Maruti Suzuki India, the country’s largest passenger vehicle maker, is gearing up to mark its entry into the electric vehicle segment with the soon-to-be-introduced e Vitara has announced an EV ecosystem with a comprehensive end-to-end digital platform for charging needs, including home and public charging, with an integrated payment journey.

The company has signed collaboration agreements with 13 Charge Point Operators (CPOs) and aggregators to provide seamless charging experiences on a single platform.

Maruti Suzuki has established a network of over 2,000 exclusive charging points across its nationwide dealer network, spanning more than 1,100 cities. Customers’ charging needs are further supported by the extensive partner-operated all-India charging network.

Aligned with its global vision, Maruti Suzuki will work with its partners to enable more than 100,000 Public Charging Points by 2030.

Hisashi Takeuchi, Managing Director & CEO, Maruti Suzuki India, said, “At Maruti Suzuki, we strive to extend a delightful ownership experience to our customers to build lasting trust. Today, we are taking a historic step, as we enter the domain of electric mobility with full readiness to address the EV charging concerns and boost customer confidence. We have established a robust network of over 2,000 Maruti Suzuki exclusive charging points across our sales and service network, spanning more than 1,100 cities. Further, we have collaborated with 13 Charge Point Operators to offer access to a vast charging infrastructure across the country. Aligned with Suzuki’s global vision, we plan to introduce multiple EVs and to support this, our aim is to enable a network of over 1 lakh charging points across India by 2030, along with our Dealer and CPO partners.”

'E for Me' Digital Platform

The Maruti Suzuki ‘e for me’ EV charging mobile app enables end-to-end usage of EV charging points from partner-operated charging points and Maruti Suzuki’s own network on a single platform.

The app offers a uniform customer journey for EV charging and payment through UPI or exclusive ‘Maruti Suzuki Money’, powered by Razorpay.

The platform's functions include:

• Locate, Pay & Use EV charging points available on the app.
• Use Public and Smart Home Charger from the same app.
• One card for ‘Tap N Charge’ functionality at Maruti Suzuki dealer outlets and home charger.
• Mirror e for me app on the infotainment system for seamless in-car EV charging experience.
• Remotely start/stop and manage the power output of the smart home charger.

Partho Banerjee, Senior Executive Officer, Marketing & Sales, Maruti Suzuki India, said, “Today is the dawn of a new era for electric mobility in India. It gives me immense pleasure to say that Maruti Suzuki is EV ready and will be ‘By Your Side’ with our comprehensive new platform that addresses key concerns around EV charging infrastructure. Leveraging India’s largest dealer network and our charging partners’ network, we are ensuring there are EV charging points at an average distance of 5-10 kilometres at key locations in the top 100 cities of India. DC fast chargers are also located at regular intervals along key highways to enable nationwide driving freedom for our prospective EV customers. To further enhance peace of mind, we have deployed a 1.5 lakh-strong specially-trained EV workforce to cater to every need of our customers. We have also activated 1500+ EV-ready service workshops across 1100 cities for meeting after-sales requirements to support EV ownership in every part of the country.”

To showcase the network readiness, four e VITARAs were flagged off from Gurugram in all four directions – Srinagar (North), Kanyakumari (South), Bhuj (West) and Dibrugarh (East) – as a part of the ‘e drive’.

The e Vitara Born EV, which is ‘Made-in-India and exported around the world,’ has been rigorously tested over 10 million test kilometres. Tested from ‘Sand to Snow’ over a temperature spectrum of 60deg Celsius to -30deg Celsius, the e Vitara has delivered a driving range of 543 km.

Banerjee added: “Words aside, we are showcasing the prowess of this platform by flagging off a radical ‘e drive’ that will demonstrate the real-world efficacy of Maruti Suzuki’s comprehensive EV charging network. With the ‘e drive’, we aim to boost user confidence and execute faster EV adoption, working alongside the nation’s sustainability goals for net zero.”

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Pre-owned car marketplace Cars24 has announced the launch of AI Labs, a dedicated initiative designed to develop artificial intelligence-native products and support early-stage entrepreneurs.

As part of the program, the company has committed a USD 20 million investment fund targeted at startups and development teams building transformative AI technologies.

The move marks an expansion of Cars24’s internal technology strategy, where machine learning and artificial intelligence models have already been integrated into core business operations to manage decision-making workflows and customer experience interfaces. Through AI Labs, the company will extend its technical resources externally to independent software engineers and startup founders.

To establish the infrastructure for the program, Cars24 has partnered with technology providers including OpenAI, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and ElevenLabs. This ecosystem will provide participating developers with cloud infrastructure, technical expertise, distribution networks and advanced language and voice synthesis models to accelerate product deployment.

The operational focus of AI Labs is divided into three primary activities:

• Build: Developing proprietary AI-native applications and contributing to global open-source software innovation.
• Partner: Collaborating with established artificial intelligence firms to encourage industry experimentation and technology adoption.
• Invest: Supplying seed capital and strategic support to early-stage businesses building software categories.

Beyond direct equity investments, the initiative will fund community engagement programs, including regional hackathons, builder incubation programs and collaborative open-source projects designed to stimulate developer experimentation.

Vikram Chopra, Founder and CEO, Cars24, said, “Every major technology shift creates a handful of companies that go on to define the future. We believe AI is the biggest shift of our generation, and the opportunity ahead is far larger than anything we've seen before. Over the last few years, we've seen AI fundamentally change how we operate, build products, and serve customers AI Labs is our way of giving back to the ecosystem that is shaping this future. We want to back founders early, help them move faster and support the people building things that seem impossible today but inevitable tomorrow.”

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Automotive supplier Valeo and Electronic Design Automation software provider Zuken have announced a strategic partnership to develop an open, artificial intelligence-assisted electronic design platform. The collaboration will operate under a joint program named the ‘Zuken Valeo InnoLab’.

The initiative integrates Zuken's AI architecture with Valeo’s custom AI agents and industrial data to create a real-time collaborative ecosystem between software tools and engineers. The primary objective of the program is to reduce hardware design timelines while maintaining structural robustness across complex automotive electronic systems.

The technical development framework spans the entire electronic design flow and is organised into four main operational areas:

• Functional Generative Design: Valeo will deploy its generative AI models within Zuken’s System Planner software to instantly generate and evaluate multi-criteria system architectures based on predefined corporate standards.
• Digital Continuity: Zuken’s open architecture will interface with Valeo’s existing digital ecosystem to provide end-to-end data traceability. This integration is designed to comply with the Automotive SPICE 4.0 (ASPICE4.0) Hardware Engineering process group standard, allowing Valeo's AI to process data and execute automated actions directly within the platform.
• Assisted Detailed Design: Valeo will integrate virtual AI copilot agents to assist engineering teams in real time with hardware rule verification, solution searching, and constraint implementations. Concurrently, Zuken is developing native AI functions to accelerate schematic entries by drawing from Valeo’s standardised components database.
• Automated Placement and Routing: Physical circuit integration will utilise Zuken’s Design Force engine, which features automated placement and routing algorithms. Valeo will use Zuken's software development kit to train the AI engine against specific automotive environmental and physical constraints to achieve correct initial executions.

Christophe Le Ligne, Vice-President – Research and Development, Valeo, said, “For Valeo, Zuken is much more than a software provider; it is a true innovation partner. The power of Zuken’s AI roadmap, combined with the exceptional openness of its architecture, allows us to hybridise our own artificial intelligence tools with their engine. This win-win partnership is the best way to tackle the challenge of automotive complexity by slashing our design times while guaranteeing 100% robustness.”

Ryosuke Takagi, Executive Officer and General Manager – R&D Division, Zuken, added, “Our vision at Zuken has always been to provide intelligent tools that adapt to our customers’ most complex challenges. Collaborating with a technological leader like Valeo pushes our ‘Autonomous Brain’ roadmap to its highest level of performance. By opening our System Planner, Design Gateway, and Design Force solutions to Valeo’s AI agents, we demonstrate that the true power of AI in engineering lies in the alliance between a high-performance software engine and expert industrial know-how.”

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Artificial intelligence software developer Helm.ai has launched two foundation models, GenSim-3 and VidGen-3, establishing a native Full HD (1920x1080) resolution standard for generative simulation across a 6-camera, 360-degree surround-view suite.

The architecture delivers 5x the pixel density of industry benchmarks to assist automotive developers facing the limitation where physical collection of edge cases becomes logistically restrictive.

Traditional generative world models typically cap resolution at roughly 0.4 megapixels per camera. Helm.ai’s platform outputs a native 2 megapixels per camera, yielding a synchronised 12-megapixel synthetic canvas per timestep. This specification matches the hardware parameters of production-grade vehicle cameras to reduce the domain gap for SAE Level 2 through Level 4 autonomous vehicle development.

The platform functions as a virtual sensor twin by mathematically replicating physical constraints and hardware anomalies, including lens flares, sensor banding patterns, and exposure blinding. To accommodate different neural network training routines, the pipeline can be configured to a high-speed validation mode using a three-camera setup at 30 frames per second, or a spatial context mode generating a six-camera surround view at 5 frames per second.

Data generation is split into two operational pipelines. GenSim-3 focuses on data augmentation by modifying environmental parameters such as weather, lighting, and object surfaces across real-world video segments at native 2MP resolution. VidGen-3 focuses on data creation, synthesising driving sequences from scratch by simulating environments, agent behaviours, and traffic logic without baseline video to patch geographic data gaps.

Helm.ai achieved the 2MP standard using a cluster of a few hundred GPUs rather than the thousands typically required for sub-HD video generation. This framework reduces the GPU infrastructure footprint for vehicle manufacturers and provides a method for compressing autonomous driving software onto mass-market on-vehicle compute chips.

Vladislav Voroninski, CEO and Founder, Helm.ai, said, "We are moving the industry from standard 'AI video' to authentic, hardware-accurate sensor emulation. By leading with a Full HD (2MP) standard and a 12-megapixel total aggregate capability per timestep, we have solved the resolution bottleneck that has historically limited the utility of generative AI in safety-critical systems. By optimising our compute architecture, we are giving our partners a high-performance platform to validate their autonomous stacks using synthetic data that perfectly matches the fidelity of their actual production sensors."

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Global automotive technology supplier Marelli has marked the 30th anniversary of its flagship electronics manufacturing plant in Guangzhou. Established in 1996 as Marelli’s inaugural manufacturing investment in China, the facility has transformed from a baseline assembly outpost into a major smart manufacturing and hardware-software validation centre.

Over the past three decades, the facility has expanded from a single operational production line with approximately 100 technicians into a 30,000-square-meter automotive electronics campus.

Today, the facility employs nearly 1,000 people and runs 66 active production lines, manufacturing components for both localised Chinese vehicle programs and global vehicle architectures.

The campus houses an adjacent, fully integrated Engineering Center that holds more than 100 registered patents. The manufacturing framework integrates high-precision assembly lines, automated optical bonding modules and site-wide rooftop solar arrays designed to manage factory energy overheads and lower operational carbon density.

The Guangzhou plant functions as a strategic industrialisation hub focused on low-cost, scalable architectures suited for the industry transition toward connected, software-defined vehicles (SDVs). The facility specialises in several high-growth hardware and display segments like advanced display solutions based on Mini-LED and MicroLED technologies. Additional key platforms include electronic control units (ECUs) for body and seat systems, zone control units, as well as digital cockpits, digital instrument clusters, and 5G telematics systems.

Ravi Tallapragada, President of Marelli’s Electronics business unit, said, “Our Guangzhou plant is a cornerstone of Marelli’s Electronics business in China and a powerful example of how innovation and advanced manufacturing can drive sustainable growth. Over the past 30 years, the team has continuously evolved its capabilities, developing advanced technologies and scalable platforms that address the rapid transformation of the automotive industry, building on long-standing collaboration with customers and partners. I’m proud of our team in Guangzhou and confident that the plant will continue to play a key role in shaping Marelli’s future globally.”

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