Continental’s eHub nears production

Component major is working on eHub which will display information, entertainment and commands and is slated for an India launch in 2013, Come 2013 and at least one compact car in India, if not more, may flaunt a multi-function thin film transistor (TFT) screen instead of mechanical gauges in the instrumental cluster space. That’s a project Tejas Desai, head of Continental’s interior electronics solutions business, is busy with these days. He wants to offer an “intuitive way for customers to do things”.

Desai says his company would like to offer the user information about the car’s speed, radio station, owner’s manual and even movies in a single screen called the eHub. Keeping safety in mind, the eHUB will play video at a slower speed of one frame every two seconds when the car travels at 20kph or above, and normal video resumes when the car’s speed drops below 20kph.

Coupled with a mobile phone, the TFT screen will also add up as a satellite navigation device. It will serve a three-way purpose of displaying information, entertainment and commands. All this will be made available at relatively low cost. Desai estimates that the TFT screen will add three percent to the cost of interior electronics of the car. Typically, these costs can add up to 20 percent of the car’s cost. The project has been under development for a “couple of years” and is now ready to be showcased to prospective customers. A team of Continental’s Human Machine Interface (HMI) experts were recently in India to understand customers’ needs from the eHub before work commenced on the project.

Once the concept was finalised, eight engineers at Continental’s Bangalore facility started working on it and the hardware is now ready. “Indians don’t look for cheap. They look for value,” explains Desai. After the engine controller electronics, the new project is the most significant development made by Continental in automotive electronics in India. While the other electronics bits were from its international ready-to-use bin, the TFT screen is being developed keeping India solely in mind. However, when Desai showed the India project to his Continental counterparts from other countries, some of his international colleagues evinced their interest in it. The system has been found to be interesting for markets like Japan and Korea as well.

Desai says that there will be three phases while developing the project. “The first phase was to bring the TFT screen, the second phase will be to connect it to the world, and then simplify the car in the third phase,” says Desai. He has one brief for himself – simplify. Desai recounts a story of someone who switched from a Mercedes-Benz C-class to a BMW 7-series simply because the rear passengers had control of many of the features inside the car. It is such customer insights which Desai and his team used to develop the TFT screen that will see commercial production two years from now.

Even as the eHub gets ready for commercial production, Desai and his team at Continental have already thought of its next generation. So, expect features like tyre air pressure sensing in the next-generation eHub. The approach at Continental is also to offer these features in entry-level cars. Desai asks “why not a Santro to begin with? Or even the Nano to offer the eHub?”

The Indica Vista could be the first car to have Continental’s eHub. With more and more features finding their way into compact cars, the demand for automotive electronics content is also set to rise gradually. Continental's India operations clearly have a key role to play in the emerging global market of affordable cars. Expect to see the eHub log on to a lot more carmakers' plans.