Background: During the last decades, the functional power and complexity of automotive E/E architectures grew radically and is going to grow further in the future. For highly and fully automated driving, functions with the highest safety integrity level need to be realized, requiring new development methodologies and a new level of formal rigor. Aim: We investigate to what extent SOA concepts are applicable for safety-critical embedded automotive software systems and whether this concept is appealing to E/E architects. Method: We conducted a survey research by interviewing system architects at our industrial partner, then we applied the grounded theory method in order to derive a theory and a set of requirements for an automotive SOA approach. Additionally, we illustrate the approach using a function needed in a highly automated driving scenario. Results: We present a formal service model and an automotive SOA framework. Both aspects, i.e., architecture structuring and formal service description resulted from the analyzed interview data. Limitation: This approach has not been evaluated extensively, yet. Conclusion: Our first results suggest that SOA concepts are indeed successfully applicable in (continuous) automotive software engineering and are a means to cope with complexity and safety requirements.