Software plays a more and more important role in modern powertrains. Software quality issues during development until start of production (SOP) are a significant time-to-market risk and in the field, a negative product quality impact from software problems must be avoided. One major role in dealing with the described problems will play the virtualization in development. The main motivation to establish it, is beside quality topics, the reduction of cost and improved time-to-market speed in development. The virtualization level of control units is not always high enough yet to support all kinds of tests. The limits caused by that will be described. The presentation shows several aspects, the industry should consider, for bringing this solution forward in big scale. Supplier cooperation, establishing process beyond a single company, work split models and data sharing are some of the key words. Virtualization plays not only during the actual development until SOP a growing role, but even after SOP until end of product life – for passenger cars and heavy-duty vehicles benefits of digital twins are clear. For the European car manufacturers SiL will be an essential building block for establishing competitiveness in the global market with very frequent product launches & updates. Finally real development project examples will be briefly discussed to underline the benefits of virtualization and the actual relevance.