Bosch plans to hire as many as 10,000 engineers
over the next few years at its research and development centre in India to work
on futuristic technologies such as the Internet
of Things, where the German auto component major sees big opportunities.
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 the 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 best-case 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.
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