India, China car design evolves for local market

Article By : Vivek Nanda

Automotive design in China and India increasingly caters to the local market with the countries posed to leapfrog to leading positions in emerging EV and autonomous driving markets, says Renesas-Intersil's Jonpaul Jandu.

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Continuing the conversation with Jonpaul S. Jandu senior marketing manager at Renesas' Intersil division we talked about key automotive markets in the region: China and India.

Tell us how the India market is developing.
In India most of my designs have been with what I would call more traditional Western tier 1s: Visteon Delphi Harman Becker Bosch. Their India divisions I would say 5 or so years ago were mostly software houses. Hardware would be designed in Germany or the U.S. and then they would send it to India for software development.

Low-cost systems

India now has a lot more organic design going on. So Bosch India is making a system from hardware level up for Indian OEMs. These companies have realised that the Indian market is different. I can’t sell my navi that works in Germany in India—the cost is too high the features are different from what's required. In a lot of cases the navi is not there: it’s a display radio.

We are seeing a lot more design activity in India… hardware design too. Tata Elexsi we’ve been engaged with them for several years on different types of programmes. Four years ago a lot of what I dealt with them they were targeting non-Indian OEMs. Now I think the domestic Indian OEM brands are growing a lot more and they want these systems. And so we are seeing a lot more Indian activity.

One challenge in India though is that the two-wheeler market is so big and you don’t need a display on that… But still the four-wheeler market is coming up. The Indian market has a big potential growth for us.

Can you contrast that with what you are seeing in China?
China I would say as far as domestic cars are concerned is ahead of India just because of the economic boom of the last 20 years. But I think you’ll see similar trends. You compete with the Toyota Honda Volkswagen or Ford. They have to have the quality levels.

In India and in China it’s not just that consumers want a radio and a navi. They want the safety. Those processors can do so much now. The navi and the map is simple. It’s the advanced features that they really deliver on. Bundling the system [with all those features] really helps sell cars.

Self-driving cars

You alredy have 75% of the systems you need to be autonomous. The only thing is the AI to blend it together. We’re this close. Renesas Electronics and Great Wall China [recently] announced a strategic collaboration on the development of new energy vehicles and self-driving cars.

In hybrid cars Japanese are 10-15 years ahead. China can lead globally in EV. That’s still an emerging technology. If they invest in it early they can lead worldwide. Similarly the next-gen is autonomous. If China addresses that early they can be with the world leaders in autonomous driving.

India is still behind China but this is emerging stuff and autonomous is a lot of software which India is famous for. So, I can see India also trying to blaze a trail in autonomous.