Suzuki Plans Standard ADAS Features for Future India Range, Including Affordable Cars

Suzuki Motor Corporation plans to make core ADAS safety features standard on future vehicles in India, including affordable models, as it develops a lower-cost system suited to the country’s traffic conditions. “But fitting expensive advanced driver assistance systems only to a few luxury cars does not reduce accidents across society,” said Katsuhiro Kato, Suzuki’s chief technology officer, at the company’s technology strategy briefing on Friday.

Kato said that Suzuki intends to make safety functions such as automatic emergency braking and lane departure prevention standard, while allowing customers to choose additional comfort functions. The company has not named the first Maruti Suzuki models to receive the system or given a rollout date.

Suzuki cited India’s 177,000 road deaths in 2024 and the large number of vehicles it sells in the country in explaining its focus. Kato said that the company wants to deploy 'just-right ADAS' suited to India’s traffic conditions across all vehicles including affordable price ranges.

To bring down costs, Suzuki plans to use high-resolution cameras and AI chips, integrate driver and occupant monitoring with ADAS, and remove the front radar from its proposed configuration.

Kato said that the company is seeking “major cost reductions” while maintaining “equal or better safety performance”. Those are development aims; Suzuki has not released performance results for a production system.

Suzuki calls its broader approach “SDV Right”. It plans to identify the functions customers need and combine electronic systems where possible. Its next-generation architecture would bring communication, power distribution and body-control functions into a Central Zone ECU.

Suzuki estimates that the controller could cost about 30% less and weigh about 15% less than its conventional arrangement. These figures apply to the controller, not the whole vehicle.

Kato said that Suzuki is working on safety from two directions: a lighter body designed to protect occupants in a crash, and ADAS intended to prevent accidents. Making the ADAS system standard across future vehicles would take the technology beyond higher-priced models and into the affordable cars that account for much of Maruti Suzuki’s India sales.