Innovation and sustainability in design took centerstage at the 19th Styling & Design Conclave 2025 organised by the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM). The event saw participation from designers and professionals from organisation such as Hero MotoCorp, Maruti Suzuki India, Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India, Stratasys and Autodesk among others.

G Sathiyaseelan, Chairman, SIAM Styling and Design Group and Vice-President, Ashok Leyland, shared his views on empathetic, inspirational and innovative approach towards technology and design,

Anuj Prasad, CEO and Founder, Desmania, expressed confidence in the bright future for automotive designers.

The event saw speakers acknowledging that automotive styling has become an old word, while design and sustainability are the modern buzzwords that indicate the direction in which the automotive sector must head.

“The level of design happening in India holds tremendous potential. We are at the threshold of a new era in design and innovation. Today, international organisations are looking to India for designs that cater to both local and global markets. Automotive design will help build the nation in a responsible manner,” said Prasad.

Prashant Banerjee, Executive Director, SIAM stated that “Indian automotive designs today are as good as Italian designs.”

Samarth Gupta, Senior Technical Specialist & Mobility Lead APAC, Autodesk, said, “Everyone wants to own a vehicle because it is an expression of independence. The urban population landscape is changing due to climate change. New developments in geopolitics and the evolution of consumers’ trends and preferences are impacting the mobility landscape. We will need to evolve our auto design thinking amidst disruptions.”

Teofilo Plaza Garcia, Industrial Studio Head, Hero MotoCorp, said “Motorsports-based designs can be used for road-based vehicles, as indicated through Hero XPulse 210. These vehicles will no longer be as expensive as before.”

Rahul Pandita, Regional Head, Stratasys, stated that 3D block printing is a useful technique that has helped companies like McLaren bring racing designs to life quickly. “As design processes such as 3D block printing decrease the time taken, companies can quickly decipher whether a design is feasible or not,” said Pandita.

Dinesh Raman, Director, Transportation Design, KISKA Shanghai, opined that “As the years go by, greater use of AI will be made for design, thereby freeing up time for creative pursuits by automotive designers.”

VS Deka, Group Manager, Royal Enfield, said, “AI innovation is coming into our lives and we need to adopt the evolving technology. AI can be customised through training and then be scaled up as per requirements.”

Ferdinand Klauser, Global Partner & MD, Asia, KISKA Shanghai said, “India has a lot of potential in bringing about the transformation in mobility designing landscape.”

He also mentioned that though the future is unpredictable, it is possible to plan for it by understanding that consumer needs are transforming faster than the market.

Professor Kaustuv Sengupta of NIFT Chennai, stated, “Colour represents around 20 percent of the design language. Every 300 miles in our country, you see a new colour context. Human beings see a small spectrum of colours. Colours affect us psychologically. We see what we want to see.”

Rajesh Gogu, Vice-President (Design), Maruti Suzuki India, revealed that the company decided to create a completely new design for the fourth generation of the Dzire. The design became a success despite a 55 percent market share for SUVs.

“The trends on the road are changing, as demand for sedans have reduced while that of SUVs have grown. Designing can reinvent declining segments or products to make them popular again. Innovation is not just about technology, it is also about shape, form, aerodynamics, performance and more. We can design our vehicles that can reduce the carbon footprint offering better fuel efficiency and value to customers,” averred Gogu.

While describing the role of AI in automotive designing, Harikrishnan AK, Delivery Manager, TCS Design, said, “AI image generators can be used for inspiration, exploration and for happy accidents but there are challenges of confidentiality and originality. We need to harness the full potential of AI by customisation and fine-tuning.”

Speaking about designing in the commercial vehicle segment, Pravin Gaikwad, Head of CV Design, Tata Motors, said, “We have adopted multi-powertrain strategy. It is possible for the form to get you the trust of the customer. Form is actually helping us to define many ideas. We are leveraging tech intelligence like telematics to design something very unique.”

He shared an insight on how Tata Motors was using space intelligence as a new design direction for making Tata Prima trucks and a new space-saving concept called Tata YU.

The SIAM Styling and Design Conclave also presented automotive design students of MIT (Maharashtra Institute of Technology), ADYPU (Ajeenkya DY Patil University) and NID (National Institute of Design) an opportunity to present their design prototypes. Vedant Barve, a student at MIT, won the first prize for an electric cruiser scooter concept.

“When we began, India had only two design schools. Today, there are over 1,500 design schools producing a strong talent pool for automotive design. We need to be transformative and move toward defining automotive design that is human-centric and sustainable,” added Prasad of Desmania.

“To make India into a global design hub, change that helps India use aspects of its culture while competing at a global level is needed in the academic curriculum,” concluded Sumer Singh, Associate Professor, IIT Delhi.

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Bengaluru-based design and technology services major Tata Elxsi and Japanese auto major Suzuki Motor Corporation have inaugurated the Suzuki–Tata Elxsi Cloud HIL Centre in Trivandrum, India.

The new centre is Suzuki’s first full-vehicle cloud-enabled Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) validation facility and represents the second engineering centre established under the Tata Elxsi–Suzuki partnership, following the Offshore Development Centre (ODC) in Pune.

The new facility is engineered for early-stage, full-vehicle simulation and validation through a cloud-native infrastructure. It will allow the Japanese automaker’s development and test teams to remotely access HIL infrastructure integrated with Electronic Control Units (ECUs) – reducing reliance on physical prototypes and accelerating validation cycles across R&D centres worldwide. This aligns with Suzuki’s roadmap for Software-Defined Vehicles (SDVs), reinforcing a shift toward software-led, scalable development.

Being purpose-built, the facility integrates Tata Elxsi’s domain expertise in automotive Verification and Validation (V&V), test automation and simulation, which it claims enables transformative advancements in development speed, quality and future readiness.

The Cloud HIL Centre is part of Suzuki’s global ‘SDV Right’ strategy for Electrical and Electronic (E/E) Virtual Development, which is set to play a foundational role in delivering continuous integration, faster release cycles and system reliability.

Katsuhiro Kato, Director and Executive Vice-President, Suzuki Motor Corporation, said, “The Suzuki-Tata Elxsi Cloud HIL Centre is a new base that leverages Tata Elxsi's expertise and deep experience to build an advanced and efficient development system. We hope that Suzuki will promote virtualisation to realise minimisation of energy and contribute to the development of next-generation mobility significantly."

Manoj Raghavan, CEO and Managing Director, Tata Elxsi, said, “We thank Kato-san and Suzuki Motor Corporation for their continued trust. This new Cloud HIL Centre builds on the strong foundation of our Pune ODC and marks a forward leap in our SDV-focused collaboration. It reflects our shared vision for sustainable and smarter mobility.”

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L&T Technology Services (LTTS) has launched PLxAI, a new proprietary generative AI (GenAI) framework designed to accelerate and optimise the product development life cycle for its global clients. The framework, developed by the company's in-house experts, aims to streamline the process from initial concept to post-launch support.

PLxAI leverages both generative and conventional AI to offer a comprehensive solution for developing scalable and reusable solutions across the entire product development process. It is built with a versatile architecture that makes it adaptable for both embedded systems and software development.

A key feature of PLxAI is its ability to capture and utilise existing knowledge, including an organisation's internal or 'tribal' knowledge. This helps it provide context-aware insights that enhance product engineering. The framework also integrates smart prompting and contextual intelligence to improve every stage of the process, from initial design to final validation and aftermarket support.

LTTS has already deployed over 36 use cases of PLxAI, with an additional 35 in the design phase. These applications span various stages of product development, including:

• Concept Design: Assisting with competitive analysis and technology scouting.
• Component Design: Generating specifications, diagrams and calculations.
• Validation Planning: Automatically creating Design Validation Plans and DFMEA templates.
• Failure Mode Analysis: Generating customisable FMEA documents using organisational templates.
• Digital Twin Integration: Supporting both physical and virtual testing workflows.
• Agentic Workflows: Using proactive agents to automate multi-step engineering tasks.

Alind Saxena, President & Executive Director - Mobility & Tech, L&T Technology Services, said,“This is a proud milestone for Team LTTS. The development of PLxAI by our in-house AI experts is a testimony to LTTS’ engineering and technology capabilities. It reaffirms our deep commitment toward driving global client success across Mobility, Sustainability and Tech leveraging the power of AI and Gen-AI based offerings. The enthusiasm from our global clients has been remarkable, with deployments already underway across multiple domains.”

By accelerating innovation and optimising costs, LTTS believes that PLxAI will redefine how businesses approach product development, unlocking new avenues for growth and efficiency.

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Mahindra & Mahindra, one of the leading SUV manufacturers in the country, has announced that extended its partnership with Dolby Laboratories to equip Dolby Atmos audio, to its new XUV 3XO SUV.

This move will make XUV 3X0 REVX A variant, the most affordable SUV globally at INR 1.2 million, to feature the immersive audio technology.

For the unversed, Dolby Atmos was originally developed for cinemas, which features a multidimensional sound experience that places listeners directly within the audio, revealing details with unparalleled clarity and depth.

The Dolby Atmos system is now available in the REVX A, AX5L, AX7 and AX7L variants of the XUV 3XO. Each of these models will come equipped with a six-speaker audio layout that has been meticulously tuned to the vehicle’s unique cabin architecture. The top-tier AX7L variant will further enhance the experience with an additional subwoofer for deeper bass and a truly cinematic soundscape.

R Velusamy, President of Automotive Business (Designate), Mahindra & Mahindra, stated that the introduction of Dolby Atmos in the XUV 3XO, particularly at a sub-INR 1,2 million price point, ‘redefines in-cabin audio with immersive sound for a larger group of general consumers.’

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Helm.ai, an autonomous driving AI software company, has signed a multi-year joint development agreement with Japanese auto major Honda Motor Co., to accelerate development of Honda’s next-generation self-driving capabilities, including its Navigate on Autopilot (NOA) platform.

The partnership will leverage Helm.ai’s full stack real-time AI software and large-scale autlabeling & generative simulation foundation models for development and validation. Honda will utilise it on Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) for production consumer cars.

Helm.ai on its part will provide its full suite of products geared toward highway and urban autonomy, including its perception stack (Helm.ai Vision), vision-based real-time path prediction AI (Helm.ai Driver) and generative simulation models (VidGen-2, GenSim-1, GenSim-2 and WorldGen-1). The solution is powered by Helm.ai’s Deep Teaching technology, enabling real-time AI systems and offline foundation models pre-trained on large-scale, diverse, multi-modal datasets. This the company shared, can be further adapted to meet Honda’s specifications for safe, reliable and scalable deployment.

Honda’s NOA system utilises an end-to-end (E2E) AI architecture that controls everything from environmental perception to decision-making and vehicle actuation. It is designed as a partially automated system, which currently requires constant driver attention, supporting both highway and complex urban driving.

The Japanese automaker aims to scale this E2E technology across a broader vehicle lineup and is developing a system that highly assists in operating the accelerator and steering throughout the entire route to the destination, without distinction between regular roads and highways, with mass production targeted after 2027.

Mahito Shikama, Vice-President of Software Defined Vehicle Business Supervisory Unit at Honda Motor Co, said, “This joint development supports Honda’s goal of realising safe and affordable automated driving technologies for our global customers. Through our collaboration with Helm.ai, we are advancing the development of AI technologies that enhance the real-world applicability of autonomous driving systems, bringing us closer to a future with zero traffic collision fatalities.”

Vladislav Voroninski, CEO and Founder, Helm.ai, said, “We look forward to entering the next phase of production development with Honda, as they expand their in-house efforts to deploy cutting edge autonomous driving technologies in mass market vehicles. This joint development highlights our shared vision of enabling AI-powered mobility at scale.”

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