Ottawa Infotainment to Drive SDV, Cockpit, and Compute Architecture for Canada’s Flagship Vehicle Program
TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA, February 17, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — The Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association (APMA) has selected Ottawa Infotainment (OI) to architect the next-generation software and electronic platform for Project Arrow, Canada’s flagship autonomous Software Defined Vehicle initiative. The Project Arrow Phase 2.0 concept vehicle, Borealis, will debut at the Toronto AutoShow as a vision of fully autonomous, connected mobility in the 2040 timeframe, showcasing Canada’s commitment to redefining the future of mobility, intelligent cockpit systems, and autonomous transportation.
A Global Industry Problem: OEMs Struggle to Transition to SDVs
Automakers worldwide are facing a structural challenge. Vehicles built on dozens of fragmented ECUs cannot support the rapid pace of software development, cybersecurity requirements, autonomy stacks, and the desire for continuous OTA feature updates. Deloitte’s Software Defined Vehicle Readiness Survey emphasizes that OEMs must transition toward centralized compute, domain consolidation, and streamlined electronic architectures to remain competitive in the coming decades.
Seeing this challenge unfold, APMA issued a national call-to-action to the Canadian automotive supplier ecosystem: contribute technologies that will allow OEMs to successfully navigate the SDV transition. The goal was to assemble Canadian innovators who have both the technical depth and long-term vision to demonstrate what fully autonomous platforms should become by 2040.
The Solution: A Unified SDV Architecture Built on DragonFire
Under this collaboration, Ottawa Infotainment will design the complete EE architecture, synchronized cockpit experience, and user interface vision across all display surfaces within the Project Arrow Borealis concept vehicle. The Toronto AutoShow debut marks the first public demonstration of the platform, with additional software capabilities and feature rollouts scheduled to be showcased at future industry events later this year.
At the heart of OI’s solution is its proprietary DragonFire OS, paired with DragonFire Pro and DragonFire Spark, a family of high-performance compute modules. These units can be daisy chained to create a centralized SDV compute domain that replaces dozens of legacy ECUs with a small number of powerful, reconfigurable building blocks.
This transition aligns directly with Deloitte’s SDV findings that centralized compute offers reduced wiring complexity, improved cybersecurity posture, and significant reductions in lifetime software maintenance costs.
Jon Hacker, Chief Technology Officer at Ottawa Infotainment, explained the core engineering philosophy:
“We built DragonFire OS and our proprietary hardware with one goal in mind: give automakers a foundation that offers true scalability. The industry is asking for simpler architectures, faster development cycles, and hardware that can evolve with software. Our approach combines a unified OS with modular compute blocks so OEMs can migrate from legacy electronics to Software Defined Vehicle architectures without rebuilding everything from scratch.”
Sean Hazaray, CEO of Ottawa Infotainment, underscored the broader industry impact:
“The biggest challenge facing automakers today is the complexity and cost of transitioning to Software Defined Vehicles. Our architecture directly addresses this by reducing the number of ECUs, simplifying integration, and enabling software to drive more of the vehicle. This shift yields immediate cost savings in development effort, wiring, and long-term maintenance. With DragonFire, we are demonstrating that a smarter, consolidated architecture is not just the future of SDVs. It is a practical, deployable solution that OEMs can adopt right now.”
The architecture being created for Project Arrow is designed as a scalable, production-ready pattern that automakers can adopt across future autonomous vehicle programs as the industry progresses toward fully autonomous mobility.
Canada’s Leadership in the Future of Automotive Technology
With Project Arrow, Canada is demonstrating that it can shape the technical architecture of future autonomous and software-driven mobility. The initiative brings together innovators across software, hardware, electrification, materials, cybersecurity, and advanced manufacturing.
The selection of Ottawa Infotainment reinforces Canada’s emerging position as a global contributor to SDV development and cockpit intelligence, showing that next-generation vehicles can be conceived, designed, and engineered domestically.
About Project Arrow
Project Arrow is Canada’s national showcase for zero-emission, autonomous, and Software Defined Vehicle innovation. Led by the Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association, the initiative brings together Canadian suppliers to develop a complete concept vehicle engineered and built domestically.
About Ottawa Infotainment
Ottawa Infotainment builds next-generation cockpit systems, consolidated compute platforms, and SDV architectures for automotive OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers. The company specializes in embedded software, domain controller design, vehicle networking, autonomous-ready computing, and production-grade digital cockpit systems.
Jason Kennedy
Ottawa Infotainment
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