Coretura, the 50-50 software joint venture of Daimler Truck and Volvo Group, wants to cut the number of onboard computers in a heavy truck from today's 100-150 down to about 40 by the end of the decade, CEO Johan Lundén told reporters at IAA Transportation in Hannover.

The Gothenburg-based company is closing in on 170 employees, up from about 50 in June 2025, and Lundén said headcount is headed toward 400-450 by 2030. Its job is to provide standardized software — an operating system, application programming interfaces and a developer toolchain — that truckmakers and third parties build features on top of.

What does Coretura actually make?

"Our layer is the operating system. Everything above it ... stays with the truckmakers or third-party vendors," Lundén said.

He likened it to a computer or phone OS — but pushed back on the "iPhone on wheels" shorthand. "When your phone freezes or an app won't load, you get a bit annoyed, but life goes on. In a truck, a failure in a safety-critical system is a different matter."

The platform walls off safety-critical code from routine updates, and Coretura carries cybersecurity responsibility for the computers and connectivity hardware it supplies. Its starting point for automated driving is Level 2-plus; the founders' autonomous-vehicle units would layer on compute and a virtual driver to reach Level 4.

Why so many computers — and what changes?

Not every control unit has its own network connection. An over-the-air update can pass through several before reaching the target, with side effects.

"You can change something you hadn't intended to. Say you're updating the infotainment system, and suddenly the vehicle won't start," Lundén said.

Coretura's proposal is two main high-performance computers — one for advanced driver-assistance and safety functions, the other for infotainment — with vehicle control placed wherever it fits.

"That's our proposal as of now. That's not a given standard," Lundén said.

What do fleets get after delivery?

Today's truck slowly decays once it leaves the plant, Lundén said. A software-defined truck doesn't have to.

"In a software-defined world, you could say it's at its worst when it rolls off the production line, and then every software update, every addition will just improve the performance of the vehicle," he said.

The ceiling is physics. "If you bought a 4x2 tractor, there's no software in the world that's going to make it a 6x2 or a 6x4," he said.

Battery-electric trucks have the most room, because retuning battery use for a specific duty cycle requires little new certification. Changing a diesel's injection system triggers fresh emissions approval — a much heavier lift.

Drivers won't pick software-defined trucks out of a lineup, but they will notice uptime-friendly update timing and features arriving after delivery: better driver assistance, better quality, better efficiency under the hood.

Will Coretura sell beyond Volvo and Daimler?

Volvo Group and Daimler Truck are Coretura's first customers. Lundén said the company is "here to sell to any and all commercial vehicle players" that want an operating system and base platform, and that the two founders together cover a large part of the market, putting Coretura "very close to a standard."

"Taking the leap of faith and saying, yeah, we're going to replace the core of our vehicle's electronics and rely on you is a pretty big step for many," he said.

When does it hit the road?

Daimler Truck CEO Karin Rådström told IAA that Daimler would have its first vehicle running Coretura software toward the end of this year, with Autocar Professional reporting the unit will be a demonstration rather than a series-production truck.

Lundén pegged the harder work later. "There's a lot of maturity steps where the really important ones are when you get into production-like and production-hardened software, which will be closer to the end of the decade," he said.

A Linux- and Android-based application toolchain is already running. Everything Coretura builds is stored in a code repository that supports heavy automation in development and testing.

For fleet operators, software-defined trucks promise an upgrade path that decouples feature refresh from hardware replacement, with the biggest near-term upside on battery-electric duty cycles. For rival OEMs, the Volvo-Daimler combination gives Coretura near-standard weight on day one, and Lundén expects customer interest to widen as the platform hardens through the back half of the decade.