Kigen, the Cambridge eSIM company backed by Arm and SoftBank, announced on 23 September that its new automotive eSIM has passed the GSMA’s eUICC Security Assurance evaluation while running SGP.32 v1.3, the newest edition of the industry’s IoT eSIM specification, published only in May. The GSMA’s own eSIM technical director called it the first eSIM to reach that combination.
The part pairs Kigen’s SIM software with Infineon’s TEGRION SLI22 controller, a security chip qualified for the extended temperatures and quality standards that cars demand. Carmakers can request samples in the small, soldered-down MFF2 package from October 2026.
A certification “first” is easy to wave away as a marketing line. This one deserves a closer look.
Tucked inside v1.3 is a small correction with outsized consequences for vehicles: how an eSIM treats the connectivity profile reserved for emergency calls. Set that beside European rules that now require new car models to place crash calls over 4G and 5G, and beside vehicles that stay on the road for well over a decade, and Kigen’s announcement looks less like a badge and more like a bet on where automotive connectivity is heading.
Why The Emergency Profile Detail Matters
Start with that emergency correction, because it is the part carmakers will feel first. According to an independent reading of the specification, eSIMs built to earlier versions could refuse to download an emergency profile altogether, mistaking the emergency label attached to it for an error rather than an instruction. Version 1.3 settles how such a profile is switched on, switched off and guarded against tampering.
For a smart meter or a parcel tracker, that gap barely registers. For a car sold in Europe, where the crash-call system is a legal requirement, it is the difference between a feature that exists in a standard and one that works when the airbags go off.
And the legal clock is already running. Europe’s shift to Next Generation eCall, which carries emergency calls as data over 4G and 5G instead of the old 2G and 3G voice channel, became mandatory for new vehicle types on 1 January 2026, and it reaches every new car and light van from 1 January 2027.
Telematics units for cars built in that year are being specified now, so a certified part that already handles emergency profiles the way the latest specification intends takes one question off a long list. We traced how the same network transition is squeezing older connected cars in our piece on LTE’s clock.
What The Certificate Actually Proves
Handling emergency profiles correctly only helps if the chip doing it can be trusted, and that is what the certificate speaks to. The GSMA’s eSA scheme is a security check, not a test of whether a SIM works on a particular network.
Licensed labs try to break the product against a checklist the GSMA sets, and since May 2025 that check has covered the chip hardware too, not only the software running on it. For an operator or a carmaker, a pass means one less audit to run themselves.
The specification it was checked against matters just as much. SGP.32 is the rulebook that lets IoT devices switch mobile networks over the air without anyone tapping “accept” on a screen, the way phone eSIMs work. We looked at who ends up holding the keys to that switching in the fight over the IoT SIM, and at why operators are buying their way into SGP.32.
Kigen has put the newest edition of that rulebook onto a chip that has already passed the security check. Besides the emergency fix, it lets a vehicle fetch a new network profile either directly from an operator or through the fleet’s own management system, and accept activation codes sent digitally rather than printed on cards.
The company frames all of this in terms of time. “Vehicles are becoming long-lived software platforms, so their connectivity trust anchor must remain secure and manageable long after production,” chief executive Vincent Korstanje said.
One Chip Family From Dashboard To Depot
That same long view explains the portfolio Kigen has built around the certificate. The automotive SLI22 is one of three siblings in Infineon’s SLx22 family that Kigen now supports, alongside the SLC22 for consumer devices, which follows the phone eSIM standard, and the SLM22 for industrial IoT on SGP.32 v1.3. All three share one operating system, one hardware base, one set of tools and one management system, and they extend Kigen’s IoT and consumer eSIMs certified six months earlier, which added secure software updates with Europe’s Cyber Resilience Act in mind.
That sounds like a spec-sheet footnote until you think about how a modern vehicle is put together. The infotainment unit behaves much like a phone, the telematics box behaves like an industrial device, and a growing number of controllers have no screen at all, a shift we followed in how IoT rewired the car. Those systems can easily end up with different eSIM suppliers, each needing its own integration work and security sign-off.
Kigen is pitching one platform that stretches across all of them, and across the passenger cars, public transport and industrial vehicles a single manufacturer may build. Our read: for a carmaker with several vehicle lines, fewer eSIM setups to qualify is a stronger selling point than the “first” in the press release.
The Chinese Route To Market
One platform matters most to carmakers selling the same model in many countries, which may explain the only partner named in the announcement. China Mobile International will work with Kigen to bring SGP.32-based security to Chinese automakers.
China’s car exports in the first eight months of this year already passed the 2025 total, and a vehicle built in China and registered in Germany or Brazil needs connectivity that can be switched to a local network after export without opening the dashboard. That is exactly the problem over-the-air SIM switching exists to solve, and it hints at where early volume for this part may come from. Before any of those cars ship, though, two gaps remain open.
What The Certificate Doesn’t Settle
Compatibility Testing Still Runs On v1.2
The first is that a security certificate on v1.3 doesn’t mean the wider ecosystem is ready for v1.3. According to the independent explainer cited above, published at the end of July, the GSMA’s separate certification that checks eSIM chips, management platforms and operator servers work together was still being issued against v1.2, the version most commercial deployments use today.
Kigen says it will join GSMA compatibility testing in October. It counts more than 20 network providers ready for digital activation and more than 60 modules in its “Secure with Kigen” programme. Those are encouraging numbers, but buyers should still ask any vendor a plain question: certified against which version, and for what, security or compatibility?
Quantum Readiness Is A Test Bench, Not A Standard
The second gap is post-quantum cryptography, the encryption designed to hold up once quantum computers can crack today’s methods. GSMA specifications don’t include it yet, so the hybrid approach Kigen offers, which pairs a conventional algorithm with a quantum-safe one, sits outside the standard for now. Carmakers can trial it end to end with Kigen’s development kit and sample eSIMs.
Infineon built post-quantum cryptography into the SLI22 when it launched the chip in March, so the hardware is ready for it. That is sensible groundwork for a vehicle that may still be driving when quantum attacks become practical, but it remains a rehearsal rather than something a certification body has signed off.
None of these gaps makes the eSIM the most glamorous part of a car, and samples only start shipping next month. Still, the automotive SIM has quietly become a long-term commitment.
Whatever goes onto a telematics board in 2027 has to place emergency calls correctly, accept new operators in markets the car was never built for, and outlast changes in encryption nobody can yet schedule. Kigen is betting carmakers would rather pay for that decade now than retrofit it later. The open question is whether testing labs and operators catch up to v1.3 before those cars leave the factory.
