Rust is rolling off the Volvo assembly line

A while back, I had the fortune to talk with Julius Gustavsson from Sweden and he squarely falls in the last category of people. From 2019 onwards, he has been the main software architect for the low-power processor ECU (electronic control unit) at Volvo.

This ECU is responsible for the (low) power management of the car. Electric cars obviously have massive high-voltage batteries, but the classic 12 volt lines are still there. Those lines are always on and can drain the battery if there's any power usage, so you want all car systems to be turned off when you're away from your car. The ECU is responsible for waking up the electric system when needed, for example when you approach the car.

This ECU was not actively being worked on in 2019 and so Julius became part of a new dedicated team. But even back in 2017, when Julius joined Volvo, he already knew about Rust and saw its potential to replace existing C and C++ code.

It turned out the low-power processor was a perfect fit for using Rust! It was not classified as a safety-critical component and it was an Arm Cortex-M processor, so there was no technical or bureaucratic blocker for using Rust.

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