a panel discussion earlier this year. While I have no judgements on the rights and wrongs of it, it’s something I’ll be coming back to in 2025.

And yes, there was the ICOTY jury meet, and we scored the competitors for the ICOTY 2025 award, as well as the Green Car and Premium Car awards. But these fundamental questions are taking up more and more of my thoughts. It almost feels like the kind of big, philosophical questions you ask in religion—because the very concept of a car is evolving. And that both excites and worries me all at once.

@kushanmitra is an automotive journalist based in New Delhi. Views are personal.

(Edited by Asavari Singh)