We are witnessing a radical transformation in automotive E/E architectures, both at hardware and software Level, forced by Autonomy, Connectivity and Electrification (ACE). The function developers thrive for the “Software Defined Vehicle”, which implies flexible and dynamic application changes based on Service Oriented Software Architectures and abstracted underlying hardware. While hardware abstraction is desirable from a software perspective, it remains challenging to decouple software from hardware in real-time and safety critical domains and make vehicles become “servers on wheels”. In fact, despite the ongoing introduction of automotive grade High Performance Compute platforms based on CPUs and GPUs in cars, designers are increasing the activity level for purpose-built SoCs, motivated by specific functional, architectural, performance, cost and/or differentiation needs. This talk will outline where and why Purpose-built SoCs make sense, and what it takes.