BorgWarner opens new EV-focused propulsion engineering centre in Bengaluru

American Tier-1 automotive supplier BorgWarner has expanded its engineering footprint in India by setting up a new technology centre – India Electric Propulsion Engineering Centre (IPEC) – in Whitefield, Bengaluru.

This comes barely a month after the company inaugurated a tech centre, also in Bengaluru, on December 8, 2022 to specifically focus on systems software development, fuel handling design and mechanical simulation for IC engines and H2 engine management systems; cater to PV and CV OEMs in India and globally.

The new facility at Whitefield, which is tasked to develop electronics and electrification products, is spread over an area of 95,000 square feet, is currently staffed with around 320 software and electronics engineers. The company aims to expand the workforce to 550 engineers by end-2023.

BorgWarner will focus on developing EV-specific products such as inverters, DC-DC convertors, on-board chargers, integrated drive modules, and battery management system (BMS), in line with its roadmap of targeting 45% revenues from EV components by 2030. It will also, however, develop propulsion controllers for internal-combustion engines and transmissions at this new facility.

The new tech centre will specialise in systems, software, and electronic-hardware engineering, and will offer end-to-end development, testing and validation support to BorgWarner's engineering centres across three continents – North America, Europe, and Asia.

The company will also leverage Indian software talent to focus on the areas of functional safety, as well as cybersecurity, and build and expand its capabilities in these domains.

"We are engaged in growing our capabilities and product portfolio in the EV domain and our main focus in India is to invest to build our competency and expand the team that supports our global engineering operations," Guenther Raab, vice-president, Engineering, BorgWarner PowerDrive Systems told Autocar Professional.

Geared for end-to-end development

While close to 80,000 square feet at this new facility is laid out in office space, almost 15,000 square feet is dedicated for testing and validation labs that house equipment like motor dynamometers, and high-voltage test beds for testing EV components in the 400-800V range.

BorgWarner's engineers at the IPEC will develop system architectures using Enterprise Architect and Polarion-based tools, conduct modelling simulations with Matlab Simulink-based models, use Creo tools for the mechanical design of electronic products, and leverage software suite to build software for these components. The facility will also deploy simulation and fully-integrated systems of electro-mechanical drive systems and build engineering capabilities in this domain as well.

"This centre is being established to cater to global engineering work across North America, Europe and Asia, particularly China, and support global platform development. Our idea is to become more efficient and competitive as a supplier, as well as within the engineering vertical in the company," Chandrasekar Krishnamurthy, global engineering director, Systems, Software and Engineering Excellence, BorgWarner said.

"To support our future growth plans, we would need to scale our engineering resources as well, and with the availability of top-quality software and systems engineers in Bengaluru, we want to tap into that talent pool," he added.

Krishnamurthy further remarked that the India EV ecosystem is evolving and the company is taking note of the market trajectory from its customers.

"With our global capability in place and also having exposure to specific requirements from the Asia region where we are very strong in countries like China and South Korea, we are strategising our way forward in terms of positioning ourselves in the Indian market. The recently-concluded Auto Expo 2023 Components Show in New Delhi has given us a lot of insight into the market's evolution and things look extremely positive from an application's perspective.

"BorgWarner has registered tremendous success in Europe in catering to OEMs with our high-voltage power electronics for passenger vehicles. We are also seeing a lot of success in China where we can compete with the local suppliers and yet be successful, and more recently, even in North America, our inverter technology is being accepted very well. India has a huge role to play in these products," Krishnamurthy said.

The company envisions the new technology centre to develop full-delivery capabilities, right from understanding customer requirements to building a complete product and delivering the solution as a package.

“There is a common understanding that a technology centre in India must have a lot of focus on software, and while there will be software capability at IPEC, it is being planned for full-scale engineering and product development, and that is why the strategic name,” Krishnamurthy signed off.