Embedded product design and engineering company Tata Elxsi Ltd has said that it will aggressively pursue projects in the automotive and aerospace sectors into fiscal 2010. Tata Elxsi’s development centre in Thiruvananthapuram focuses on supporting automotive and aerospace customers for mission-critical embedded software, hardware and systems.
R Natarajan, VP -Automotive and Aerospace practice, Tata Elxsi, said that India would emerge as a major player in the automotive industry with electronics, electronic design services, software and production activities shifting to low-cost countries.
Tata Elxsi expanded its Thiruvananthapuram development centre last year to meet scale-up requirements of its clients in these industries. The Thiruvananthapuram centre works on advanced automotive technologies including hybrid and electric hybrid vehicles, setting up virtual test environment and executing virtual tests, designing ECUs (Engine Control Units) for various applications, including AUTOSAR (Automotive Open System Architecture) compliance, and deploying model-based design strategies for developing production code.
The increasing complexity of software in the automotive electronics sector has made it mandatory for OEMs to shift to more flexible and reusable software architectures, Natarajan said.
“The oil crisis and recession have increased focus on fuel efficiency and hybrid technologies. Customers in the West as well as in emerging markets such as India and China are turning to smaller, more fuel-efficient cars. We are currently engaged with numerous vendors who are working to realize the dream of viable hybrid cars by the end of 2010. We are offering prototyping and production stage support to our customers globally and are actively engaged with automotive OEMs and Tier 1 companies in their hybrid electric programs. Our understanding of challenges and emerging technologies in this area, and premium membership with consortiums such as AUTOSAR has yielded positive results for us.”
Bangalore-headquartered Tata Elxsi is also partnering in the development of a Diesel Engine Management System (DEMS) for a luxury car manufacturer in Europe. The scope covers full responsibility and project management for DEMS-ECU development, diagnostics and vehicle calibration for the EURO 5 emission and European Onboard Diagnosis (EOBD) standards. This has also involved validation of software functions developed by Tier 1 system suppliers.
“We have recently bagged a project in the technology-intensive aerospace and defence domain from a European Tier 1 aerospace supplier. We began our engagement with a pilot activity, which has been expanded into a full-fledged development program,” Natarajan said.
