Developing software in the automotive industry can be tedious. Old compilers, out-dated toolchains, resource constraint hardware. “Only use something which has been proven in-use” most safety engineers would argue. Well, hardly anyone would object, no one wants to jeopardise peoples lives when bringing a car on the road. The question we asked ourselves quite often in the last year: How can one combine the momentum and the freedom of an open source project while not compromising on the quality and safety? Apex.AI has extensive knowledge on the design and implementation of safety-critical applications written in modern C++ and is focused on certifying the robot operating system (ROS 2) according to the international standard for functional safety ISO26262. We will present an overview over the typical automotive software development process and discuss our modifications in the development workflow that we created for Eclipse iceoryx. Furthermore, we will share the key architectural design decisions, give examples of safe vs. unsafe code and conclude with a brief insight into the lessons learned.