In 2017, a report from Visual Capitalist showed that software for the automotive market contains upwards of 100 million lines of code. To give some perspective, only Google, with all of their services, was said to have more code in their products.

If the automotive market wants to stay ahead of these software giants, who may have their own ambitions of breaking into the car making game, they need a secret weapon to give them that nitrus boost into the next generation of development.

Automakers have begun to understand that if they are going to have a shot at beating Silicon Valley at their own game, then they are going to have to pool their resources and work smarter together.

One of the ways that they are already doing this is in their use of open source components. This software is written and maintained by the open source community and made available for reuse by others so long as they follow their licenses.

Open source components are essentially the building blocks of software, comprising between 60-80 percent of the code base in modern applications. These reusable components give developers a fast and free way to solve problems and add powerful features to their products without having to write new code themselves.

In hopes of making code sharing in the industry a reality, the majority of stakeholders -- including Panasonic, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz, Honda, Toyota, and many more -- have joined with The Linux Foundation's Automotive Grade Linux (AGL) project.

The goal of the AGL initiative is to create a space, through the Unified Code Base (UCB), where developers can contribute to projects, which in turn will be available to developers at other companies. Through this code sharing, companies can speed up their development of products without having to reinvent the wheel.