42 OutlOOk 1 JULY 2019
aUtomotive
changing gears
Until not too long ago, the automotive industry
was predictable. Not so much anymore...
of today are the safest, most advanced and
most efficient that we’ve ever had – not to
mention the fastest. Such is the nature of
progress. Darwin would be pleased.
But then the diesel scandal exploded
(or imploded I should say), and an
upstart North American electric vehicle
manufacturer was perfectly poised to
take advantage of it. Meanwhile, Uber
and Ola want to change the way we
commute, and now the tech giants want
a piece of the action and would like to
replace the driver altogether.
Of course, such shake-ups do have
their benefits. Hyundai and MG (now
Chinese-owned and new to India) are
launching India’s first connected cars –
SUVs with SIM cards built-in – ensuringConnect with us:Most global manufacturers had a range
of cars – small, medium and large. A
new model was introduced every seven
years, and was incrementally better than
before. In the meantime, every three-
and-a-half years, or so, it would be given
a mild facelift. And while competition
was fierce, you didn’t exactly have
to reinvent the wheel with each new
model.
Then came the SUVs, four door sports
cars, SUV coupes, and pretty much any
body style that a designer could conjure
up to give a carmaker the jump on a new
niche sub-segment with the potential to
attract a few adventurous buyers. And,
over the years, the regulations have gotten
ever more stringent. Nonetheless, the carsthat the vehicles are always connected.
In the predictable automotive world
that I described in the first paragraph,
new technology such as this was
introduced in the luxury cars of the day- before it filtered down to their lowly,
mass market brethren in a measured
manner. The pace of proliferation
determined by the economies of
scale. Now, however, we have new and
cutting-edge technologies hitting the
market for the first time in a couple of
relatively entry-level compact SUVs.
Darwin would be perplexed!
The beneficiary of all this, of course,
is that the Indian consumer gets to
jump to the front of the line. The luxury
carmakers in India, meanwhile, are left
scratching their heads and wondering
how best to catch up. After all, if my MG
can show me the weather forecast but
not my S-Class, tell me again why one
costs as much as an entire fleet of the
other?
The buzzwords now are IOT and big
data, and everyone better get on board - at terabytes per second rather than
Kbps. In fact, Hyundai recently issued
an ad that said they were once a ‘car
company,’ but are now transforming into
a ‘smart mobility solutions provider.’
And to that end, they’ve recently
invested $300 million (USD) in ride
hailing start-up (now giant) Ola and $90
million in EV hyper-car start-up Rimac.
Car manufacturing is so yesterday.
Smart mobility solutions, that’s the
future... but someone still has to make
the cars, don’t they?
Dhruv Behl, Editor, autoX
@dhruv_behl | [email protected]autoX autoX autoX autoXmag