What will be the future of on-road mobility, the shape and size of vehicles, the intensity and diversity of technologies they will hide beneath the hood, display on the dashboard, and communicate with the rest of the world?
Unleash your imagination and visualise a bizarre project or product and give it the power of technologies like IoT, AI or ML, through AR and VR. If you are one of those dreamers or visionaries, CampX by Volvo Group India is looking for you.
Volvo has the wherewithal for the metamorphosis of your mobility dreams and visions into business propositions. The Gothenburg-headquartered Volvo Group has a long legacy of innovations. Here is proof of that.
Building CampX
One of the museums in Eskilstuna, a small town with a population of less than 70,000, still has one of the earliest, perhaps a century old, diesel engines. It still functions. A smart caretaker amazingly changes the direction of the engine’s rotation by his trick of partially shutting off and making it run again. The sight of this engineering marvel makes the adrenaline flow through the thinking process of even a layman like me. The atmosphere there stirs up innovation.
So is the ambience at CampX campus in Bengaluru with a line of test laboratories and simulation centres along with the Volvo Group Trucks Technology (VGTT) in the same premises. It is an exceedingly innovative and exceptionally innovation stimulant.
CampX site in Bengaluru is part of the Volvo Group CampX global mandate. Its global and Indian goals are the same – to accelerate innovation with simplicity and marketability.
CampX works on three pillars: Discover (identify winning concepts by understanding customer needs and emerging trends), Develop (shaping ideas into solutions by co-creating with experts and partners), and Launch (taking the solutions to market, with its global reach).
For this, the centre invites partners from sectors and segments as diverse as customers, start-ups, suppliers, academia and authorities to collaborate with Volvo Group’s experts to develop future transport solutions. In addition to giving shape to their dreams, and if feasible, they can get funding support also.
The centre looks forward to co-creating and testing new ideas using the labs, workshops, start-ups, and other external stakeholders, closely collaborating with Volvo’s domain experts.
CampX in India will also focus on the new-age business models and technologies that are transforming the transportation industry.
The camp site in Sweden has already gathered nearly 1,000 of its technical and business experts. The Bengaluru unit hopes to replicate the same environment and similar response.
Pushing innovation
Lars Stenqvist, CTO and Executive Vice President, Volvo Group Trucks Technology, was very vocal about the group’s belief more in transport, but the transport must be within the planet's boundaries, which calls for engineering-driven new technological solutions.
According to him, making the impossible possible is innovation. Any initiative on decarbonising road transport leads to new territories, new technologies, new geographies, new industries, which are disruptive development, and therefore, it cannot be the usual research. Hence, it calls for new partnerships to enter into unique ecosystems. “It is to explore possibilities and partnerships in the ecosystem that we decided to have a CampX in Bengaluru,” Stenqvist added.
Helene Niklasson, Vice President, Innovation Ecosystem and Partnership, Volvo Group, said that since opening the first CampX hub in Gothenburg, the group had run more than 20 innovation projects or proof of value projects, as it calls them. About one-third of them have moved on either to be integrated into its products or are in the process of becoming a business offer of their own, she said.
The VGTT team in Bengaluru is an integral part of Volvo Group’s development as it takes over complete responsibilities and ownership for the products. As a result, and in sync with the new CampX set up, the group traverses to the next phase of the innovation sojourn, using Indian talents.
What will the India set up have?
India is looked at for four significant aspects – economic viability, socially inclusive, environmentally-friendly and ethically clean, Kamal Bali, President & MD, Volvo Group, India, said.
While India ranks third in the start-up ecosystem globally, many of the developments in the automotive ecosystems prop up in the two/three-wheeler segment, in which Volvo is not involved. However, CampX Bengaluru will look at this space as well since it is keen to take ideas from any segment and extrapolate them to fit into the space where Volvo is operating.
The India centre will go beyond start-ups, though they will be the primary focus. The facility will encourage even other OEMs from India for a probable collaboration. “We are open to looking at our requirements, our challenges, and willing to offer solutions; anybody would be welcome. When we talk of start-ups, we actually mean entrepreneurs. It could be a young entrepreneur just starting up or even three years old, or maybe even 50 years old. So, if somebody has a solution in such areas as we are interested, they’re most welcome,” Bali said.
Conclusion
CampX ultimately supports Volvo Group’s objective of making transportation environment friendly. Volvo has made its 2040 Sustainability commitments to move towards 100% fossil-free, safe and more productive offerings. It believes that the future needs to deploy new technologies, new business models, and a work culture marked by intense collaboration. CampX will be a crucial driver to this future, Bali added.