Auto makers leverage Modelling and Simulation (ModSim) to cut development cycles from five years to under two, reshaping the automotive industry.
25 Jul 2025 | 581 Views | By Shahkar Abidi
India's automotive industry is in the midst of a sea change, driven not only by the shift towards electric, connected, and autonomous vehicles but also by extensive modification of the very process used to bring these complex machines to market. For decades, the journey from a vehicle concept to a ...
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India's automotive industry is in the midst of a sea change, driven not only by the shift towards electric, connected, and autonomous vehicles but also by extensive modification of the very process used to bring these complex machines to market. For decades, the journey from a vehicle concept to a showroomready model could easily span four-five years.
Today, that timeline is being aggressively compressed, with manufacturers worldwide aiming for development cycles as short as 18 to 24 months. Powering this unprecedented acceleration is the widespread adoption of sophisticated digital technologies, particularly a potent combination known as Modelling and Simulation, or ModSim.
This rapid digitalization is proving increasingly "inevitable" for manufacturers striving to meet market demands, ensure high quality, and boost productivity. Nowhere is its impact more keenly felt than in India's dynamic and fiercely competitive automotive sector, where giants like Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M), Ashok Leyland, Volvo Eicher are leveraging these tools to reshape their future.
Reinventing Vehicle Development
The traditional approach to vehicle development was often characterized by a linear, sequential process fraught with inherent delays. Design teams meticulously crafted three-dimensional models, which were then handed over to specialized analysis departments, often known as Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE) teams, for simulation and performance validation.
This handover frequently created significant bottlenecks. Praveen Mysore, India Industry Consultant and Senior Director at Dassault Systemes, explains the historical inefficiency: "In the earlier days... people were modelling and they were just pushing the model to the analysis team and they were doing the validation part and that was really bringing down the efficiency from the timeline point of view." CAE teams typically faced long queues and substantial backlogs.
Complex simulations, essential for assessing critical factors like durability, longevity, crashworthiness, and overall performance, could consume considerable time – sometimes taking a month or even several months to yield feedback. During this protracted wait, the design team's progress often stalled.
Subsequent design modifications triggered by simulation results would then initiate another lengthy cycle, adding weeks or months to the overall product development timeline. This siloed structure, while ensuring specialized expertise, inherently limited speed and agility. ModSim fundamentally disrupts this established workflow by integrating the distinct worlds of digital 3D modelling (design) and computer-aided simulation (validation).
The core principle is to enable users to model and simulate synchronously. This facilitates "synchronous verification and validation of the model and maturing the model at the same time," according to Mysore. By embedding virtual validation earlier and more frequently within the design process, ModSim breaks down the traditional departmental silos, fostering collaboration and enabling a more iterative, real-time approach to development.
This shift is not merely about adopting new software; it represents a fundamental change in engineering culture and operational workflow. Successfully implementing ModSim requires dismantling long-standing organizational barriers between design and analysis functions, fostering cross-functional teamwork, and potentially redefining roles and responsibilities – a significant organizational undertaking alongside the technical transition.
The market's relentless demand for faster innovation makes this change imperative. Dr. Klaus Krohne, Simulia AP Senior Sales Director at Dassault Systemes, views the dramatic shrinking of the product development cycle from the historical 4-5 years to the current 18-24 month targets as "unthinkable without technologies like ModSim."
He emphasizes that companies, particularly those striving to match the rapid release cadence seen in the electronics market (often targeting new vehicle releases every two years), simply "cannot afford to do this siloed way of doing things if they are to meet these stringent timelines."
ModSim Adoption Takes Hold
The global trend towards ModSim is strongly mirrored in the Indian automotive market, where its adoption has gained significant momentum across the entire ecosystem. Startups, often needing to innovate rapidly and costeffectively, are early beneficiaries.
Cellestial E-Mobility, a Murugappa Group-owned electric tractor startup, utilizes a software platform that aids in developing new product ideas, exploring numerous options, virtually simulating performance, and validating designs – all while managing the development cycle (product governance) to ensure timely product readiness. Similarly, River, another Indian EV startup, employs a comparable platform to engineer robust and dependable electric two-wheelers.
For these nascent companies, ModSim offers a crucial advantage: the ability to iterate quickly and validate designs virtually, minimizing the need for expensive and time-consuming physical prototypes. Legacy players and large Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) are also making substantial commitments. In June 2023, Mumbai-based auto major Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) announced its adoption of a cloud-based ModSim platform to accelerate its endto- end new product development process.
M&M aims to enhance efficiency, slash time-to-market, and bolster sustainability goals within its automotive division. Other established names like Ashok Leyland and Volvo Eicher are reportedly working on similar lines. The trend extends deep into the supply chain, with Tier 1 suppliers such as Bosch and Endurance also implementing similar software solutions.
Furthermore, M&M's specific choice of a cloud-based platform is noteworthy. It reflects a broader industry trend towards leveraging cloud infrastructure for the immense computational demands of advanced simulation. The cloud offers scalability, accessibility across geographically dispersed teams, and potentially lower upfront capital investment compared to building and maintaining powerful on-premise computing clusters.
This strategic move towards the cloud is also intrinsically linked to accessing next-generation capabilities, particularly those involving Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), which often require vast computational resources best delivered via cloud platforms. Praveen Mysore confirms this widespread embrace, noting "very high" traction in ModSim adoption within India, particularly over the last two years.
"Companies in India have realized the value of synchronizing the modeling and simulation together to gain that agility and develop the products faster," he states. This surge marks a significant shift from initial skepticism. Mysore points out that the idea of designers performing simulation studies was once novel, as simulation was often perceived as requiring deep expertise.
However, intense market pressure to reduce the cycle time made the integration of design and simulation teams inevitable, as traditional methods simply couldn't deliver the required speed. Where vendors previously had to actively propagate the ModSim ideology, the past two years have seen companies, inspired by global successes and early Indian adopters, proactively seeking these capabilities.
Virtual twins and artificial intelligence are revolutionizing how vehicles are designed, tested, and manufactured.
India's Dynamic Automotive Landscape
The rapid uptake of ModSim in India is occurring against the backdrop of a large, growing, and rapidly evolving domestic automotive market. Understanding these market dynamics is crucial to appreciating why tools that enhance speed, efficiency, and innovation are becoming so critical. India stands as one of the world's largest and fastest-growing automotive markets.
The overall Indian automotive industry was valued at approximately USD 121.5 billion in 2024 and is forecast to more than double to USD 247.4 billion by 2033, growing at a CAGR of 7.13%, as per an analysis by Custom Markets Insights. However, this push for innovation, particularly in complex areas like EVs and emerging technologies like Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems (ADAS), faces a significant structural challenge: relatively low investment in Research and Development (R&D).
Reports from NITI Aayog, the Indian government's policy think tank, have highlighted that the nation's automotive ambitions are being constrained by inadequate R&D infrastructure and spending. Indian automakers typically invest only 2-3% of their revenue in R&D, compared to a range of 5-12% by their international counterparts in leading automotive nations like Germany, Japan, and the United States.
This underinvestment, NITI Aayog warns, limits competitiveness in critical future technologies, fosters reliance on imported solutions (which increases costs), and hinders the industry's ability to move up the global value chain. It is within this context – a rapidly growing market demanding faster innovation (especially in EVs) coupled with constrained R&D budgets – that ModSim emerges as a powerful efficiency lever.
By enabling extensive virtual testing and validation early in the development cycle, ModSim drastically reduces the reliance on costly and time-consuming physical prototypes. This allows Indian companies to conduct more design iterations, explore more complex engineering possibilities (like optimizing battery performance or validating ADAS algorithms), and achieve higher levels of product validation within their existing R&D expenditure.
In essence, ModSim helps maximize the innovative output per rupee spent, offering a crucial pathway to bridge the gap created by lower absolute R&D investment levels compared to global peers and address the innovation deficit highlighted by NITI Aayog.
The Multifaceted Gains of ModSim
While accelerated time-to-market is a primary driver for ModSim adoption, its benefits extend far beyond mere speed, fundamentally enhancing the quality, efficiency, and innovative potential of the vehicle development process. A key advantage is the "democratization" of simulation. ModSim platforms aim to "empower designers to do certain iterations, quickly validate the given component or a product and then push it to the detail engineering team or the analysis team for final validation," explains Mysore.
Furthermore, ModSim contributes directly to higher product quality. Enabling virtual validation early and often helps identify potential design flaws or performance issues much sooner than traditional methods reliant on physical prototypes. This proactive identification minimizes the risk of costly late-stage errors and extensive rework, ensuring a more robust design from the outset. Perhaps one of the most significant advantages is the ability to unlock greater design exploration. Previously, tight deadlines often restricted engineers from investigating the full spectrum of design possibilities.
ModSim removes many of these time constraints, allowing engineers to "explore the entire design space," leading to potentially more optimized and innovative solutions, according to Mysore. He illustrates this with an example: a simulation to assess the impact of adding a stiffener or altering a car's bonnet length, which might have taken weeks under the old paradigm, can now potentially be completed in seconds, providing instant feedback to guide design decisions.
Underlying these benefits is a fundamental change in how simulation is utilized. Traditionally employed in a corrective capacity – primarily to find flaws in an already largely defined design – ModSim facilitates a move towards simulation as a proactive, generative tool. By integrating simulation insights early and continuously, engineers can use virtual testing not just to check for errors, but to actively guide the design towards optimal performance, quality, and efficiency right from the initial concept stages.
Virtual Twins, AI, and Specialized Applications
The evolution of ModSim technology is far from over. The integration of more sophisticated concepts like virtual twins and artificial intelligence promises to further revolutionize how vehicles are designed, tested, and operated. Dassault Systemes, a major player in this space, is promoting the concept of the "virtual twin."
This goes beyond a static "digital twin" (often seen as a mere digital replica or image) to create something described as "alive" – a dynamic virtual representation that users can interact with, probe, and use to perform extensive "what-if analysis." This virtual twin is "brought to life by simulation," enabling rigorous testing and validation in the digital realm before any physical parts are made.
Examples include simulating a vehicle's crash resistance under various conditions or, more uniquely, using the virtual twin combined with physics models to assess the state of a real-world vehicle after an incident, determining if it's still safe to drive by virtually reproducing the event. Further amplifying ModSim's capabilities is the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML).
ModSim unites digital 3D modeling and computer-aided simulation
This trend is moving towards "generative experiences," where AI/ML algorithms, trained on a company's vast repository of historical ModSim data and intellectual property (IP), can help accelerate the design process by suggesting optimized solutions or automating certain simulation tasks. However, integrating AI into sensitive engineering workflows presents significant challenges.
As Mysore cautions, the effectiveness of AI models is entirely dependent on the data used for training: "It's only as good as the data you train those models with." This raises critical concerns about data quality, and perhaps more importantly, data ownership and IP rights protection.
In an industry where companies invest billions in developing complex products and proprietary processes, ensuring that valuable IP used to train AI models remains secure and traceable is paramount. Platforms like Dassault Systemes' 3DEXPERIENCE aim to address this by enabling customers to manage their own data and IP securely, ensuring full traceability of the models used within their virtual twins.
Beyond automotive, the principles of ModSim find application in diverse fields like urban planning, where simulations can model logistics flows or assess the seismic resilience of infrastructure like metro tracks, illustrating the universality of the concept. Furthermore, the increasing complexity of vehicle systems and stringent safety regulations mean ModSim is becoming indispensable not just for design optimization but also for demonstrating regulatory compliance and achieving certification.
For intricate systems like ADAS, or for proving the long-term safety and durability of EV batteries, comprehensive physical testing is often impractical or impossible. Validated simulation thus becomes the primary mechanism for generating the necessary evidence to satisfy regulatory bodies and bring advanced technologies to market safely. Modelling and Simulation technology is clearly reshaping the Indian automotive industry's landscape.
It is acting as a critical catalyst, enabling companies to dramatically accelerate product development cycles, enhance vehicle quality and performance, boost the efficiency of their R&D efforts, and tackle the immense complexity involved in designing the next generation of electric, connected, and potentially autonomous vehicles. Looking forward, the reliance on these digital tools is only set to increase. Dr. Klaus Krohne anticipates a growing focus on sustainability norms and material compliance certifications within the Indian market, areas where simulation plays a vital role in virtual assessment and validation.
He also expects Indian OEMs to continue pursuing advanced ADAS capabilities, regardless of the pace of supporting infrastructure development. Meeting these future challenges – from optimizing for environmental impact and certifying new materials to ensuring the safety of increasingly sophisticated driverassistance systems – will demand even more advanced and integrated modeling and simulation capabilities.
By embracing and mastering these powerful tools, the Indian automotive industry is not only positioning itself to compete more effectively on the global stage but also equipping itself with the capability to potentially shape the future of mobility.