MAHLE is quite upbeat about India, says Jupiter Kalra

India is well-positioned to take advantage of the changes happening in the automobile industry, according to a spokesperson of MAHLE - the manufacturer of IC engines and engine peripherals. “With electrification is happening faster in developed regions like Japan, Europe and North America, production of gasoline and diesel vehicles will decline, depriving manufacturers with economies of scale to produce those engines. That is where India will be in an advantageous position as being the last one to switch to electrification we can continue to produce and export internal combustion engine (ICE)-based vehicles,” said Jupiter Kalra, Head of Sales Planning Asia, MAHLE, during an interaction with APF’s Manish Pant.

“On the other hand, even if there is a massive shift towards electrification, it will happen first in two and three-wheelers, and India is their biggest market,” he added.

According to Kalra, 2020 would see several making a switch to electric vehicles (EV)s. With the Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of (Hybrid &) Electric Vehicles in India (FAME)-II guidelines becoming applicable from April 2020, MAHLE had already started manufacturing motors and controllers in India after localising them. The company was also in talks with its tier-2 and tier-3 suppliers to source most components locally.

MAHLE is also working to support its OEMs on Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) rules by manufacturing its products using plastics in a bid to reduce their weight.

Speaking about the emerging trends, Kalra said that different people had different views on the direction that the market would eventually be adopting. There were OEMs with a very sound legacy who didn’t see EVs posing a serious challenge to their business model and had, therefore, decided to stick to IC vehicles. Then some were debating between the merits of hybrid and EVs.

Making a very relevant point, Kalra observed, “Some OEMs believe that even electrification won’t serve the purpose because if countries like India don’t produce crude oil, they don’t produce critical components like magnets either. So, we are merely shifting our reliance on resources from the Middle East to China while the problem remains.”

Consequently, some OEMs saw hydrogen fuel cell technology powering the automobile industry in the future. In Japan, OEMs like Toyota and Honda already sell fuel cell vehicles like Mirai and Clarity.