Robert Bosch’s panel discussion throws light on future mobility in India

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Transportation has come a long way since the days of the steam engine. It is no longer about getting from point A to point B alone it has evolved into an experience. The future of mobility holds ‘ACES’, which stands for Automated, Connected, Electric and Shared.

Automated and connected vehicles are to revolutionize the urban landscape while electric vehicles are helping to decarbonize the transport sector. Additionally, shared use mobility mechanisms can help establish a culture for using mobility resources on a demand basis. It is of utmost importance to understand how this trends ties into the future of mobility and how it will reshape the industry. Here the stress is it has to be automated, connected, electric and shared to meet the demand of urban explosion.

These were the points that were discussed in the Panel arranged by Robert Bosh Engineering and Business Solutions (RBEI) in Bangalore under the topic ‘Mobility Reimagined : The Future of Bengaluru.

One of the panellists, R K Shenoy, Senior Vice President, Business Unit-Embedded Solutions & Product Engineering, RBEI,  said that there are three main trends to gain from the future mobility such as Connected mobility, automated mobility and Powertrain Systems & electrified mobility. Automated driving starts with highway driving and parking functions.

Click here to read how Bosch India is betting on smart mobility sector in India : Interviews from RBEI MD Vijay Ratnaparkhe & Sr VP RK Shenoy

Explaining degree of automation in driver assistance, Shenoy listed out several functions like Intelligent Light, Automatic Wiper, Collision Warning, Park Assist, Integrated Cruise Assist, Highway Assist to Highway Pilot and  Auto Pilot in advanced levels.

Shenoy also briefed about 0-5 levels of automation with Level 0 at Driver Only taking full control to Level 5 of full automation.

Another panellist Sirish Batchu, Senior General Manager-Head, Advanced Technology, Mahindra Electric, has given details about the electric mobility scenario in India. He said electric vehicles are the tipping point.

Talking about the government policies in promoting electric vehicles, Batchu said that Karnataka has released Electric Vehicle policy and many other states are drafting such policy. He also said various states are running EV bus pilots. Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) is looking to electrify their fleet, he said.

BMTC is one of the largest state-owned public transporter in the country and operates more than

He also said that many states including Karnataka are considering of introducing e-autorickshaws with the green top instead of the current yellow top.

Claiming Mahindra as the country’s largest brand of all-electric vehicles, Batchu said the company is enabling multiple segments to adopt electric vehicles to transform mobility and become one of the largest selling EV brands in the world by developing world class electric vehicles & electric drivetrain kits.

Also Read : Bosch India demonstrates electric vehicle solutions, gears to back Indian EV sector

He also said Mahindra introduced autonomous mode in the farm sector, developing a driverless tractor, which will be launched this year.

Referring to General Motors parking lot in Shenyang, China, Tarun Rambha, Assistance Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, said, “On an average, vehicles remain parked 95% of the time and occupancy rates very low (typically less than 1.5).

Sharing trips or vehicles is a potential solution to address this issue of oversupply. This will lead to advantages like improved resource utilization, less congestion, environment friendly, lower vehicle ownership and cheaper travel. There are also challenges while implementing this model. The broad challenges include Institutions Barriers, Regulation and Trust and operational challenges are Demand uncertainty, Matching and routing, Redistribution and Periodic maintenance.

Amit Gupta, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Yulu, explained how his company is trying to address the commuting issues in the congested Bangalore and Pune cities through bike sharing. Yulu is the smart dockless bike sharing system.

Moderating the panel, RK Misra, Co-Founder & President, Ecosystem Partnerships, has thrown more light on the poor road infrastructure in the congested cities like Bangalore. He said Bangalore has around 1.3 crore population with around 70 lakh of vehicles. Around 80% of traffic in the city is witnessed on only 12 roads, where bus traffic is more.  The government is struggling to build new or widen the roads inside the city due to land acquisition issues.

Earlier Dattatreya Gaur, Vice President, Business Unit-Mobility Solutions, BE-MS, RBEI, welcomed the gathering.

The collective discussion in the panel revealed that smart cities is a collective term for digitization of cities to make them live-able, secured, sustainable and more socially equitable. Thirty percent of India lives in cities which will increase to 40% by 2030. Average traffic speed in cities today is around 8km/hour, air pollution levels are on the rise.

From Urban mobility perspective, inefficient public transport, traffic and parking management are the major issues as parking search adds to 30% of the traffic. Average traffic speed is reducing. It is important the cities plan and implement use cases in the right Order of Fix the Basics and Build the Next on it to manage the transformation and maximize the effectiveness.

There’s no point in building a sky scraper on a weak foundation.  Similarly, before we move to building next gen solutions for mobility, it is important to first fix the basics. The fallbacks of our cities mobility can be attributed to infrastructure and the throughput of services, such as :

• Automation of traffic, violation detection, e-penalty tickets.
• Automation of vehicle plate recognition, e- toll collection
• Tracking public transport vehicles, fleet management and transference of information to the commuters
• Mobile parking search, automated access to parking lots, e–payment

Once these basics are fixed, the amount of data collected and analysed will help build the next.  Without the basics ready it is not possible to build them, as the following are the typical use cases for next phase.

• Traffic, Transport, Citizen Safety – all interconnected, interoperate
• Choose the best mode of travel from Trains, buses, Taxis, E-bikes
• Congestion based traffic Management, demand based transport Management
• Your groceries, meals…. Delivered to your car/drop boxes
• Location based and value added services for convenience