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Driving Safety, Sustainability, and the Road to the Centenary

Autocar Professional Bureau — Tue, 12 May 2026 09:27:21

As Volvo Cars marks 99 years globally this April, the milestone is less a celebration of history and more a signal of strategic continuity. Founded in 1927 in Gothenburg, Sweden, Volvo Cars has endured a century of change by anchoring itself to a clear philosophy: design mobility around people, not technology alone. In an industry where relevance is constantly contested, longevity has been earned through clarity of purpose and disciplined reinvention.

That purpose was articulated as early as 1936, when Volvo’s founders wrote: “An automobile is driven by people. The fundamental principle for all construction work must therefore be safety.” Nearly a century later, that philosophy remains intact - only now, it is amplified by software, electrification, and artificial intelligence.

Safety has never been a formatting feature for Volvo Cars; it has been the organising principle of the company. The three-point seat belt, introduced in 1959, remains one of the most significant safety innovations in industrial history, credited with saving over a million lives worldwide. What distinguishes Volvo is not just invention, but intent. Then-President Gunnar Engellau and engineer Nils Bohlin made the decision to share the patent freely, a conviction that safety should not be owned.

Decades later, that thinking continues to shape the company’s direction. As our CEO Håkan Samuelsson once observed, “There is no point in being the safest car if nobody else learns from you.” Today, that belief manifests in Safe Space Technology, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), real-time occupant sensing, and the next generation of multi-adaptive seat belts, technologies designed not merely to react, but to anticipate.

The past decade has introduced a second inflection point as consequential as safety: electrification. Volvo Cars was among the earliest legacy manufacturers to accept that the transition was not optional. As Samuelsson put it bluntly, “The industry will be electric—there is no turning back.” Under successive leadership, electrification has been framed not only as a climate responsibility but as a long-term competitiveness strategy.

That thinking has matured further. Another former CEO of Volvo Cars captured the shift succinctly when he said: “Electrification is not just good for the climate; it creates better cars. The real transformation is how software, data, and sustainability come together.” As a result, Volvo’s electric strategy now spans the full value chain from ethical raw-material sourcing and battery transparency to circular manufacturing and climate-neutral operations.

India represents a disproportionately important chapter in this 99-year global journey. While Volvo Car India is relatively young, the market sits at the intersection of three global priorities: rapid urbanisation, climate transition, and digital adoption. In that sense, India is not a peripheral market it is a proving ground for the future of mobility.

The shift to electric vehicles here is gradual but irreversible. Policy momentum, infrastructure build-out, and rising consumer awareness are reshaping demand curves. Importantly, premium buyers in India are no longer evaluating cars purely on performance or brand heritage. They assess trust, safety, sustainability, and ease of ownership. That shift aligns closely with Volvo’s global positioning.

At Volvo Car India, our role is to translate global ambition into local relevance. Our electric portfolio reflects this intent of combining Scandinavian design, world-class safety, and real-world performance adapted to Indian conditions. What is increasingly evident is that Indian customers are willing to adopt electric mobility when the experience is intuitive and uncompromising.

Luxury today is defined by simplicity. That is why we are investing in an ecosystem approach to EV adoption, starting with home-charging solutions, partnerships for long-distance charging corridors such as the Mumbai–Nashik highway, and exploration of decentralised renewable energy integration. These are not marketing initiatives; they are infrastructure decisions aimed at reducing friction in everyday use.

Sustainability, however, cannot stop with the products. Volvo’s philosophy has long been that businesses must earn their place in society. As our ex CEO once noted, “We don’t add sustainability for the sake of sustainability. It is embedded at the design stage, how it benefits the customer and how it benefits society.” In India, this translates into community engagement, urban restoration initiatives, and long-term social impact that complements our commercial presence.

As Volvo Cars approaches its centenary, the roadmap is explicit. Electrification will accelerate, safety systems will become predictive through AI, and circularity will increasingly determine how vehicles are designed and reused. In markets like India, which are young, complex, and aspirational, the winners will not be defined by horsepower, but by the ability to harmonise safety, technology, and environmental responsibility.

At 99, Volvo Cars is not reflecting on a legacy; it is investing in relevance. The road ahead is electric, intelligent, and human-centric, and India will be central to how that next century is shaped.

Jyoti Malhotra is the Managing Director of Volvo Car India. Views expressed are the author's personal.

Driving Safety, Sustainability, and the Road to the Centenary

Autocar Professional Bureau — Tue, 12 May 2026 09:27:21

Jyoti Malhotra is the Managing Director of Volvo Car India. Views expressed are the author's personal.

Motor Underwriting is Evolving: From Static Profiles to Data-led Risk Assessment

Autocar Professional Bureau — Sat, 09 May 2026 20:12:50

Motor insurance in India is facing a structural profitability challenge.

For every Rs 100 that insurers earn in motor premiums, payouts and operating costs can exceed Rs 110– Rs120 in several segments. This imbalance reflects a deeper issue in how risk is assessed and priced.

Underwriting continues to rely significantly on static vehicle attributes such as engine capacity, age, and location, particularly in regulated segments. These variables help estimate repair costs, but they do little to predict the likelihood of an accident. Two identical vehicles can carry very different risk depending on how, when, and where they are driven.That gap between pricing inputs and real-world exposure is now forcing a reset.

For a long time, motor insurance underwriting in India was built on broad classification. Vehicles were grouped into categories, and pricing was applied at a portfolio level. This approach worked when data availability was limited, but it came with an inherent constraint. Individual driving behaviour and other measurable risk indicators remained outside the underwriting lens.

Even after pricing flexibility was introduced in segments like Own Damage nearly two decades ago, underwriting continued to rely largely on these static constructs. What is now emerging is a more refined approach that incorporates how a vehicle is actually used, not just what it is.

This shift is visible in the growing adoption of usage-linked constructs such as Pay-As-You-Drive. These models introduce a more direct relationship between usage and premium. A vehicle that is driven less, or used in a more predictable manner, can be priced differently from one that is exposed to higher usage and variability.

Beyond usage, insurers are also beginning to incorporate a wider set of customer-linked parameters into underwriting. This includes factors such as driving patterns, historical behaviour, and contextual usage signals. The objective is not just segmentation, but better alignment between risk and pricing.

Intelligence Reshaping Underwriting

Artificial intelligence and machine learning will enable this transition at scale. Traditional underwriting relied on a limited set of variables and relatively simple models. Today, insurers can process larger datasets and identify patterns that more closely reflect real-world risk.

What is emerging is more precise underwriting, where relevant, behaviour-linked variables carry greater weight than broad static inputs. This improves the ability to differentiate between risks that would otherwise appear identical.

The impact is visible across the value chain. Better risk selection improves portfolio quality. Advanced analytics also strengthen fraud detection by identifying anomalies that are difficult to detect manually.

Underwriting, as a result, is gradually shifting from a periodic exercise to a more continuous and responsive process.

Regulation as a Catalyst

This transition has been supported by a regulatory approach that has encouraged measured innovation. Sandbox frameworks introduced by the regulator allowed insurers to test new underwriting models in controlled environments. These experiments provided early validation for usage-linked constructs in the Indian market.

The subsequent approval of Pay-As-You-Drive products marked a clear step toward mainstream adoption. At the same time, the broader structure of motor insurance remains intact. Mandatory third-party coverage under the Motor Vehicles Act continues to serve its core social objective of protecting accident victims. This balance between innovation and stability is critical as the industry evolves.

The Compounding Value of Better Data

One of the defining characteristics of robust, real-time data-led underwriting is the advantage it builds over time. Each additional data point improves the ability to assess risk more accurately. Better risk assessment leads to more precise pricing, which in turn improves portfolio quality.

This creates a reinforcing cycle. Insurers that invest early in building data capabilities are likely to benefit from progressively better outcomes. Unlike traditional inputs, behavioural and usage-linked insights become more valuable as they accumulate.

At its core, this shift is changing what motor insurance represents. The emerging models are more adaptive, with pricing increasingly reflecting how a vehicle is used over time.

This creates the possibility of a system that is not only more accurate, but also more equitable. It aligns cost more closely with usage and behaviour, rather than broad categorisation.

Moving toward data-led risk assessment is about building a system that reflects how risk actually plays out on the road. The future of underwriting will rely less on static proxies and more on measurable usage and behaviour. That shift is already underway.

Paras Pasricha is the Head of Motor Insurance of Policybazaar.Views expressed are the author's personal.

EVs Are Rising Fast, But What Happens When They Break Down?

Autocar Professional Bureau — Sat, 09 May 2026 20:02:20

India’s shift to electric mobility is clearly underway. What once felt like a future goal is now visible across roads and cities. EV sales crossed 24.5 lakh units in FY26, growing 24.6% year-on-year. Two- and three-wheelers continue to lead volumes, with one in ten two-wheelers sold in March 2026 being electric. Passenger EVs (four-wheelers), meanwhile, are gradually finding their place.

What stands out even more is where this growth is coming from. Adoption is no longer limited to large cities. Tier 2 markets have already crossed 10% penetration, and smaller towns are steadily catching up. Nagpur and Bhubaneswar, for instance, recorded 16,935 and 17,984 two-wheeler sales, respectively, in FY 2025-26.

Electric mobility is no longer an urban trend; it is spreading across the country. As this shift gathers pace, the conversation is also changing. The focus is no longer just on buying an EV, but on what it means to live with one.

The Real Question: Ownership Beyond the Sale

While incentives and sustainability have driven adoption so far, long-term confidence depends on the ownership experience. EVs are structurally different from internal combustion engine vehicles. They have fewer moving parts but rely heavily on batteries, electronics, and software systems. While electric vehicles are reliable in most ways, they still present a few challenges:

● Limited charging availability in certain regions

● Range-related concerns in real-world conditions

● Dependence on diagnostics and specialised servicing

India has made progress on infrastructure, with 30,000 public charging stations operational across the country as of early 2026. However, availability remains uneven, particularly outside urban centres. Hence, infrastructure expansion is still catching up with the pace of EV adoption, creating gaps in user confidence during unexpected situations.

Breakdowns: Rare, But Defining Moments

Breakdowns may not be frequent, but they are critical moments in the customer journey. In conventional vehicles, solutions are familiar: nearby mechanics, fuel availability, and established service networks. In contrast, EV-related issues, such as battery depletion, software faults, or system errors, require a different response ecosystem.

For a first-time EV user, the question is simple: if something goes wrong, will I get help quickly and reliably? The answer to this question directly impacts trust and, ultimately, adoption at scale.

Building a Reliable Support Ecosystem

As EV adoption deepens, emergency and roadside support is emerging as a key pillar of the ecosystem. Two elements are particularly critical:

Skilled Technical Support - EVs require specialised handling and technical expertise, particularly for high-voltage systems and advanced diagnostics. Ensuring trained technicians across geographies, not just metros, paired with the right operational frameworks in place, is essential for consistent service quality.

Real-Time Accessible Assistance - Modern support systems are evolving into 24/7 command centers that centrally monitor every service request, deliver multilingual assistance, and enable fully digital end-to-end service management with complete transparency. These capabilities significantly reduce response times and provide critical reassurance during high-stress situations.

Together, these elements ensure that support is not just reactive but dependable.

From Adoption to Assurance

India’s EV ecosystem is at a turning point. The initial barriers like cost, awareness, and product availability are gradually being addressed. The next phase will be defined by confidence. Consumers are not just evaluating vehicles anymore; they are evaluating the ecosystem that supports them.

A reliable, responsive, and widely accessible service network will be critical in ensuring that EV users feel secure in everyday usage. This is because the future of mobility will not be determined only by how many EVs are sold, but by how confidently they are driven. And in that journey, the strength of support systems and service readiness will play an equally important role in shaping the overall ownership experience.

Vimal Singh SV is the Founder & CEO of ReadyAssist.Views expressed are the author's personal.

3 Semiconductor Technologies that are Redefining the EV Experience

Autocar Professional Bureau — Sat, 09 May 2026 15:10:32

A few years ago, my family and I climbed into our electric vehicle (EV) for a weeklong road trip. Amid enjoyable memories of marveling at shimmering lakes and singing songs, there were a couple of less-convenient ones, such as stopping to charge the vehicle for over an hour even though we were close to our destination.

Today's EV drivers are traveling farther between charges. Charging times previously measured in hours are now measured in minutes. Battery systems are smarter, helping vehicles operate more consistently and with greater confidence. EVs are becoming a practical option rather than a preferential one.

Those improvements didn't happen without effort. Behind every breakthrough in EV performance is years of engineering innovation that requires semiconductors, and it starts with understanding drivers' expectations.

How collaboration inspired innovation

To understand the technology redefining EVs, the story doesn't start with semiconductor companies alone—it starts with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). OEMs produce parts or components for other companies' products. They can range from automakers acting as their own OEMs to suppliers of automotive products such as tires or braking systems.

Five years ago, engagement between semiconductor manufacturers and automakers often began after automakers defined architectures for their next generations of vehicles. But that model has changed, and it's accelerating how quickly new capabilities reach the road.

Today, collaboration happens earlier. Instead of optimizing components independently, semiconductor developments are aligned with drivers' real‑world demands. The outputs of this relationship are enabling drivers to reconsider when and how they use their EV.

3 technologies that are shaping EVs into everyday cars

Collaboration with OEMs at an earlier stage enables us to shape battery management strategies, charging topologies and power-conversion architectures at the beginning of the design process.

There are three innovations we're working on today that are paving the way for EVs' evolution.

1. Predictive battery management starts with deeper visibility into battery health. Drivers want to know whether their vehicle will perform consistently in every situation, from daily commutes to road trips and even in extreme temperatures. Predictive battery management technologies enable battery systems to detect changes such as state of charge, temperature, aging or charge imbalance in the cells of a battery pack using model‑based algorithms or edge artificial intelligence.

Careful monitoring of cell behavior allows OEMs to implement protective features. Sensing and data analysis in real time make it possible to detect and address risks earlier, improving battery safety and performance and extending pack life. Drivers can expect fewer unexpected drops in range, greater reliability and earlier safety alerts. A longer battery life lowers overall ownership costs as well.

2. Higher power density charging is also important when making EVs more convenient for everyday use. Faster charging is being enabled through new onboard charger designs that deliver more power in a smaller footprint while simplifying system architectures. By increasing power density and improving efficiency with a single power‑conversion stage, automakers can shorten charging times without compromising performance. Charging is thus becoming faster and more predictable for drivers. And for OEMs, more efficient charging designs can reduce system weight and cost, lowering the cost of bringing EVs to market.

3. Extended vehicle range remains a persistent driver demand that OEMs have identified, as well as an engineering challenge. A longer range depends on how efficiently the powertrain manages energy. Advances in power electronics and optimized control improve how effectively stored energy becomes motion. Algorithms that improve traction inverter efficiency by minimizing energy loss allow EVs to go farther on a single charge, while drivers experience faster acceleration and a smoother, quieter ride.

Until my family's road trip a few years ago, we had only used our EV for day‑to‑day errands where we knew that our range would exceed our mileage, such as visits to the grocery store. That road trip showed us that the EV experience was evolving, and it would not be our last.

With extended vehicle range, high‑power charging and predictive battery management, long‑distance travel is becoming more enjoyable. Charging times are beginning to rival gas station fill‑ups, while smarter systems bring intelligence to safety‑critical functions.

As semiconductors continue to advance and collaboration with OEMs deepens, the challenges drivers face today are being addressed while tomorrow’s opportunities are anticipated. The EV driving experience is becoming more intelligent, reliable and convenient.

Jerry Shi is the General Manager of HEV/EV and Powertrain, System Engineering and Marketing. Views expressed are the author's personal.

How Leasing Is Quietly Rewriting India’s Mobility Story

Autocar Professional Bureau — Sat, 09 May 2026 14:53:47

For the longest time, mobility in India followed a simple, almost predictable logic: you worked hard, saved up, and bought a car. Ownership wasn’t just practical, it was emotional. It meant you had arrived. That equation is now beginning to shift. Not dramatically, not overnight, but steadily enough to notice.

Increasingly, both individuals and businesses are asking a different question: Why own, if you don’t have to?

This is where leasing has found its moment. India’s vehicle leasing market has already crossed the $50 billion mark and is projected to grow steadily over the next decade. But the more telling signal lies beneath that headline number. Segments like fleet leasing and commercial vehicles are expanding at over 10% annually, outpacing much of the traditional automotive market.

This isn’t just growth. It’s a change in behaviour.

Ownership, as we knew it, is being re-evaluated. A car once fit neatly into a relatively stable life. Today, neither life nor business follows a straight line. People move cities more frequently. Companies scale up or down, faster than before. And vehicles, more often than we admit, spend a large part of their time parked.

In that context, ownership begins to feel less like an asset and more like an inefficiency. Leasing offers a different way of thinking. It separates usage from ownership. You don’t carry the burden of depreciation, resale, or long-term commitment, you simply use what you need, for as long as you need it.

Globally, this model is well established. In India, however, leasing still accounts for a small fraction of total car sales. Which, if anything, highlights how much headroom there is for growth.

Corporate India has accelerated this shift. If leasing is scaling at its current pace, a large part of the momentum is coming from businesses.

Across sectors, whether it’s logistics, infrastructure, or new-age startups, companies are rethinking how they deploy capital. Vehicles are essential, but owning them is no longer.

Leasing allows businesses to move large upfront costs into predictable operating expenses. It also simplifies what used to be a complex operational challenge, fleet management.

What has changed in recent years is the nature of leasing itself. It’s no longer just about financing vehicles. Today, it includes maintenance, compliance, analytics, and even driver ecosystems in some cases. That shift from product to service is critical.

There’s also a sustainability dimension emerging. Nearly half of electric vehicle leasing demand in India today is being driven by corporates, as companies look to meet ESG commitments without taking on the risks of owning rapidly evolving technology.

Technology has quietly enabled this transition. Leasing didn’t always feel this seamless. Not too long ago, it involved paperwork, delays, and limited visibility. Today, much of that friction has disappeared.

Digital platforms have simplified onboarding. Real time tracking, predictive maintenance and better fleet optimisation today are powered by Telematics and data analytics. This level of visibility becomes transformative for businesses which operate at scale. In many ways, leasing has benefited from the same digital acceleration that reshaped fintech and e-commerce in India.

The economics have tilted in its favour. There is also a more practical driver at play: cost. Vehicle prices have increased, insurance premiums have risen, and maintenance costs continue to climb. The rapid adoption and shifts towards electric mobility have made resale values harder to predict.

With leasing absorbing much of this uncertainty, and the outlook of a fixed outflow is ensuring that the younger users and growing businesses especially move away from the ownership of a depreciating asset with unknown future values.

Despite its momentum, leasing in India remains underpenetrated compared to mature markets. Which makes this phase particularly interesting.

Leasing today is not a replacement of ownership, but has quickly emerged as a viable and efficient model. With time, awareness and more firsthand experiences, leasing will stop being seen as an alternative.

It will simply become… normal. And perhaps that is the real shift underway. India is not moving away from mobility. It is moving towards a smarter way of accessing it.

Aman Naagar is the Managing Director of Avis India. Views expressed are the author's personal.

From Subsidy-Driven to Market-Driven: The Next Phase of India’s EV Economy

Autocar Professional Bureau — Sat, 02 May 2026 19:12:09

The Indian market of electric vehicles (EV) is not an experiment anymore, it is quickly turning into a business. Registration has increased 11 fold FY2020-2025 and has risen to approximately 175,000 to almost 1.9 million units per year. As the market has been projected to have a size of over 54.4 billion in 2025 and over 110.7 billion in 2029, it is no longer whether EVs will experience growth, but how this will be sustained.

The solution is in relaxation of subsidies to adoption by market forces.

Subsidies Sparked the Boom

Tax breaks as well as direct subsidies by the government were critical in breaking the barriers to early adoption. They challenged manufacturers to be innovative, fleet operators to be experimental and first movers to jump.

Subsidies however are temporary. The long-term growth will be based on them; this will mean that the market will be reliant on the policy handouts and not the actual value. The following stage of India's EV economy will be successful not due to incentives, but due to performance, affordability and trust.

Market Forces Take the Wheel

Consumers are evolving. Subsidies encouraged early adopters, yet total cost of ownership, reliability, and convenience are the new criteria taken into consideration by mainstream buyers. Decisions made by the fleet operators are not made on incentives but on the economics of operating and environmental commitments.

The main ingredient is innovation: battery leasing, vehicle swapping, shared mobility, and high-density charging infrastructure must be the new realities in order to make EVs not only attractive without subsidies. Firms, which get these real-life problems resolved, will be on the forefront in the next decade.

Trust Drives Adoption

Interest can be obtained by means of a subsidy, but can be maintained by trust. Drivers need to be convinced that an EV will be able to provide constant performance, that they can find charging stations and have maintenance services easily.

The electrification of the fleet is not just a matter of implementation of vehicles, but of a stable operation. Adoption is determined by lived experiences rather than policy incentives by employees and corporate clients. Every successful movement generates trust, generating natural development in the ecosystem.

Lessons from Global Leaders

China and Europe are an example of how powerful market-based EV development can be. Subsidies were used to jumpstart adoption but the long run success was achieved through good infrastructure, competitive price and good network of service. Once the trust had set in, consumer adoption did not need incentives.

India must follow this path. Government policies and fleet growth will continue to be significant, yet market forces of trust, convenience, and economics will have to become the key driver of growth.

Enterprise Fleets as Catalysts.

Enterprise fleets are frequently perceived as those who have to be subsidized but in fact they can contribute to market-driven adoption. The consistent, reliable, and well-supported fleet operations affect the mobility of employees and this spill over effect reinforces consumer adoption.

Constructing a Self-Sustaining Market.

India needs four pillars to work together to have a prosperous EV economy with no subsidies.

New models of business - battery leasing, swapping and shared mobility reduce barriers.
Stable infrastructure - charging networks should be available and reliable.
Transparency - effective and understandable information on performance, cost of ownership, and environmental influence generate trust.
Service oriented towards customers - maintenance and support systems ensure that EV owning is a hassle free affair.

When all these come together, the market would be self-sustaining because it is motivated by value and experience and not incentives.

The Road Ahead

The EV path of India has been impressive: the 11 times of registration growth, the current market size of 54.4 billion, and the forecasted 110 billion in 2029. However, the true experiment is still ahead in the form of switching to a market-based ecosystem. India can develop an EV economy which is resilient, scalable and competitive across the globe by addressing the issues of trust, performance, and affordability.

It is obvious what shall happen in the future: subsidies will light the fire, market forces will inflation will stoke the flame. This is the following chapter of the EV story of India, which is part of an independent consumer-trusted system.

Abhinav Kalia is the Co-Founder & CEO of ARC Electric. Views expressed are the author's personal.

Driving the Future: GCCs at the Core of the Auto Industry’s Reinvention

Arunima Pal — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 14:10:00

For decades, the global auto industry focused on manufacturing scale, supply chain efficiency, and engineering excellence. Today, this definition is evolving. Global Capability Centres (GCCs) in cities such as Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, and Chennai are emerging as key drivers of the mobility ecosystem. Initially established for cost efficiency, GCCs have become strategic assets. They are now integral to how automotive companies design, build, and envision the future of mobility.

Cost Efficiency to Core Capability

The shift has been gradual but decisive. In the early 2000s, automotive GCCs in India were largely focused on IT services, bThis shift has been gradual yet decisive. In the early 2000s, automotive GCCs in India focused on IT services, basic engineering support, and back-office operations. Today, they lead initiatives in advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), electric vehicle (EV) platforms, connected car technologies, digital twins, and predictive maintenance, electrification, software-defined vehicles, autonomous driving, and shared mobility are reshaping business models. In such a landscape, the centre of gravity is shifting from mechanical engineering to software, data, and systems integration. GCCs, particularly in India, are uniquely positioned at this intersection.

India’s Advantage: Talent to Meet Scale

India’s emergence as a GCC hub is supported by a deep and diverse talent pool. Engineers have expanded their expertise from mechanical systems to embedded software, AI models, and cloud architectures. Combined with a strong startup ecosystem and cross-industry collaboration, this talent base is both scalable and adaptable. For global automotive companies, this is invaluable. Building such multidisciplinary teams in traditional markets is both expensive and time-consuming. GCCs in India offer not just cost advantages, but speed, agility, and access to next-generation skills. This is one reason why we are seeing a new wave of GCC investments, not just from traditional OEMs, but also from EV startups, mobility platforms, and Tier-1 suppliers.

The Software-Defined Vehicle and the GCC Moment

The idea of the “software-defined vehicle” is no longer theoretical. Vehicles today are becoming platforms continuously updated, data-rich, and deeply integrated with digital ecosystems. This requires capabilities that go far beyond traditional automotive engineering. GCCs are playing a central role here. They are developing vehicle operating systems, managing over-the-air (OTA) updates, building cybersecurity frameworks, and enabling real-time data analytics. In many cases, critical intellectual property is now being created within these centers. This raises an important shift in perception: GCCs are no longer just execution hubs, they are innovation engines.

Reimagining the Value Chain

The impact of GCCs is not limited to product development. They are increasingly influencing the broader automotive value chain. In supply chain management, GCCs are deploying AI-driven forecasting models to navigate disruptions, from geopolitical tensions to shipping delays. In manufacturing, they are enabling smart factory initiatives using IoT and digital twins. In aftersales, they are building predictive maintenance solutions that enhance customer experience while reducing costs. Even areas like finance, risk, and compliance are being reimagined, with GCCs leveraging advanced analytics to drive decision-making. In essence, GCCs are stitching together what was once a fragmented value chain into a more integrated, intelligent system.

The India Opportunity

India today hosts over 1,500 + GCCs, employing more than 1.8 million professionals. A significant and growing share of these is linked to the mobility and auto ecosystem. Yet, the opportunity ahead is even larger. As global companies look to diversify supply chains and build resilience, India is emerging as a credible alternative, not just for manufacturing, but for capability building. GCCs will be central to this shift.

However, this also brings responsibility. To sustain this momentum, India must continue investing in infrastructure, skilling, and policy clarity. The transition to EVs, the rise of AI in mobility, and the increasing importance of cybersecurity all demand a workforce that is continuously learning and evolving. Equally important is the need to move up the value chain, from execution to ownership. This means not just delivering projects, but shaping strategy, driving innovation, and creating intellectual property.

A More Human Shift

Amid all the talk of technology and transformation, it is easy to overlook the human dimension of this shift. Inside GCCs, thousands of engineers are working across time zones, collaborating with global teams, and solving problems that have real-world impact, whether it is improving vehicle safety, reducing emissions, or enhancing access to mobility. For many, this is not just a job; it is an opportunity to be part of a global transformation from right here in India. The auto industry’s future will be defined as much by code as by combustion, as much by data as by design. In this new world, GCCs are not just supporting actors, they are central to the narrative.

The question is no longer whether GCCs will play a role in the mobility ecosystem. It is how far they will go and how effectively India can leverage this moment. If the trajectory holds, the next breakthrough in mobility may not just be manufactured in India. It may well be imagined, designed, and engineered here.

Nancy Bhatt is Managing Director at Protiviti Member Firm for India. Views expressed are the author's personal.

Depreciation as Opportunity: How India’s Pre-Owned Market Unlocks Hidden Value in Luxury Cars

Angitha Suresh — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 18:38:51

For ages, depreciation has remained the steep, immediate and inevitably mounting silent tax in the luxury car segment. As soon as the luxury car exits the showroom, its value starts to erode instantly. In India, this phenomenon has conventionally worked against both buyers and brands, bolstering the belief that luxury mobility is often dearer and incurs lop-sided financial cost.

However, with increased education about caring for luxury cars, the narrative is slowly changing and picking up pace among both the dealers and customers to keep the vehicle’s ROI in check.

In the current market dynamics, depreciation of luxury cars is not a liability but an active enabler for the rise of India’s pre-owned luxury car ecosystem. Depreciation is paving the way for reshaping how value is perceived in the premium automotive segment.

From Value Loss to Value Unlock

The numbers tell a compelling story. The pre-owned luxury car market in India has not only matured but, in many ways, overtaken the primary market in terms of momentum. With used luxury car sales now outpacing new ones, the shift is no longer cyclical—it is structural. This overturn showcases how education and value-consciousness are leading buyers to trade the “first-owner premium” with a smarter entry point into luxury ownership.

Centrally, the depreciation curve itself helps benefit both the pre-owned car market players and the buyers. Luxury vehicles usually see the lopsided depreciation in the first 3 years, wherein it usually drops in value up to 30% of their original price. For the first owner, this is a cost. For the second owner, it is an arbitrage opportunity. And that arbitrage is driving demand.

The Democratisation of Luxury Ownership

For a growing segment of Indian buyers—particularly younger, urban professionals—the pre-owned route offers access to globally benchmarked engineering, safety, and performance at significantly reduced price points. In effect, depreciation is democratising luxury. It is expanding the addressable market beyond traditional high-net-worth individuals to include aspirational buyers who prioritise experience over ownership hierarchy.

This shift is also altering the ownership lifecycle itself. Statistics showing a pattern of depreciation is nudging first owners to decrease the waiting period while upgrading, hence inducing a steady pipeline of well-maintained vehicles entering the pre-owned market. Banks and NBFCs too have learnt the potential held in lending finance for pre-owned luxury markets with increased ease in documentation process and nearly equal interest rate as applied on first-ownership cars. This results in the pre-owned luxury car markets’ inventory seeing a healthy mix of fairly new cars that are usually under four years, low mileage and complete service histories.

Rise of an Organised Ecosystem

OEMs, once cautious of the residual value conversation, are now actively participating in it. Certified pre-owned programs, which were once looked over, are now an important part of brand strategy. Manufacturers must focus on mandating standard refurbishing procedures, providing warranty on pre-owned vehicles, and sharing the car’s complete history, etc., to ensure brand equity and increased customer retention within the ecosystem across multiple ownership cycles.

This is a critical shift. The pre-owned market has steadily accelerated from being a feeder market to a crucial extension of the primary market.

The role of organised players and digital platforms has been crucial in the current times. Increased pricing transparency, access to vehicle history, and data-driven valuation tools have helped sellers overcome a significant hurdle that plagued the segment for ages, i.e. trust. Buyers today have multiple sources to seek information and hence make a conscious decision, and sellers are equally informed about the market realities to price the cars transparently. The asymmetry that once defined used car transactions is steadily narrowing.

A Lifecycle View of Luxury

What is also becoming evident is that depreciation-led demand is not merely a function of affordability—it is a reflection of evolving consumer behaviour. While elders predominantly appreciated buying brand new premium cars as a statement of legacy, the notion in the current times across buyers of all ages has seen a mindful shift to invest in lesser-driven, quality maintained, certified pre-owned luxury cars, especially niche brands like Volvo, Maserati, etc. This allows the consumers to access their desired cars at attractive prices and at a time when supply for first-ownership cars of these brands usually have longer waiting periods.

Indian buyers, especially in the premium segment, have a conscious approach towards financial investment in the luxury cars segment. The consumers now know that the value of a luxury car is not superficial in its logo but in its actual life-cycle in terms of utility, performance, and overall ownership experience over time.

Hence, the thought of paying a large chunk of premium for first ownership is waning significantly. The first owner absorbs the depreciation; the second owner reaps the real value from the luxury car.

Shifting Gears to the Road Ahead

In the coming times, the used-to-new car sales ratio in India is deemed to be in the leading position, indicating a notable headroom to grow in the pre-owned luxury car segment. With the amplification of supply, financing pre-owned cars becomes increasingly institutionalised and easily available. The certification standards also continue to evolve to keep the segment sustainable in the coming times.

For dealers, the opportunity lies in curation and credibility. For OEMs, it lies in lifecycle engagement. And for consumers, it lies in access to a level of luxury ungated by price.

Once a legacy factor in India to be the first owner of a new luxury car, the current times are defined by how making the decision of buying a pre-owned luxury vehicle is a smarter choice within the ownership cycle. And in that equation, depreciation is no longer the enemy but the entry point.Avneet Singh Kohli (Sunny) is the founder at AutoBest Emperio. Views expressed are the authors' personal.

When Cars Become Code: The Cyber Risks of Software-Defined Mobility

Arunima Pal — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 17:10:35

Not long ago, ‘vehicle control’ meant gears, valves, shafts and steel. Today, a modern vehicle is made up of code as much as metal, making the car a continuously evolving digital system on wheels, powered by 100–500 million lines of code.

As per Deloitte’s Global Automotive Consumer Study (GACS) for the India Market in 2026, one of the most important factors driving one’s choice of brand purchasing vehicles is features/ technology, accounting for 50 percent. This is primarily because, at 80 percent, India has the highest proportion of consumers finding software defined vehicles (SDVs) useful This has led to an increased number of connected cars on the road.

This transformation is creating value for the customers as well as the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) but there are significant risks. Connectivity, personalisation and autonomous features are central to brand differentiation. Yet every interface built for convenience introduces exposure. The competitive advantage of SDVs rest on architectural sophistication, but so does the ever-expanding attack surface.

Real incidents have shown us how a single weak interface can cascade into a safety-critical control issue.

Last year, one of the largest global passenger car manufacturers’ vehicle mobile app had insecure authentication. This resulted in the disclosure of vehicle identification number (VIN) and complete control of car functionalities remotely, such as remote start/stop, AC, lock/unlock, geo locations etc.
Few years back, a leading sport utility vehicle (SUV) hack moved from the head unit over the cellular interface into the controller area network (CAN) bus, letting researchers manipulate brakes, transmission and steering. This triggered a massive vehicle recall and redefined “cyber” as a road-safety issue.

The SDV attack surface is no longer a perimeter, but a mesh. Per GACS reports, consumers are ready to pay extra for connected features. The report indicates that 75 percent consumers are ready to pay for autonomous parking while 77–79 percent consumers prefers to have vehicle health reporting, app connectivity, automatic detection of vehicles/ pedestrians and digital keys.

Infotainment systems: It is integrated with smartphone mirroring and voice assistants without strict network segmentation or gateway enforcement, which becomes a safety-critical risk
Advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS): It raises the stakes further, since these platforms ingest data from cameras, radar and LiDAR sensors. A simple manipulation of sensor inputs or injection of adversarial signals could directly influence the vehicle’s behaviour.
Telematics unit: Maintaining persistent cloud connectivity and the over-the-air (OTA) updates could change an operational convenience to a systemic vulnerability with flawed authentication models or weak certification management.
V2V/V2X: While improving safety and efficiency, V2X also introduces attack feasibilities such as spoofing and Denial of Service (DoS) into the ecosystem

The industry’s responses cannot rely on reactive patch cycles any longer. Security must be engineered into the vehicle lifecycle from the earliest architectural decisions. Threat analysis and risk assessment (TARA) at the concept stage, secure boot chains, software bill of materials (SBOM) governance and secure coding standards aligned with AUTomotive Open System Architecture (AUTOSAR) and Motor Industry Software Reliability Association (MISRA) practices are foundational controls. These are not optional safeguards; they define system integrity.

This shift-left posture is further reinforced by the regulatory momentum. ISO/SAE 21434 formalises cybersecurity engineering processes across development, production and decommissioning, while UNECE WP.29 R155 mandates a cybersecurity management system (CSMS) as a prerequisite for vehicle type approval across major markets. National frameworks such as AIS-189 further codify compliance expectations.

Today, certification hinges on demonstrable risk management, traceability and incident response readiness and cyber governance has entered the homologation process.

For OEMs, the strategic calculus is shifting. Now, cyber resilience intersects with safety, brand trust, investor buy-in and customer confidence. Per GACS, about 95 percent of customers are willing to pay for SDVs, with safety, security and continuous vehicle health reporting being the top features. As vehicles continue to become software-driven, cyber risk transforms to a safety and brand risk. OEMs that treat cybersecurity as a core system property, architected in early, validated continuously, monitored at fleet scale and anchored in CSMS/ISO 21434 discipline will keep up with attackers and regulators, and outpace competitors on trust, time-to-feature and total lifecycle value.

In a world where software increasingly determines how vehicles sense, decide and move, trust will act as the fuel that redefines the future of mobility.

Rajat Mahajan is Partner and Automotive sector leader at Deloitte India, and Santosh Jinugu is Partner at Deloitte India. Views expressed are the authors' personal.

Beyond Horsepower: How Digital Intelligence is Rewiring India’s Auto Industry

Arunima Pal — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 16:59:15

India’s automotive industry is standing at a defining moment. For decades, competitiveness in the sector was defined by manufacturing scale, cost efficiency, deep supplier ecosystems and expansive dealer networks. These strengths enabled India to build one of the world’s largest and most competitive automotive manufacturing bases.

But the foundations of competition are changing.

Electric mobility, connected vehicles, software‑defined architectures and digitally driven customer journeys are rapidly transforming the industry. The race is no longer only about producing more vehicles. Increasingly, it is about how intelligently companies manage data, risk, supply chains and digital platforms.

In many ways, the sector is moving from a volume-led manufacturing model to a digitally orchestrated mobility ecosystem.

This transition is also redefining the role of governance. Traditionally seen as a compliance obligation handled largely within legal or regulatory teams, governance today is emerging as a strategic business function.

Electric vehicles, advanced driver assistance systems, connected platforms and software updates have significantly expanded regulatory exposure. Automakers must now manage complex requirements around battery traceability, semiconductor sourcing, cybersecurity standards, data privacy regulations and product liability risks.

Automakers must now track the origin and traceability of batteries, semiconductors and rare earth materials, ensure cybersecurity compliance across supplier ecosystems, manage data privacy obligations and maintain readiness for product recalls supported by digital traceability systems. Environmental reporting and carbon accounting transparency are also becoming integral to corporate disclosures.

For several large Indian manufacturers, governance is increasingly integrated across finance, supply chain, engineering and technology teams. The maturity of governance systems now directly influences export eligibility, investor confidence, cost of capital and brand reputation. As a result, several automotive boards are establishing dedicated risk and sustainability committees, embedding governance frameworks into enterprise systems and conducting recall simulation exercises to test readiness.

At the same time, the industry’s supply chain philosophy is undergoing a rethink. The global semiconductor shortage and a series of geopolitical and logistics disruptions over the past few years have exposed the fragility of traditional Just-in-Time manufacturing systems. India’s automotive ecosystem, heavily dependent on MSME suppliers, experienced these shocks first-hand.

Instead of abandoning efficiency, companies are now augmenting it with intelligence. Manufacturers are mapping visibility across Tier-2 and Tier-3 suppliers, building dual sourcing strategies for critical components and segmenting inventory risk more carefully. Investments are also flowing into EV component localisation and digital supply chain control towers that provide real-time monitoring of production flows.

The emerging philosophy is simple: resilience must be built before disruption occurs, not after it.

Technology plays a central role in enabling this shift, particularly through the modernization of core enterprise systems. Digital transformation in the automotive sector is no longer just about upgrading IT infrastructure. It is about creating an integrated digital backbone that connects product design, manufacturing, suppliers, dealers and analytics in real time.

Legacy ERP systems were designed for a manufacturing environment focused on stable production cycles. They struggle to support emerging business models that involve subscription-based services, over-the-air software updates, integrated dealer platforms and global compliance frameworks. Modern ERP ecosystems are therefore evolving into unified digital cores, integrating product lifecycle management, manufacturing execution systems, dealer networks, supplier collaboration platforms and advanced analytics layers.

With such integration, companies gain the ability to anticipate production bottlenecks before they halt assembly lines, dynamically balance dealer inventory, forecast warranty liabilities more accurately and recalibrate procurement decisions in real time. In a highly connected industry, slow access to information can quickly become a structural disadvantage.

The transformation is equally visible in the retail landscape. The traditional dealership model — built around physical inventory and transactional vehicle sales — is gradually evolving into a digitally connected ecosystem. Consumers today expect seamless digital journeys, from online vehicle discovery and booking to financing and service scheduling.

Automakers are experimenting with omni-channel retail models, direct-to-consumer initiatives and subscription-based ownership experiences. New entrants such as Ola Electric have demonstrated alternative distribution architectures that rely heavily on digital platforms, accelerating the pace of change across the industry.

However, the biggest shift in retail may emerge in the after-sales segment. Electric vehicles have fewer moving mechanical parts and therefore require less routine maintenance. At the same time, they rely heavily on software systems, battery management technologies and connected services. As over-the-air updates become more common, service interactions may shift away from traditional workshop visits.

Revenue streams are gradually moving toward software upgrades, connectivity subscriptions, battery lifecycle management and fleet analytics services. This evolution is prompting manufacturers to rethink dealer compensation structures, enabling dealerships to participate in digital revenue streams and long-term customer engagement.

While large manufacturers are adapting to these changes, the transformation also poses significant challenges for the supplier ecosystem. India’s automotive component sector is overwhelmingly MSME-driven, accounting for nearly 70 to 80 percent of the vendor base. The shift toward electric mobility fundamentally alters the economics for many of these suppliers.

Components designed for internal combustion engines may face declining demand, while EV manufacturing requires investments in new tooling, electronics capabilities and advanced production technologies. Compliance standards and digital reporting requirements are also becoming more demanding.

Forward-looking manufacturers are responding with supplier digital enablement programmes, shared research initiatives and strategic partnerships. Some of the large Tier-1 players such as Motherson Group are already diversifying into electronics and forming global alliances to reduce dependence on traditional engine components.

Ultimately, the competitiveness of India’s automotive exports will depend not only on the strength of its major manufacturers but also on how successfully the supplier ecosystem modernises.

Beyond these structural shifts lies an even broader transformation. The automotive industry is increasingly moving from selling vehicles to managing mobility platforms. Electric mobility, connected vehicles, shared transportation fleets and software-defined vehicle architectures are bringing the automotive and technology sectors closer than ever before.

This convergence requires new capabilities — agile product development teams, cloud-native backend systems, subscription-based revenue frameworks and cybersecurity-by-design engineering approaches. The boundaries between a vehicle manufacturer and a technology platform provider are steadily blurring.

For industry leaders, the strategic priorities are becoming clearer. Boards must elevate governance and resilience to the centre of their strategic agenda. CFOs must reassess working capital strategies that balance efficiency with supply chain resilience and modernise revenue models for digital services. Technology leaders must accelerate cloud ERP transformations and build cybersecurity frameworks that extend across supplier ecosystems. Operations teams must invest in predictive analytics and digital twins to optimise production performance.

The transformation underway is not merely technological — it is systemic.

Governance is no longer just a control mechanism; it is becoming a strategic accelerator. Resilience is no longer insurance against disruption; it is a competitive differentiator. ERP systems are no longer back-office tools; they are the nervous system of the enterprise. And data is no longer simply for reporting; it is the foundation of predictive advantage.

The companies that successfully align governance, digital infrastructure, supplier modernization and mobility innovation will not only navigate this transition — they will shape the next chapter of India’s automotive industry.

In the decade ahead, the future of Indian mobility will not be built solely on horsepower. It will be built on intelligence, resilience and orchestration.

Saurav Kumar is Managing Director, Protiviti Member Firm for India. Views expressed are the author's personal.

The Road Ahead: Oil Shock, Electric Vehicles and the Remaking of the Global Car Industry

Arunima Pal — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 16:44:56

The internal combustion engine powers an entire economic system. That system is a vast, interlocking network of crude extraction, refining, fuel retail, and vehicle manufacturing that has shaped industries, economies, and foreign policy for over a century.

Oil shocks, when they arrive, put that entire system under interrogation.

The current oil shock is severe, but not unprecedented. What makes it consequential is the moment in which it arrives—when an alternative system is already emerging.

Electrification was underway well before the oil crunch. Inevitably, high oil prices accelerate a transition already in motion and force decisions that might otherwise have been deferred.

To understand what comes next, it helps to discard a persistent illusion—that the global auto industry has a single center of gravity. It once did, but no longer does. What exists instead is a system of competing poles. China dominates scale. The United States holds the deepest profit pools and the capital that funds innovation. Europe sets regulatory direction, even as its industrial position weakens. India represents the largest reservoir of future demand.

No single geography defines the industry anymore. Each defines a different part of it.

China is the world’s largest auto market. It is a parallel industrial ecosystem, operating on a different technology stack and at a different competitive tempo. Its electric vehicle market has evolved rapidly because of policy support, the depth of its domestic supply chain—from battery chemistry to large-scale manufacturing—and intense domestic competition. BYD now competes globally at scale. CATL supplies companies across continents.

The United States, by contrast, is often misread by analysts who mistake volume for consequence. American manufacturers still dominate the most profitable segments of the market, particularly trucks and SUVs. American capital markets continue to underwrite global automotive innovation. Tesla has already reshaped the economics and expectations of electric vehicles worldwide, however deluded its valuation may seem. Detroit has been relativized; it has not been replaced.

Europe occupies a different position. It is a center of engineering excellence. It has regulatory power. Emissions standards set in Brussels shape product decisions far beyond the continent. German manufacturers remain central to the premium segment. Europe is also caught in a tightening squeeze, given higher energy costs, intensifying competition from Chinese manufacturers, and domestic political pressure to slow the very transition it helped design. A region that sets the rules while losing the capacity to compete under them cannot hold that position indefinitely.

In the global auto industry, India is something volatile. It’s a market where the outcome is still being decided.

At roughly 3% vehicle ownership, this is not a transition from one technology to another. It is a first-choice market. The technology that wins the first purchase at scale will define India’s automotive system for decades.

The battle is unfolding. Tata Motors built the initial lead, at one point commanding over 80% of India’s electric passenger vehicle market. That lead is now eroding. Market share has halved in three years, and the underlying pattern reveals that each new launch delivers a temporary spike in volumes, followed by a reversion to a baseline that has barely shifted. This is a structural signal.

The limitation lies in product architecture. Most of Tata’s EV portfolio consists of electrified adaptations of combustion platforms. That strategy delivered speed, but it is now hitting a ceiling visible in range, charging speeds, and overall performance.

Contrast that with Mahindra & Mahindra. Its INGLO-based vehicles are not conversions but purpose-built electric platforms. The difference is fundamental—with larger batteries, materially higher range, and significantly faster charging capability. The market response has been immediate, manifesting in rapid share gains and sustained waiting periods.

The gap is architectural, which the market is pricing accordingly.

JSW MG Motor India has taken a different route to the same destination and has depended on pricing innovation. Its ‘battery-as-a-service’ model effectively lowers upfront cost by decoupling the battery from the vehicle purchase—a case of a bigger hook than the fish—but it has worked in creating consumer attention. In a market where upfront affordability remains the single biggest constraint, it is a wedge.

Finally, there is Maruti Suzuki—an auto leader that is still early in electric vehicle offerings but could be a disruptive force. Its initial EV volumes are very modest, but with roughly 40% market share and an unmatched distribution network, Maruti does not need to lead in technology to shape the market.

Those are the three competing pathways: architectural advantage, pricing disruption, and distribution at scale.

Tata Motors still retains meaningful advantages of scale and a group ecosystem spanning charging, batteries, and software. But those advantages were built in a market with limited competition. That condition no longer holds.

The next phase of India’s EV market will be defined by whoever can align product, pricing, and scale simultaneously.

That is still an open contest.

In the backdrop of the oil shock, India will not decide whether electric vehicles win. But at scale, it will decide what kind of electric market wins—whether premium, affordable, or mass.

This is not a purely commercial question. India imports the vast majority of its crude oil, making high prices a macroeconomic vulnerability. Electrification, in that context, is both an environmental objective and a strategic one. Upfront costs remain high, charging infrastructure is uneven, and adoption depends on whether policy, economics, and infrastructure align. If they do not, the transition slows. If they do, it accelerates quickly.

Financial markets offer an imperfect but revealing lens. Divergences in valuation across the industry suggest that capital is beginning to price in a different future. Companies positioned to benefit from electrification and reduced oil dependence have seen stronger investor support than those tied most closely to traditional internal combustion profit pools.

History offers a useful reference point. The oil shocks of the late 1970s reshaped the industry. American consumers, confronted with rising fuel costs, shifted toward more efficient vehicles. Japanese automakers such as Toyota, Honda, and Nissan, already positioned for that demand, gained market share that proved durable. The lesson was that incumbents failed to see the pace of oncoming change. Transitions that appear viscous in theory can accelerate rapidly under pressure.

That risk is present again. The tension between today’s profit pools and tomorrow’s technologies is becoming harder to sustain.

In the United States, highly profitable combustion vehicles coexist with massive investments in electrification. In China, the shift toward electric is already well advanced, strengthening domestic manufacturers. In Europe, regulatory ambition collides with industrial reality. In India, the foundational choices have yet to be made.

What will determine the outcome is the persistence of higher oil prices. A short-lived spike changes behavior at the margins. A sustained period of higher prices alters investment decisions, accelerates technological adoption, and redistributes competitive advantage.

There are reasons to believe the current environment may have more staying power than previous cycles, given constrained supply investment, geopolitical fragmentation, and simultaneous shifts in demand.

None of this means the end of the internal combustion engine in the near term. Transitions of this scale are uneven and contested. Direction matters more than speed. The industry is moving toward electrification. The question is who arrives positioned to benefit.

The mistake after the oil shocks of the 1970s was the belief that a temporary recovery invalidated the need for structural change. When prices fell, strategic adjustments were deferred. The consequences played out over decades.

That is the risk again.

The current moment does not create a new trajectory for the global car industry. It merely accelerates an existing one, and in doing so, it begins to sort winners from losers.

The wars that triggered the latest price surge will end, hopefully, at some point in time soon.

The repricing it has set in motion will not reverse with them.

Shubhranshu Singh is a business leader and marketer. He served as global head of marketing at Royal Enfield and as Chief Marketing Officer at Tata Motors CV across the last decade. Views expressed are the author's personal.

How the Critical Minerals Recycling Scheme Can Be India’s Fastest Route to Manufacturing Sovereignty

Autocar Professional Bureau — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 14:05:46

Critical minerals, as the name aptly describes, are essential for electric vehicles, electronics, renewable energy storage and defense. Minerals like cobalt, lithium, and nickel play a crucial role in energy storage. Currently, India imports virtually all of its lithium and cobalt and spent over ₹34,000 crore on critical mineral imports in FY2023–24.

Since these minerals are so important, recycling batteries and electronic waste can become a strong domestic source of supply. With a strong recycling ecosystem, dependence on imports and new mining can be reduced, and India can build strategic reserves that protect the country against supply chain disruptions.

Experts worldwide argue that recycling is vital for critical minerals supply security and sustainability. All major economies are racing to scale up recycling. The EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act (2023) sets a goal of 15% recycling of strategic minerals by 2030, and the US has proposed a $12 billion critical minerals stockpile.

India’s “manufacturing sovereignty” i.e., our ability to produce high-tech machinery or batteries at home, is dependent on securing critical mineral inputs through domestic recycling and processing, along with the primary routes of developing new mining assets and scaling refining capabilities.

Recycling Fuels Industrial Strategy: Global Trends

The International Energy Agency (IEA) substantiates the role of recycling in reducing reliance on new mines and enhancing supply security of critical minerals. Globally, recycling rates of nickel and cobalt have reached about 40–50%, providing ~40% of theoretically available scrap for nickel and cobalt (lithium ~20%) (IEA, 2024). There is significant potential for recycling to scale supply with the right policy support.

Internationally, over 30 new measures on critical minerals recycling have been introduced since 2022, ranging from Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) frameworks to financial incentives. Corporates and automakers are responding to this, and EV battery supply chains are being designed for circularity. Consumer electronics firms are funding e-waste take-back programs, and these global trends foreshadow India’s path as well.

India’s Critical Minerals Scenario

With India being almost 100% dependent on key minerals, its industries are vulnerable to geopolitical risks. EV sales and renewable energy deployments are rising, and with that the domestic demand for lithium, nickel, cobalt and rare earths is set to skyrocket.

In January 2025, the government announced the National Critical Minerals Mission (NCMM) as part of Atmanirbhar Bharat. It is a ₹34,300 crore, seven-year mission (₹16,300 crore direct budget plus ₹18,000 crore expected PSU investment) spanning the full value chain from exploration, mining, and processing to recycling, effectively complementing recycling with mining and international tie-ups.

Under the NCMM, in September 2025, the government approved a ₹1,500 crore incentive scheme to build recycling capacity for critical minerals. This scheme, spanning six years, targets e-waste, lithium-ion battery scrap, and other secondary sources as feedstock. It encourages both new and existing recyclers through capital and operational subsidies. It offers up to 20% capex subsidy on new plants, plus opex-linked incentives (40–60% of incremental sales) over five years.

The scheme targets establishing 270 kilotonnes per year of recycling capacity and recovering 40 kilotonnes of critical minerals annually. The government intends this to catalyse about ₹8,000 crore of private investment and create around 70,000 jobs across the recycling ecosystem. Recycling can rapidly generate material supply and employment even as mining projects mature.

The Critical Minerals Recycling Scheme ties into a broader push for circularity across sectors. India is the world’s third-largest e-waste generator, and much of this e-waste such as phones and PCs contains cobalt, copper, gold and rare earth elements (REEs). The recycling scheme will ramp up formal e-waste and battery waste processing capacity and funnel recovered metals into manufacturing.

Recycling lithium-ion batteries will facilitate the supply of battery materials back into various metal value chains. Platinum group metals (PGMs) and REEs will also be recycled and collectively, these measures will ensure that waste is used as a resource for multiple industries including automotive, batteries, solar, steel, defense and other machinery. Some states like Tamil Nadu and Gujarat are already planning battery parks.

In summary, recycling will shorten lead times. Mines can take decades to yield usable minerals, but recycling plants can supply materials within months to a few years. A closed-loop system for critical minerals can feed India’s gigafactories and over time, mandated targets (such as 35–40% scrap use in steelmaking) will weave recycling into every factory’s supply chain. This will reduce India’s import bill and insulate manufacturers from global shocks and dependencies.

India’s Critical Minerals Recycling Scheme is a decisive step toward strategic autonomy. Its alignment of fiscal incentives with regulatory support and industry action can lay the foundation for high-tech manufacturing. This is an era where raw material supply is as vital as markets, and recycling is India’s fastest route to manufacturing sovereignty. With proper implementation, this scheme will create new industries, jobs, and help turn India into a manufacturing powerhouse amid the global green-tech transition.

Mr. Manikumar Uppala is the Co Founder and Chief of Industrial Engineering at Metastable Materials. Views expressed are the authors’ personal.

From Workshop Chaos to Connected Networks: How Technology Is Rewriting Auto Repair

Autocar Professional Bureau — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 14:02:07

When a customer hands over their car keys, they're making a leap of faith. For many customers, auto repair means surrendering control and bracing for the unknown — on cost, timeline, and even the work itself. This gap is reflected globally, where independent service experiences consistently rank among the lowest-trust consumer services, revealing a system in need of fundamental change.

When satisfaction collapses across every fundamental dimension, the issue is not a few bad garages or untrained technicians. It is structural. Something deeper in the operating model is broken.

Auto repair today is not failing because people do not know how to fix cars. It is failing because the system coordinating that work is fragmented.

Understanding The Fragmented Workshops

A fragmented workshop is built to survive. A connected network is built to scale trust. Most of the world’s independent workshops still operate in the first mode. And that difference explains almost every customer frustration we see.

Independent garages keep millions of vehicles on the road globally and service approximately 70% of post-warranty vehicles worldwide. Across Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe, the story is the same. These businesses are indispensable. Yet the experience around them feels outdated.

Job cards live on paper or spreadsheets. Diagnostics sit in a technician’s head. Spare parts are sourced through phone calls and WhatsApp. Insurers work on entirely separate systems. Billing is often reconciled after the car is delivered, not before. Every step depends on manual follow-ups, local relationships, and individual memory.

Nothing Talks to Anything Else

In a fragmented workshop, every function optimises locally. Parts teams chase availability. Service advisors chase approvals. Technicians wait. Customers call for updates. The business survives, but only by absorbing chaos.

In a connected network, workflows are shared. Data moves automatically. Delays are visible before they become disputes. Trust is designed into the system, not patched onto it. That difference is not cosmetic. It changes economics.

Why Surface-Level Digitisation Fails

Other industries have faced this problem before. Uber did not succeed because it built a better taxi booking app. It succeeded because it coordinated drivers, pricing, demand forecasting, payments, and routing on one shared system.

Airbnb did not win by listing homes. It won by standardising trust: identity, payments, reviews, availability, and dispute resolution.

Swiggy and Zomato did not just help customers discover restaurants. They rebuilt the entire food delivery backend: order flow, kitchen prioritisation, rider allocation, live tracking, and settlement. Auto repair is harder than all of them.

A ride is one transaction. A meal is one order. A stay is one booking. A repair is a chain reaction. Vehicle repairs involve multiple decision points discovered only after inspection, unlike fixed-scope transactions in ride-hailing or food delivery.

Inspection leads to diagnosis. Diagnosis leads to parts identification. Parts availability affects labour scheduling. Approvals impact cash flow. Delays ripple across every downstream step. One missing component can stall an entire job for days. Parts availability issues account for 30–40% of extended repair turnaround times in independent workshops.

This is why most aggregator-led models struggle. They digitise discovery and booking but sit on top of broken operations. Workshops end up updating multiple platforms manually. Insurers remain disconnected. Parts suppliers stay loosely integrated. The customer sees an app. The workshop still runs on phone calls.

Digitising the surface without fixing the core does not remove friction. It just relocates it.

What Connectivity Actually Unlocks

A connected network changes the cost of coordination. When intake, diagnostics, parts sourcing, approvals, labour tracking, and billing run on shared digital infrastructure, information no longer needs to be chased. It flows. The implications are tangible.

Studies of digitally integrated service operations show a 15–25% reduction in turnaround time. This results in faster delivery and unlocks higher vehicle throughput without adding bays or technicians.

A 20–30% increase in technician productivity is not just efficiency. It translates into higher revenue per employee and better margins in a labour-constrained industry.

Standardised digital job cards and integrated parts ordering do not just reduce errors. They compress working capital cycles by aligning parts procurement, approvals, and billing.

Real-time visibility does not just improve customer experience. It reduces disputes, rework, and post-facto audits. These gains compound.

Technology as a Transformative Force

Auto repair does not need another standalone platform. It needs interoperability. Garage management systems, parts e-commerce platforms, insurer and fleet systems, POS, payments, accounting, and logistics must be able to exchange data securely through APIs. Without this, digitisation remains siloed and coordination fails.

The workshop sits at the centre of this ecosystem. Choosing a strong, integrated garage management system is not a tooling decision. It is an operating philosophy. It decides whether a business remains reactive or becomes process-driven.

Insurers and fleet operators benefit most when they partner with digitally enabled repair networks rather than individual workshops. Continuous visibility replaces retrospective audits. Approvals move faster. Fraud risk drops.

Parts suppliers gain by connecting directly to real workshop demand signals. Inventory planning improves. Conversion rates increase. Manual ordering channels shrink.

Adjacent services — pick-up and drop, digital inspections, diagnostics, warranties, service history, even pre-owned vehicle platforms — scale faster when they plug into a shared network instead of rebuilding context each time. Rather than being about control, this is about enhanced coordination.

The Global Consequence

This is not an India problem. It is a global one. Trusted, transparent car repair remains one of the most unresolved service experiences worldwide. Unclear pricing. Unpredictable timelines. Limited visibility. The same failures repeat across markets. The stakes are rising fast.

Vehicles are becoming software-driven with EVs and new energy platforms, which require significantly higher diagnostic time and specialised tooling compared to ICE vehicles. Regulations are demanding traceability and compliance. Customers raised on Uber and Amazon expect real-time updates, zero ambiguity, and price transparency as a baseline across services. Fragmentation is no longer inefficient. It is untenable.

Independent workshops will not design ecosystems. They are not supposed to. They are built to fix cars, manage cash, and survive the day. Ecosystems are built by infrastructure.

The only viable path forward is this: digitise the workshop to solve immediate operational pain, then connect those systems outward through open, interoperable networks spanning parts, insurers, fleets, logistics, and payments.

When coordination is embedded into daily workflows, not sold as strategy, networks form by default. Participation becomes rational, not aspirational.

This shift cannot wait. The future of auto repair will belong to those who build the invisible coordination layer now. Everyone else will be forced to operate on top of it later — on weaker margins and someone else’s terms.

Vijay Gummadi is the CEO of Autorox. Views expressed are the authors’ personal.

The Dealers’ Dossier That Made It Into a Trade Deal

Autocar Professional Bureau — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 18:38:54

Trade agreements are usually written in the language of tariffs and timelines. But their success is ultimately measured in the real economy—on factory floors, in supplier parks, and, crucially, in the dealership bays where consumers decide what they can afford, what they can maintain, and what they trust.

That’s why the India–EU FTA is more than a diplomatic milestone for the auto sector. It is a case study in something rarer: how a stakeholder group closest to the consumer—auto dealers—can influence the architecture of a mega trade deal when it brings data, discipline, and a market-stability lens to the table.

This is the behind-the-scenes story of how FADA’s recommendations—delivered as a structured research paper in July 2025, after a direct request from the Hon’ble Commerce & Industry Minister Shri Piyush Goyal during May–June 2025 engagements—found their way into the public contours of the deal announced in January 2026.

The Moment Policy Met the Marketplace

In June 2025, FADA’s engagement with the Commerce Ministry took a decisive turn. The Hon’ble Minister’s message was direct: don’t just react to the FTA—help shape it. Specifically, FADA was encouraged to develop a research-backed view on how the India–EU FTA could benefit the Indian automobile ecosystem—not in theory, but in practice.

For an industry often represented through manufacturing or component narratives, this was a strategic opening. Dealers are not just intermediaries. They are the sector’s early-warning system—tracking demand sentiment, financing constraints, inventory health, sale/resale behaviour, service readiness, and customer friction points in real time.So FADA did what dealers do best: convert market signals into actionable structure.

July 2025: A Research Paper Designed Like a Policy Blueprint

By July 2025, FADA submitted its representation—built to answer a practical question:

How does India liberalise without destabilising its mass-market manufacturing base?

FADA’s paper was grounded in a simple but powerful thesis:
Liberalisation must be calibrated, segmented, and safeguard-led—so that India gains technology and investment without triggering a demand shock.

This was not an argument against opening. It was an argument for how to open—intelligently:

• Avoid a tariff cliff that creates a sudden price shock and market distortion
• Use quota-led/guard-railed pathways to manage the pace of change
• Keep India’s mass segment insulated while allowing a premium-tech upgrade pathway
• Ensure openness reinforces Make-in-India capability building, not mere import substitution
• Build predictability so OEMs invest, suppliers scale, and dealers prepare service capabilities

In other words: trade policy, reimagined as market design.

The Persuasion Phase: One Report is not Enough

Policy adoption is rarely about the document alone. It’s about the rigor behind it—and the ability to defend it under scrutiny.

Following the July submission, FADA undertook multiple engagements to walk policymakers through the logic, the segmentation model, and the second-order effects on retail, financing, and service readiness. The intent was to prevent a simplistic debate (“imports good” vs “imports bad”) and instead anchor the conversation in outcomes:

• consumer choice without consumer confusion
• technology access without ecosystem disruption
• competition without destabilisation
• investment certainty without policy whiplash

This is the unglamorous part of reform—less headline, more hard work. But it is precisely where trade deals are either made credible or made brittle.

January 2026: The Deal Lands—and the Design Looks Familiar

When the FTA’s broad contours were announced in January 2026, what stood out was not merely that automobiles were included. It was how they were included.

From the industry’s standpoint, the structure carried a clear signature: calibration.

Three signals were particularly aligned with the philosophy FADA advocated:

Quota-led liberalisation as an organising principle
Instead of an immediate, broad-based opening, the package reflected a managed pathway—the kind that prevents demand shocks and allows domestic industry to adapt and upgrade.
A phased glidepath on tariffs, not a sudden cut
A time-bound pathway creates predictability. Predictability creates investment. And investment creates the real win: localisation, jobs, and capability building.
A narrative that explicitly ties the framework to Make-in-India and future export potential
This is the strategic leap. It reframes the FTA from being “about imports” to being “about India’s next auto chapter”—technology absorption, manufacturing competitiveness, and global market participation.

From FADA’s vantage point, the alignment was clear: the final architecture mirrored the same risk-managed, growth-forward framework that we had submitted.

Why the Dealer Lens Mattered More Than Most People Realise

Dealers sit at an unusual junction: they represent the consumer’s affordability constraint and the ecosystem’s execution constraint.

When policy changes, dealers see it first:

• financing approvals tighten or loosen
• price sensitivity shifts overnight
• inventory cycles change
• aftersales capacity becomes the bottleneck
• customer expectations reset

That’s why FADA’s representation was not just policy opinion. It was operational intelligence—the kind governments need if they want reforms that hold up under real-world conditions.

The result is a trade deal design that, at least in its public contours, signals a crucial intent:
India wants competition and technology, but not chaos.

The Real Scoreboard: What Happens Next

The announcement is not the finish line. For the auto ecosystem, the next phase is where outcomes will be won or lost:

• rules and administrative mechanics
• clear definitions and transition schedules
• compliance architecture that doesn’t overburden execution
• OEM localisation and supply-chain strategy
• dealer readiness—training, tooling, diagnostics, and service infrastructure

If the FTA is executed with the same discipline with which it has been framed, India can achieve a rare trifecta:

Consumer upgrade (better tech, better safety, better choices)
Ecosystem strengthening (components, jobs, service capability)
Strategic competitiveness (investment + export optionality)

A Closing Insight: The Quiet Power of Credible Institutions

In a world of loud lobbying, the most effective influence is often the most measurable one. FADA’s role in the India–EU FTA narrative underscores a broader lesson:

Institutions that combine data credibility, market intimacy, and national interest framing don’t just participate in policymaking—they improve it.

FADA’s submission began as a ministerial request in mid-2025. It matured through technical engagement. And in January 2026, it showed up where it matters most: in the shape of policy.

For India’s auto retail ecosystem, that’s not just a policy win. It is proof that ground truth, presented with rigor, can move the architecture of history.

Saharsh Damani is the CEO of FADA. Views expressed are the authors’ personal.

Telematics: The Route to India’s Next-Gen Logistics

Autocar Professional Bureau — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 11:53:24

Logistics has never been more complex. From safety and sustainability standards to end customers demanding faster delivery times, today’s fleets face immense pressure.

Not helping matters are untracked common unpowered assets like trailers, containers, and pallets, which can result in inefficient fleet utilisation, long idle times at hubs, bad route planning, pilferage, detention delays, and border holdups. The direct impact is higher costs and reduced reliability. Naturally, decision-makers are looking to improve operations through technology.

Meanwhile, government efforts such as the National Master Plan for Multi-modal Connectivity (PM Gati Shakti), the National Logistics Policy, and the rapidly expanding Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS), aim to accelerate digital transformation with a view to elevating the entire logistics chain.

However, technology is not a silver bullet. Instead, fleet managers must invest wisely, putting their resources into building a foundation of detailed, actionable information.

Systemic bottlenecks

With a network of inter-state ports, inland container depots (ICDs), and distribution hubs, fleet managers in India need to monitor assets across road, rail, air, and waterways. Integrating them is essential to improving last-mile connectivity and cost-efficiency. In essence, this was what 2021’s Logistics Efficiency Enhancement Programme (LEEP) aimed to address.

However, due to process fragmentation, fleet managers face challenges in acquiring detailed information on their logistics systems. In spite of updates to the AIS-140 mandate, which requires commercial vehicles to integrate global positioning systems (GPS), emergency buttons, and real-time data connectivity to a central command centre, many still lack end-to-end monitoring and tracking.

That has led to many fleet managers being mired in bottlenecks, misplaced trailers, unverified handovers, and limited proof of movement. This has chafed fleet managers with a lack of control over operations while making it harder for them to fulfil commitments to customers, as highlighted in a report by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT).

The real-time visibility gap

While freight corridors, multimodal infrastructure, and digitalised planning frameworks have strengthened India’s logistics ecosystem, real-time visibility remains elusive. This is where telematics comes in. Picture a computer in each vehicle that observes and records everything from speed and idling to fuel consumption and tyre pressure. This data would be a godsend for fleet managers, who can use it to make better decisions based on how each asset is used.

Better still, a powerful, scalable internet of things (IoT) platform that centralises device and data management, enables swift, accurate, and uninterrupted analyses of both powered and unpowered assets nationwide. The result is fleet management that can track movements in real time to refine routes or spot problems before they cause disruptions. In real terms, these benefits can provide impetus for the national objective of reducing logistics costs to 7.5% of GDP target by 2030.

Closing the loop via complete visibility

Powering transparency, efficiency, and sustainability will require complete visibility. Asset tracking solutions are the key here. With a full-stack, secure telematics ecosystem that is tailored to serve India’s mixed-asset logistics environment, fleet operators will be able to aggregate a vast amount of data from geographical locations and usage patterns.

Systemic issues like unattended trailers, unpredictable dwell times, and the inability to verify cargo movement cost the Indian logistics sector billions annually. A tailored telematics solution can ease these issues.

For example, an asset tracking solution that tracks both powered and unpowered assets via low-energy IoT modules with a long-lasting battery reduces the friction that traditionally made it difficult to achieve end-to-end visibility. Supported by eSIM technology, such a solution will ensure reliable connectivity across regions and telecommunications networks.

A robust telematics ecosystem offers more than just precise location data, with elements like remote geofencing, diagnostics, tamper alerts, and utilisation analytics allowing fleet managers to delve deeper into asset behavior. With this level of end-to-end visibility, shippers, fleet owners, and warehouse teams can trace movements, handovers, and deviations within the logistics chain with full transparency and efficacy.

Visibility raises efficiency, safety, and sustainability

India’s fleet managers face a range of pressures. Growing expectations around efficiency, safety, and sustainability, not least from the PM Gati Shakti as well as stricter AIS-140 enforcement, make precise asset allocation indispensable.
The conundrum for organisations is how to ensure a profitable business case for asset tracking.

This hinges on two critical requirements: long-term operation with low maintenance costs, and real-time GPS tracking during movement. The way to achieve that is through a powerful, scalable IoT platform that embeds end-to-end tracking of any asset and logistics challenge anywhere.

Sachin Arora is the Head IoT and Connectivity at Giesecke+Devrient (G+D) India. Views expressed are the authors’ personal.

Software Ages Faster Than the Car: The Bill Nobody Budgeted For

Arunima Pal — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 14:39:15

Software-defined vehicles (SDVs) were meant to extend vehicle life through upgradable software. At least, that was the promise. Instead, software may be shortening perceived relevance—and someone will eventually pay for that gap.

The automotive industry is enthusiastic about software-driven longevity: vehicles that stay updated, relevant, and competitive for longer. What is far less understood—or conveniently ignored—is the long tail of cost, liability, and operational burden that follows this promise.

This article is not a rant about OTA failures. It is not a software-versus-hardware debate. And it is certainly not another explanation of why “technology is hard.”
It is about lifecycle economics, operational reality, and consequences the industry prefers to defer.

At its core, this discussion challenges two widely accepted tenets of SDVs:
first, that software updates alone can keep vehicles fresh for their full lifespan; and second, that decoupling software from hardware is always the right direction for SDV evolution.

At the heart of the issue lies a quiet mismatch: vehicles are expected to last like infrastructure, while software is designed to evolve like fashion.

1. Decoding the Software–Hardware Age Gap

Consumer electronics offer a telling reference. Smartphones were once supported for barely two years; today, leading models promise seven or more. Even then, few users mistake updates for timeless relevance.

In theory, SDVs can receive software updates across their entire 10–15 year lifecycle. In reality, not all updates are equal. A more honest SDV software lifecycle looks like this:

0–7 years: Innovation years
Feature expansion, UI refreshes, ADAS improvements, capability growth.
7–10 years: Maintenance years
Optimisation, bug fixes, efficiency improvements.
10–15 years: Survival years
Security patches, regulatory compliance, functional safety updates.

In practical terms, an SDV remains meaningfully contemporary for its first 5-7 years. Beyond that, software updates often shift from enhancing relevance to merely sustaining existence. This has a direct impact on perceived longevity and real-world value.

In comparison, a car—pre SDV—has traditionally been designed for roughly 22 years of serviceability before being regarded as a classic. Ownership may change multiple times during this period, but the viability of the vehicle remains intact. The expectation has never been continuous reinvention, but dependable relevance over time.

The uncomfortable truth is that the oldest vehicles carrying credible “software upgradability” promises are barely a decade old. The industry has not yet experienced a full SDV lifecycle at scale. And when it does, the limiting factor will not be software ambition—it will be hardware reality.

2. The Cost of Believing the Myth of Infinite Updates

If the current approach to decoupling hardware and software continues unchanged, OEMs risk shipping vehicles that age digitally faster than they age mechanically—a new form of obsolescence the industry is not prepared to manage.

Many strategic decisions today carry quiet downstream consequences:

Aggressive OTA promises lead to service overload and customer distrust
High-compute platforms without lifecycle planning accelerate warranty exposure
No hardware evolution path forces premature replacement

This raises an unavoidable question: who pays for the gap?

The cost does not fall on technology partners whose responsibility often ends at delivery. Instead, it lands on:

OEMs: R&D teams pulled back into post-SOP firefighting, Aftersales and service networks, Warranty and goodwill budgets
The pre-owned market, where value erosion accelerates and Independent service providers struggling with tools and access
And Customers asking the most damaging question of all:
“I was promised a future-ready car—why does it already feel old?”

If SDV lifecycles are not prioritised now, vehicles risk running mechanically sound but digitally outdated software, with growing security gaps and limited repairability. The industry is already grappling with electronic waste from short-lived consumer devices. With SDVs, the scale—and the consequences—will be far greater.

3. Beyond Wishful Thinking: Designing for Planned Evolution

This is where the SDV conversation needs a reset.

The next direction is not endless abstraction or complete hardware–software separation. It is planned hardware evolution, deliberately embedded within the SDV framework.

If software is expected to grow smarter over time, the physical systems it depends on—sensors, cameras, radar, and compute platforms—must be designed to evolve as well.

Imagine instead:

Sensor suites designed with clear upgrade paths
Compute platforms refreshed once during the vehicle’s life
ADAS and autonomy capabilities improving because inputs evolve, not just algorithms

This is not about turning cars into Lego kits. It is about accepting a basic truth: software cannot outgrow the senses through which it perceives the world.

Done thoughtfully, selective hardware upgradability:

Extends usable vehicle life
Preserves customer trust
Stabilises residual values
Keeps SDV promises aligned with physical reality

Hardware stops being the bottleneck—and becomes the enabler. This also reframes the HW–SW relationship. The question is no longer how much we can decouple, but where coupling must remain intentional. That shift demands new thinking—and deeper collaboration between OEMs and technology providers, not just on software standards, but on sensing and compute foundations.

Closing Thought: The Cost of Denial Is Higher Than the Cost of Design

The promise of software-defined vehicles was never about endless updates. It was about relevance, longevity, and trust.

Software will age faster than cars. That is not a failure—it is a fact.
The real failure is designing vehicles as if this fact does not exist.

Because if we don’t plan for software ageing, we don’t eliminate the bill—we merely defer it. And deferred bills, as the industry knows well, always arrive with interest.

The only question is whether we choose to design for it—or keep pretending it won’t.

Parul Pradhan Sharma is a Design-driven strategic leader with over 23 years of experience in the automotive and product innovation space. Views expressed are the authors’ personal.

India’s Auto Boom Is Outpacing Road Safety: Why Road Safety Isn’t Scaling with Vehicle Growth

Arunima Pal — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 14:04:48

India’s growth story is increasingly visible on its roads. Highways now stretch deeper into the hinterland, cities are linked by faster corridors, and connectivity has become a backbone of economic mobility. Over the past decade, the national highway network has expanded by more than 60 percent, with construction continuing at a rapid pace daily. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of new vehicles hit Indian roads every day, reflecting rising incomes, growing logistics demand, and changing travel habits.

Yet this rapid expansion comes with a stark contradiction. Even as roads improve and vehicles become safer, India records some of the highest road crash fatalities globally: around 474 lives lost daily. Growth has delivered speed and scale, but safety has not kept pace.

A key challenge is how road usage has evolved. Roads are no longer simple transport corridors, they now serve school zones, hospitals, markets, residential areas, expressways, and freight routes within the same network. Pedestrians, children, cyclists, two-wheelers, buses, delivery vehicles, and private cars compete for limited space. Traffic volumes are denser, speeds are higher, and the mix of users is far more complex than a decade ago.

Yet road design and regulation have not kept up. Many rules still assume predictable traffic behaviour and prioritise vehicle movement over human safety. When infrastructure and policy lag behind real-world conditions, risk multiplies.

The Risk Is Concentrated Where Protection Is Weakest

The burden of road crashes falls disproportionately on vulnerable users—pedestrians, cyclists, and two-wheelers—who together account for nearly seven out of ten fatalities (around 68% as per MoRTH data. Two-wheelers alone make up almost majority of all fatalities, while rising pedestrian fatalities highlight the shortage of safe footpaths, crossings, and traffic-calmed streets. Speed remains the dominant factor, contributing to 68–70 percent of fatal crashes. Highways, though a small fraction of road length, account for over a third of fatalities due to higher speeds, while rural roads also show high death rates because of weak enforcement, poor lighting, inconsistent engineering, and delayed emergency response.

Beyond human loss, road crashes cost India an estimated 3–5 percent of GDP annually, with lower-income households bearing the heaviest financial burden. At a time when the central government is considering critical amendments to the Motor Vehicles Act, the opportunity to address these systemic gaps has rarely been clearer. Targeted changes can help ensure that India’s road safety laws catch up with today’s road realities.

Three Levers That Save Lives: Speed, Enforcement and Child Restraints

Closing the gaps requires focusing on the few interventions that consistently deliver the highest safety impact across India’s roads. Speed limits must reflect real-world road conditions and be set using scientific evidence and human injury tolerance, not just vehicle categories. Amendments to Section 112 of the Motor Vehicles Act can enable this shift by aligning speed limits with road function, surrounding activity, human injury tolerance levels, road environment, and the presence of vulnerable users. As traffic volumes grow, evidence-based speed management, aligned with global best practices and supported by periodic data-led reviews, becomes one of the most effective ways to reduce fatalities.

Enforcement must evolve in parallel. Two-wheelers and three-wheelers dominate urban mobility and account for a large share of fatalities. Clear inclusion of these vehicles under Section 183, with graded penalties linked to the severity of violations, can strengthen deterrence and better reflect actual road risk.

Built-in safety features are another critical area. Rear-seat belt usage remains weakly enforced, and children are often restrained using adult seatbelts due to legal ambiguity. Updating Section 194B to mandate the use of child restraint systems (CRS) for children under 12 years of age or below 150 cm in height, in line with global standards, is critical. Adult seatbelts are not designed to protect children and can cause serious injury in crashes. Clear legal provisions requiring age-, height-, and weight-appropriate CRS, along with unambiguous enforcement, will ensure that built-in child safety features are used effectively in real-world conditions.

Beyond saving lives, these changes also benefit the automotive ecosystem. Aligning vehicle safety standards with real-world outcomes helps ensure that OEM investments in airbags, crash structures, and child safety systems translate into measurable reductions in fatalities. Consistent rules across states reduce compliance uncertainty and reputational risk when vehicles are incorrectly blamed for crashes driven by human behaviour or unsafe infrastructure.

India stands at a pivotal moment where policy, industry, and infrastructure can align to redefine road safety. The MV Act amendments offer a chance not only to improve safety outcomes but to build a predictable, accountable, and outcome-driven mobility framework. Every new vehicle and every new kilometre of road represents an opportunity to make travel safer — and to ensure that growth does not come at the cost of human life.

Rinki Sharma is Project Leader, Consumer Voice, and Member, Road Safety Network. Views expressed are the author's personal.

Union Budget 2026–27: Shaping India’s Manufacturing Future

Arunima Pal — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 14:00:03

Union Budgets often shape expectations for the year ahead.. This year, the Budget reflects a steady policy direction, with continued emphasis on infrastructure-led growth, strengthening the manufacturing ecosystem and supporting MSMEs. While the announcements build largely on existing priorities, the Budget reinforces the importance of domestic capability creation as part of India’s Atmanirbhar Bharat vision, which is increasingly being viewed not as an aspiration but as a practical requirement in a changing global environment.

It features six clearly defined 'Kartavyas' to successfully guide India in the next stage of economic growth. These Kartavyas together convey the government’s intent to augment the foundations of development led by manufacturing, with a strong push on creation of infrastructure, empowerment of MSMEs, industrial rejuvenation and demand led growth. The Budget delivers alignment, policy continuity and long-term investment confidence for the manufacturing sector, including automotive and auto components.

The Union Budget has identified Creating and Championing MSMEs as one of the six Kartavyas. Through the Tier 2 and a Tier 3 supplier base, MSMEs act as a backbone in capacity creation, flexibility and employment generation. Efforts to enhance access to credit, encourage cluster-based development, and to provide targeted capital support will seek to resolve the structural challenges, especially those concerning liquidity and scale. Measures are aimed at improving access to finance, encouraging cluster-based development and providing targeted capital support to address structural challenges, particularly related to liquidity and scale. Strengthening MSMEs will help improve productivity, support technology upgrades and improve quality standards, thus strengthening the overall manufacturing ecosystem.

Another important Kartavya highlighted in the Budget is the continued push for infrastructure development. Infrastructure investment remains one of the most effective enablers of industrial growth. Spending on roads, transport networks, logistics systems and industrial infrastructure helps reduce logistics costs, improve supply chain efficiency and support large-scale manufacturing operations. For the capital goods, construction-linked manufacturing, and automotive supply chains sectors, this enhances operational efficiency as well as generates demand through increased economic activity. To make Indian manufacturing competitive in the domestic and global markets, a strong infrastructure base is essential.

The Budget also calls attention to legacy industrial sectors. This shows that they are relevant to the industrial structure of manufacturing in India. The traditional engineering and manufacturing sectors use a significant workforce and contribution to industry. By better access to capital, infrastructure and industrial support systems we can support their modernisation to become more efficient and competitive. Additionally, there is focus on more balanced regional development by developing city economic regions, particularly in new geographies. Encouraging industrial activity beyond established manufacturing hubs can unlock new demand centres, and create employment opportunities closer to consumption markets.

Moreover, the emphasis on consumption-led growth is an important signal to the manufacturing sector from a demand perspective. Consumption is one of the key drivers for the automobile, mobility related industries. Policies that enhance economic stability, infrastructure development and employment generation reinforce consumer confidence. For investments and long-term production strategies, a steady demand environment is essential.

With manufacturing becoming increasingly technology-driven, sectors like semiconductors and rare earths are becoming more relevant across sectors like auto and industrial manufacturing. Strengthening our electronics and high-tech engineering capabilities will improve the resilience of the supply chain and reduce our critical technology and metals dependencies. This is in line with the larger goal of creating a manufacturing ecosystem that can support the needs of future products and processes.

Collectively, the six Kartavyas outlined in the Union Budget 2026–27 create a stable and forward-looking policy environment for manufacturing-led growth.

By focusing on infrastructure, MSMEs, industrial rejuvenation, regional development, consumption and advanced manufacturing capabilities, the Budget 2026 positions India for the next decade. It aims to build formidable resilience against external factors and solidify India's ambition to be a rule-maker, rather than merely a rule-follower, in the global economic order.

Rajnikant Behera is Executive Director of RSB Global. Views expressed are the author's personal.

Union Budget 2026–27: Shaping India’s Manufacturing Future

Arunima Pal — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 14:00:03

Collectively, the six Kartavyas outlined in the Union Budget 2026–27 create a stable and forward-looking policy environment for manufacturing-led growth.

Rajnikant Behera is Executive Director of RSB Global. Views expressed are the author's personal.

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