Our hardware team has finalised the board design for the next generation of our vehicle intelligence unit, marking the formal commencement of Phase 2 in the SVI prototype programme. This milestone follows eight months of iterative design work and closes out the Phase 1 architecture validation stage that began in early 2025.
What Phase 2 Means
Phase 1 was about proving the concept at the system level — confirming that the core architecture of the Strategic Vehicular Intelligence System could deliver the performance characteristics we needed: event detection latency within our target window, communication reliability above a defined threshold, and power consumption compatible with a vehicle-installed unit that does not require modification to the host vehicle's electrical system.
Phase 2 shifts focus from architecture validation to engineering for manufacture. The board design finalised by our hardware team this month incorporates the lessons from Phase 1 into a design that is testable, reproducible, and capable of being assembled in small production runs for pilot deployment.
Key Design Changes in Phase 2
The Phase 2 board incorporates several significant changes from the Phase 1 prototype:
- Consolidated communications stack. Phase 1 used separate modules for GPS, cellular, and V2X signalling. Phase 2 integrates these onto a single custom board, reducing form factor, power draw, and potential failure points.
- Improved GNSS/IMU fusion. The Phase 2 design uses a tighter-coupled GNSS/IMU architecture, improving positioning accuracy in environments where satellite visibility is intermittent — urban canyons, underground car parks, and tunnel approaches.
- Enhanced thermal management. Phase 1 units showed thermal margin concerns under sustained high-load operation in warm ambient conditions. The Phase 2 board redesigns the power delivery and thermal dissipation path to operate within specification across the full automotive temperature range.
- Firmware update capability. Phase 2 hardware supports over-the-air firmware updates, allowing the system to receive software improvements throughout its deployment lifetime without physical intervention.
The Road to Phase 2 Testing
Board fabrication is now underway with our manufacturing partner. Initial units are expected to arrive in the engineering lab in the coming weeks, at which point the team will begin a structured bring-up sequence — power rail verification, communications stack initialisation, sensor validation, and integration testing against the cloud backend.
Once bring-up is complete, Phase 2 moves into system-level testing: on-vehicle integration, real-world event detection validation, and the first end-to-end tests of the full alert pipeline from on-board event detection through to cloud acknowledgement and operator notification.
Towards Pilot Deployment
Phase 2 testing success is the gateway to our first pilot deployments. We are in active conversation with a small number of fleet operators and institutional partners about initial deployment contexts, with the goal of gathering real-world operational data that Phase 1 and Phase 2 lab testing cannot replicate.
Pilot feedback will directly inform Phase 3 — the transition from prototype to a production-ready unit suitable for volume deployment. We will publish further updates as Phase 2 testing progresses.
If your organisation is interested in participating in the SVI pilot programme, we encourage early contact. Pilot cohort places are limited and will be allocated based on operational fit and the quality of the learning opportunity each deployment represents.
A Note on the Development Timeline
Hardware development timelines rarely survive first contact with fabrication. We are sharing this milestone publicly because board design finalisation is a concrete, verifiable deliverable — not a projection. The next update we will share is board bring-up completion, which is the next hard milestone in the programme. We do not share timelines we cannot stand behind.
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