Q) How do you see the Indian automotive market, and what are the factors that drive and influence Covestro’s product offerings in India?

Anand Srinivasan: The McKinney Report 2019 states that India is likely to become the third largest automotive market in the world. The report says that the key factors that drive this would be rapid urbanisation, a burgeoning middle class, increased consumer spends, continued government focus on the sector, and low sharing of mobility barring high-density urban areas.   

We feel there could be a spike in the luxury car segment and the mid-entry level cars. These are facilitated by the government focus on infrastructure development and the love of inter-city independent travel. In India, cars are seen as a status symbol and this will continue to drive the consumption pattern.

This year's Auto Expo was dominated by electric vehicles where auto-giants like Hyundai, Mahindra and Mahindra, and Tata Motors unveiled their plans.

Another significant factor is that India continues to be the centre for frugal engineering. This leads to cost-efficient, ground-up innovation that also fits into each consumer's value proposition and fuel the growth in consumption.

Q)  Consumers are very choosey about the car interior. Personal car users want interiors that appeal to their personality and emotions. Riders in share-riding expect the interiors to be robust, and functional. Such broad expectations are putting much pressure on designers and engineers of the OEMs. How do you take this challenge as a material supplier? What products do you offer for automotive interiors?

Anand Srinivasan: In India, car interiors traditionally have been robust – irrespective of the type or choice of interior. The end-consumers always prefer robust and highly functional products to delicate and limited functionality products. This comes from the value proposition ingrained in the Indian DNA.

The expectations in the personal car space are most likely to become a requirement in the share-riding space also. This will be essentially driven by pressure on margins which will force share-car owners to focus on value-addition to generate premiums. As a result, a product today for the personal car space will become an innovation for a share-car owner tomorrow. 

So any product, we create for the personal car space becomes an investment in the innovation for the more mass requirements of share-riding. Covestro provides materials like polyurethanes for seats, coverings and coatings. Covestro's flexible polyurethane foam car seats offer significant ergonomic advantages over seats in other materials and reduce fuel consumption.

Q)  Automotive lighting has gained momentum due to the growing focus on safety and energy efficiency. The designing of headlamps and rear lamps is getting more complicated. What kind of challenges are you facing in this segment, and how are you tackling them? What new technologies do you are work on in the segment?

Anand Srinivasan: Safety and energy efficiency is definitely on top of our agenda. Factors such as emphasis on road safety, implementation of stringent government regulations, and rise in production drive the growth of the automotive lighting market. However, the high cost of LEDs had restrained the automotive lighting market growth. Lighting is one of the more challenging needs to address. Simple understanding like the type of lighting and the impact on cars coming on the opposite direction can often be the critical differentiator.

The most important contribution to cost is the demand for vehicles equipped with advanced technologies. While globally, features like communication with the pedestrians to ensure better safety have gained momentum, the focus in India is more skewed to convenience. The concept of safety (which is among the slow-moving traffics globally) is significantly different. In that, the ability to use halogen lighting without inconveniencing the driver on the opposite side could be a very simple example. These and the focus on reducing carbon footprint on any consumption have gained momentum.

However, to our advantage, India is a highly skilled and bright-minded innovative nation. Therefore, our limitations impose on us the need to innovate cost-efficiently without compromising on the product quality and end result.

This holds us in a very good state – where we like to call our innovations as being N&N (needs & norms) compliant. We as an organisation have been able to focus on "Building the Future" through our energy-efficient products across many different industries and are confident of bringing the same to the automotive sector.

Q) A supplier may create excellent materials for the interior or exterior, but it has to be compatible with the design of a product. OEMs also want to offer differentiators in the market. With the growing complexity of interior and exterior designs, what are the challenges that you face?

Anand Srinivasan: For the interior or exterior, the key challenge lies in estimating consumer expectations. The need for any OEM is to read the current and latent needs of the end-consumers and to enable automotive companies to integrate their products into the consumers' life. Before answering this question, I think it is very important to understand the drivers of change in consumer expectations.

The evolving lifestyle of the urban classes and DINKs, DISKs and DIDKs are driving the economy. This essentially means less time at home and more at work. The ability to leave from the work will largely depend on the time utilisation during travel. The second is the need for better connectivity, even on the go. To improve their own productivity, for home tasks or for office work, cars will increasingly need to cater to smarter, easier and more interactive tools like touch screens instead of music systems, voice-activated products and similar others. The third one is a culture of digitised work environment penetrating into family time. With increased exposure to digitisation, even children have taken to it like fish in the water. As a result, family cars are expected to be compliant with the latest gizmos and gadgets that make a child's travel time more interactive while giving parents the chance to complete work on chores on the go. 

The luxury segment, on the other hand, is leaning more towards ensuring that travel is the downtime that people need in their busy lives. Thus the focus on a premium look and feel products, entertainment like exotic grills and mood elements, interactive panels, capacitive switches and more. In this segment, the driver is clearly making the PVQ (Perceived Value Quotient) less elastic. To do that, redefining luxury every 6 months becomes a mandate. I think the level of consumer expectations is very high. For that we are in a constant state of Research and Innovation. (MT)

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Tier 1 automotive supplier Marelli has received the ‘Commendable’ honour in the ‘Engineering Product of the Year’ category at the Digital Engineering Awards 2026. The ceremony, hosted by L&T Technology Services in association with ISG and CNBC-TV18, was held in Boston, USA, on 12 March 2026.

The award recognises the role of Marelli’s Zone Control Unit (ZCU) in the transition towards software-defined vehicles.

The ZCU is designed to replace traditional domain-based architectures with a platform that delivers cross-domain control through a single Electronic Control Unit (ECU). This system simplifies vehicle electrical and electronic (E/E) layouts and enables communication across vehicle zones. By reducing the number of dedicated ECUs and streamlining wiring, the ZCU reduces wiring harness weight by 30 per cent compared to existing systems.

It is built on the EliteZone platform and supports ethernet capabilities, hardware accelerators, and remote-control protocols. It features processing performance up to 6 KDMIPS, two-port Gigabit Ethernet, and more than 20 CAN and LIN interfaces. The unit also includes an integrated hypervisor and data routing engine, supporting functional safety up to ASIL D standards.

For power management, the ZCU accommodates 48V system requirements with dedicated power input and efuse-protected output. The hardware uses a service-oriented architecture (SOA), which decouples software development from hardware. This approach allows modules to subscribe to services exposed by the ECU, supporting feature updates throughout the vehicle lifecycle and shortening development cycles for manufacturers.

Ravi Tallapragada, President, Marelli’s Electronics business, stated, “This recognition for our Zone Control Unit makes me and all of us at Marelli truly proud. It reflects the impact of our work on supporting the industry’s transition toward software-defined vehicles. By bringing cross-domain control into a single, scalable platform, our ZCU enables vehicle makers to innovate at speed. I want to congratulate our global engineering teams, whose dedication and expertise made this achievement possible.”

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drivebuddyAI has been awarded a patent for a facial recognition system designed for vehicle environments. The technology identifies drivers in moving vehicles to monitor duty hours and manage fatigue.

The system uses computer vision and artificial intelligence to recognise faces under varying lighting conditions and when drivers wear accessories such as caps or mufflers. This replaces manual or key-based identification methods to track driving time for wage calculations and safety compliance.

The patented technology is integrated into several areas of the company's product suite:

• Driver Profiling: Used in the 'CARDs' scoring method.
• Alert Systems: Provision of language-specific alerts based on driver identification.
• Performance Monitoring: Real-time tracking of duty time and driver behaviour.
• Compliance: Alignment with Indian government discussions on enforcing rest periods for commercial vehicle operators.

The company holds 15 patents in AI vision, edge processing, and risk assessment. Its systems meet India's AIS-184 driver monitoring standards and the European Union's General Safety Regulation (GSR) 2144.

Nisarg Pandya, CEO, drivebuddyAI, said, “Driver fatigue remains one of the most critical yet under-addressed causes of highway accidents. Our patented technology ensures that fleets know exactly who is driving, for how long, and under what conditions. This creates a foundation for enforcing safe driving limits while also enabling continuous learning and improvement for drivers. This milestone reflects our commitment to delivering technology built from the ground up and leveraging AI to enable safer and smarter driving solutions.”

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Servotech Renewable Power System and Electra EV have been granted a patent by the Indian Patent Office for an ‘Electric Vehicle Charging Device’. The technology is designed to provide charging solutions for low-voltage electric vehicles (EVs).

The device addresses interoperability challenges by enabling fast DC charging for low-voltage EVs with sub-200V DC platforms. This includes vehicles based on GB/T Bharat DC 001 standards. The technology allows these vehicles to utilise widely deployed, conventional high-voltage CCS2 charging infrastructure.

The patented device incorporates power management and voltage conversion systems to facilitate energy transfer to low-voltage battery platforms. The primary focus of the technology is on vehicle segments such as small commercial EVs and pick-up vans, which are used for urban and last-mile mobility.

Key features of the technology include:

• Interoperability: Enables sub-200V DC platforms to use CCS2 fast-charging stations.
• Compatibility: Supports vehicles adhering to GB/T Bharat DC 001 standards.
• Energy Management: Advanced voltage conversion to ensure safe battery charging.
• Safety: Integrated protocols for stable energy transfer.

The joint ownership of the patent by Servotech and Electra EV is intended to accelerate the development of charging infrastructure for small commercial fleets. The demand for such flexible solutions has increased as adoption of low-voltage EVs grows within the Indian logistics and transport sectors.

Arun Handa, CTO, Servotech Renewable Power System, said, “Securing this patent is an important step in strengthening our innovation-led approach to EV charging technology. Low-voltage electric vehicles are a key part of India’s mobility ecosystem, particularly in segments like small commercial fleets. This patented device has been designed to ensure safe, efficient, and reliable charging for such vehicles, helping make EV adoption through improved charging compatibility.”

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NXP Semiconductors has launched the NXP CoreRide Z248, a zonal reference system combining 48V energy distribution with data routing. The hardware-software foundation is designed to assist OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers in transitioning to software-defined vehicle (SDV) architectures by reducing integration effort and development cycles.

The Z248 is built on NXP’s S32K5 microcontroller series, featuring on-chip Magnetic Random Access Memory (MRAM). This technology is intended to accelerate electronic control unit (ECU) programming during manufacturing and over-the-air (OTA) updates.

The system integrates several 48V-capable components and networking tools:

• Power Management: Includes eFuses, Power Management Integrated Circuits (PMICs), and DC-DC converters for energy conversion and protection.
• Networking: Features Ethernet PHY and CAN transceivers for data handling.
• Software Stack: A pre-validated stack managing smart data energy network (SDEN) functions such as impedance monitoring and diagnostics.
• Safety: Built-in functional safety and real-time responsiveness for zonal processing.

NXP stated it has validated the Z248 through system-level tests focusing on low-power modes and wake-up response times. The package includes a Board Support Package (BSP) with integrated software from partners including GLIWA for performance monitoring, Green Hills Software for compilers and Vector for embedded tools.

The reference system is designed for deployment across internal combustion engine (ICE), hybrid, and battery electric vehicle (BEV) platforms. It supports ECU consolidation by managing energy distribution and data protocols within a single architecture.

Sebastien Clamagirand, SVP and General Manager, Automotive Systems & Platforms, NXP Semiconductors, said, “The NXP CoreRide zonal reference system Z248 delivers a performance-optimized, scalable 48 V foundation that intelligently fuses power, data and software, while dramatically simplifying system integration, reducing time to market, and enabling OEMs to focus on vehicle differentiation and long‑term value creation.”

Peter Gliwa, CEO and Founder, GLIWA, added, “NXP understood that the eco-system, the tooling around a new platform is essential for its success. With our Analysis Suite T1 built into the NXP CoreRide Z248 zonal reference system, high efficiency, proper timing analysis and timing verification are very well addressed.”

Jochen Rein, SVP Business Unit Software Platform, Vector, stated, “The combination of the NXP CoreRide platform and Vector’s software foundation provides a robust basis for next‑generation zonal architectures. We enable our joint customers to reduce their time- to-market due to a pre-integrated and highly optimized software stack.”

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