The automotive world got stunned at the Japan Mobility Show 2025, not by a legacy carmaker, but by an IT services giant. SCSK Corp – known for software and cloud solutions – unveiled an EV concept, developed in a staggering nine months.
This quick turnaround time challenges the traditional car development cycle, which typically takes 3-5 years for a ground-up model.
The concept vehicle, which SCSK refers to as Software-Defined Vehicle (SDV) EV Concept, is not intended for mass production, but showcases what software companies are capable of when they try their hand at hardware.
Nine months
The deliberate nine-month development cycle is a symbolic parallel to the period of human pregnancy, signalling the ‘birth’ of a new model for mobility.
Koji Watanabe, the general manager of the Mobility Business Group at SCSK, said that in the traditional model, car development is vertical, with hardware dictating software integration. “SCSK flipped this, proving that by prioritising software architecture – and utilising a horizontal, co-creation model with overseas hardware partners – the process can be dramatically accelerated,” he said. “I have felt the depth of the wisdom and commitment cultivated over the long history of car manufacturing. By overlaying the perspective of IT onto that history, the possibilities for new mobility expand. We want to meet partners who will connect that passion with the power of digital technology and draw the future together.”
The car
The SDV EV Concept looks like a futuristic car, and the front grille is a large, interactive screen. Inside the cabin, it has an intelligent cockpit with a 44.6-inch 8K pillar-to-pillar display and a personalised AI agent. Watanabe said that the AI can learn user habits to tailor everything from climate control to navigation, turning the car into a highly adaptable experience space.
SCSK emphasised that its goal is to foster a new ecosystem where IT expertise and automotive engineering collaborate – and the automotive process can be transformed from a rigid industrial pipeline into a dynamic, lifecycle-focused IT project.
Watanabe said the aim is that this nine-month-born EV will inspire a new era of partnerships and rapid development across the global mobility sector.
