Visteon To Support India's Long Drive To Autonomous Vehicles: Amit Jain

Visteon Corporation is one of the leaders in the global automotive infotainment and automation market. The recentlylaunched Phoenix infotainment platform has driven it to further heights. Visteon India, one of the largest Tier 1 companies in the country, is working on various new technologies and cost effective solutions. Amit Jain, Country Head, Visteon India, told Bhargav TS, the situation that is prevailing in the Indian market and how the company is addressing it. Excerpts from the interview:

- Bhargav TS

Q: The industry is now talking more about ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance System), so what is your view on it?

Jain: ADAS in India is still in infant stage. We talk about cost pressures and value-for-money features and looking at these priorities there is going to be challenges in adapting ADAS. Today, what India view as the market for ADAS, for example, is the 360 degree view of the car, birdseye view of the car and more intelligent parking systems. For ADAS to completely develop, it is going to go through many phases. In the initial stages of ADAS it is to be more about information and warning. Then it will go into assist mode where, apart from information and warning, the ADAS will start assisting the driver. In the third stage, apart from assist, it will also include some level of autonomous features, like autonomous braking, collision prevention etc.

Q: When will India reach the fully autonomous driving stage?

Jain: To get to the stage of autonomous it will probably take another 15 years. To reach the next level we have to change the entire system and this calls for more investment and the infrastructure has to be at a different level. We are currently working towards the first stage. We believe that consolidation of electronic control unit modules (ECUs) are going to happen within the car and the cockpit electronics are going to get consolidated into cockpit domain controllers.

The cockpit domain controller technology basically has a multicore architecture. Each core will able to drive 1 feature. Within 1 domain controller, multiple touch domains can run simultaneously. Our ADAS approach will be through the domain controller because it has multiple things.