Growing ADAS, UX trends fuel Aptiv’s India Bet With New Tech Centre

The growing trend of ADAS and consumer demand for enhanced in-cabin user experience (UX) are also fuelling technology suppliers to step up their game in India. One of them is Dublin-headquartered $19.7 billion Aptiv, which inaugurated another technical centre in India. The technical centre in Oragadam, near Chennai, will work on developing solutions for Indian vehicles, primarily Mahindra SUVs to start with.

The new technical centre is Aptiv’s fourth engineering base in India and the second dedicated to advanced safety and UX. 300 engineers will work in the centre, with a provision for 200 more. It’s part of a $60 million investment Aptiv has made over the past three years in India to expand its advanced safety and UX business. The centre also includes a manufacturing plant, which was commissioned last year.

The new development is part of the Irish major’s strategy of tapping India for more than the engineering talent pool, and a low-cost advantage. “I think there’s maybe a third prong. We can leverage that for programmes and applications outside of India, but it also gives us a great foothold for the ASEAN market, to service the ASEAN market not only from the technical centre here in Chennai but also the manufacturing plant in Chennai,” Matthew Cole, Sr. VP & President, Global Advanced Safety & User Experience (AS&UX) APAC, Aptiv, tells Acko Drive.

Big Scope in India

The Chennai technical centre will spearhead the development of next-generation ADAS perception tools, in-cabin sensing technologies, and software-defined infotainment platforms. It will also contribute to Aptiv’s cloud-native architecture, while leveraging integrated capabilities across hardware, software, and edge technologies from Wind River (a software company Aptiv acquired in 2022). The company looks to combine global scale with local relevance, and deliver customer-focused solutions for India.

Aptiv, which is in its 30th year of operations in India, also has a global engineering centre for AS&UX in Bengaluru. With around 2,500 engineers, it’s the company’s largest among five such centres globally. The others are located in Europe, North America, and China.

 The growing appetite for ADAS in India, with OEMs like Mahindra & Mahindra adopting the tech also to enhance product differentiation, is making Aptiv bullish about its prospects here. “I expect within ADAS an increasing level of sophistication globally. In India, we are in the very, very early stages. That’s why we are so excited about this partnership with Mahindra, and the investment we are making, because India has a long way to go, which means there’s a lot of opportunity. And it’s also one of the few growing markets. One of the few markets that’s actually growing,” says Javed Khan, Executive VP & President, Global Advanced Safety & User experience, Aptiv.

The four largest passenger vehicle OEMs in India are already its customers, and the company is “looking at how we expand further”, says Arun Devraj, VP & MD, Advanced Safety & User Experience, APAC (Non-China), Aptiv. 

 The ADAS trend is expected to have a much bigger play between the L1 and L2++ levels. Beyond that, the industry faces major cost hurdles. Khan says, “It’s not that there aren’t solutions out there. They just need to be a lot more economical. The computing power needed to effectively and safely do L3 and beyond is just too expensive. Some companies are doing that, but we are still in the early stages of doing that on scale.”

The higher cost becomes a bigger challenge in a more cost-conscious market like India. Before L3 Autonomous Driving becomes mainstream, the market for features below that level is expected to see a major growth trend. Regulations will also play a role in the penetration of certain ADAS features. “And also if we can make it a better driving experience. If you feel safer in a vehicle. If you feel like you can drive the vehicle more effectively, then again those features, L0 moving towards L2 are very important,” says Cole.

As much as they may be useful features, customising them for the Indian driving environment is equally important. Which is what multiple Indian technical centres of global Tier 1s, including Aptiv’s Chennai technical are also working on.