Bosch plans to hire as many as 10,000 engineers over the next few years at its research and development center in India to work on futuristic technologies such as Internet of Things, where the German auto component major sees big opportunities.
According to Economic Times, the company will invest between Rs 500 crore and Rs 800 crore in each of the next two years in India to expand local operations including in R&D to develop products for global markets, Bosch Group India president Soumitra Bhattacharya said.
“We spend a lot of money on IoT, especially to provide mobility solutions, and we see a strong future in this area,” Bhattacharya said. “Today, the car is looked at as the third living space after one’s office and home. Bosch is making for connected, automated and shared vehicles. Just from your car, you will have an equal form of connectivity as you can have from the office or home.”
Bosch operates its second biggest R&D centre in India, employing more than 18,000 engineers at the Bengaluru facility.
Though India contributes only a little over 3% to Bosch’s total revenue, the country has strategically become important for the company, both as a technology development centre and as a market.
The German company is also working on its strategy on batteries as automakers accelerate their electric mobility programmes.
“The Bosch global board has yet to take a decision whether we will go into actual manufacturing or outsource batteries for EVs … as I said we are fully there and a decision on battery will be made soon,” the Bosch India chief said added.
The company, which has a substantial share of revenue coming up from the conventional internal combustion engines, though, doesn’t expect electric vehicles becoming too big a segment in the near future.
“Internal combustion engine, gasoline, CNG or ethanol will have a long lasting time. It is very much worthwhile to invest in any kind of efficiency improvement in these engines,” said Jan Oliver Rohrl, the German company’s chief technology officer.
According to Bosch, by 2030, pure EVs would comprise only 10% of total vehicles globally. Even in a bestcase scenario, according to it, EVs would not exceed 18% of the total.
“While EV will leapfrog and grow into a substantial number, yet ICE will still remain a very dominant technology for mobility,” said Bhattacharya.
Implementation of the Bharat Stage VI emission rules in 2020 and the RDE (Real time Driving Emission) norms later will help India substantially improve on emission standards, he said.
