Amidst the many technological advancements happening in the auto industry, sustainability and safety will be the core pillars, said CV Raman, CTO, Maruti Suzuki India. He made this observation at the recently held Mobility FutureTech organised by Mobility Outlook in New Delhi recently.
According to him, with the industry moving towards software-defined vehicles, multiple factors such as electrification, connected technology and advanced safety technologies were paving the way for development of automobiles of the future. In this scenario, he added, cybersecurity had also become an important aspect.
Eventually, the success of any technology would solely depend on how specific it is to the region or country. In the case of ADAS, for instance, it should not be accommodated in Indian vehicles “just for the sake of it”.
On the contrary, a proper solution is needed to actually cut down accident rates while keeping the affordability factor of the vehicle in mind. Nearly 65% of road fatalities in India happen in two-wheelers or bicycles where technologies like ADAS provide support to active safety.
Horses For Courses
“I believe that functionalities which have been developed, keeping the western, or advanced country, ecosystem and mobility in mind, cannot be replicated immediately in India,” reiterated Raman. It was his view that the country would need unique technologies given the widespread vehicle types on its roads. Western technologies had to be properly evaluated and used in Indian vehicles with appropriate adjustments, he said.
There are a lot of technologies coming in today developed by not only OEMs or auto component manufacturers, but also many others which is spawning an additional layer of complexity. That is where the problem with technologies like ADAS lies in, said Raman.
The constant challenge is for the system to learn, always recognise rightly and not give false outputs. As far as India was concerned, ADAS needed a lot more testing and evaluation.
According to Raman, this would help OEMs understand, for instance, what features had to be turned on or not; what could a potential enabler for reducing accidents and benefitting the customer; or what could be a potential irritant which actually may have to be switched off by a customer
In India, price is always the key for customers who also seek features and this is true in the case of cars. The Maruti CTO added that safe and convenient mobility was an imperative even while a large chunk of the population still rides two-wheelers.
Only 15% own a private vehicle, of which 12% are two-wheeler owners and the balance 3% are four-wheeler owners. This translates to 30 out of 1,000 people owning cars compared to 600 per 1,000 in Europe.
Steeper Price Tags
Even while income levels and aspirations are rising in India, so have prices of vehicles. This is a fallout of regulations pertaining to safety such as airbags and sustainability regulations such as BS6 norms. With customers seeking fancy infotainment features, the price tags of cars have only increased further.
Consequently, vehicles which were priced INR 5 lakh five years ago are nearly twice as much at INR 9.1 lakh today. Raman said this had adversely affected the entry vehicle segment and” we see an even wider gap increasing each day” between the number of two and four-wheel owners. “That is where the conundrum is — the gap is increasing. And so one could ask which is safer? A two-wheeler or four-wheeler and where should one move to?” he asked.
Raman was categorical that sourcing components locally was the key to bring down the costs of newer/essential technologies. Technology always “comes at a premium” and an engineer’s job was to look at options which were relevant enough to meet customer needs. The other priority was to make technology affordable and democratise its use to cover the length and breadth of the market.
According to Raman, the current period was the best to be in the automotive industry with multiple layers of mobility coming in the form of sustainability, safety, connectivity etc. Consequently, the complexity of the space had increased but so had the opportunities.
New Challenges
While software would be the pivot of future mobility, there was greater responsibility for an engineer in terms of versatility in capabilities and skills. These would be needed to stitch together and integrate technologies into the vehicle, said Raman.
“The unknowns are huge and with software becoming more complex, with multiple controllers needing to talk to each other, the development (of software) is becoming more challenging,” he added. With automobiles gradually becoming “mobile phones on wheels”, the scope and field of a traditional engineer had “multiplied immensely” in the last few decades.
The Maruti CTO said knowledge workers were going to become more important in R&D centres and skill capability was going to “definitely find a place because that is something which is not going to be available” since it was scarce.
“Therefore, developing the talent is where the challenge is,” he added. Acquiring and training manpower while retaining them is becoming important because in some of these areas, the skill level is niche,” he cautioned.
As Raman reiterated, the next decade was going to be a “huge opportunity” with huge challenges, a huge amount of learning and a huge amount of development of technology where “one would be creating a lot more”.
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