In this special report, Sarada Vishnubhatla brings you three experts sharing highly insightful points on how the companies that they are personifying are setting trends in the international transportation domain. Dr. Markus Heyn, Member of the Board of Management, Robert Bosch GmbH; Tugrul Arikan, Managing Director, Anadolu Isuzu: and, Harald Spaeth, President & General Manager, Original Equipment, Mann+Hummel also dwell upon their initiatives in the Indian market – which is currently the most sought after in the world. Here are the excerpts from the three exclusive interviews.
Revolutionary Move
Robert Bosch, in a revolutionary move, is launching its logistics services on Amazon Web Service. The platform, which we are intending to launch now together with Amazon Web Services basically intends to create a bundle of services, on one platform – beginning from the very first day when you ‘in-fleet’ the vehicle, covering online diagnoses, state of health, everything that a customer needs, which today are offered as separate software solutions. And this requires each logistics service provider to deal with a broad variety of those solutions. We are covering all these entirely in this platform, which we are going to launch, which would then provide the solutions seamlessly. We are planning to launch this by the end of the year in India, and then next year, we will probably continue with launching it in Europe, and the US.
Market Expectations
We are excited because we have tested the market quite a bit. We have spoken to literally hundreds of companies about various aspects, including their pain points, their needs, and their expectations. I am confident that we will meet those pain points with a solution which we are going to offer. The foremost pain point is primarily the multitude of different options, which are not integrated into one. A customer has all the data inputs separately into individual solutions. In essence, for them it is that much more effort to handle the data. So, with our solution, our customers will expend fewer efforts since we are offering a direct method to integrate every aspect of the logistics.
The Big.e
Our launch of the Big.e at the trade show is a big moment. It is a fully-electric micro truck with a payload of one tonne. With our launch here of the Big E, we are targeting right now the Turkish and the European markets, primarily. When it garners more success, we will be expanding it to different geographies. It is our answer to the last mile problems. The Big.e is designed and produced entirely in Turkey and is capable of addressing the future in logistics and transportation solutions because it is compact in structure and has an innovative electric motor. It offers a range of 150 km and is equipped with three different battery capacities. The Big.e comes in two different versions with maximum speeds of 60 and 80 kmph and it can be charged just like a smartphone using a standard socket and to its full capacity under five hours. The model will be produced at the company’s production facility in Cayirova, Turkey. It will be available commercially from 2024 onwards and is banking on its aesthetics, practical features and most importantly, its robust total cost of ownership.
Tackling India – A Challenging Market
India is a challenging market for us as against Europe or the Americas, with extremely good, competitive players, with high manufacturing capabilities. We are extremely interested in introducing our products there yet, we are also aware of the daunting logistics cost. Currently, we are focusing more on the South American market. Since we are already present in North Africa, it will be a natural progression for us to extend our footprints in South and Middle Africa. The Indian market holds major importance on quality with elaborate emphasis on R&D, despite many people thinking that it is only interested in products that have a low-cost benchmark.
Ultimate Rooftop Filtration
In fact, here we are talking about the second-generation rooftop filtration solution which is mounted on a vehicle. This is made in India and it is designed to consume less energy, and has more filtration efficiency. We continue to develop this product and it has come a long way from the initial product that we have developed in the sense that this is more advanced in the technical data and the specifications, and the performance. It can capture more particles and that way is more efficient. Since the equipment needs less energy to do its work, it is greener. We are happy to help clean the environment in the world’s highly polluted regions. An example would be in a country in South America where the government wishes to equip all their public buses in the city with our filtration solutions. And, here we are speaking about 10,000 buses being fitted with such a device. In short, this solution works like a vacuum cleaner when it comes to cleaning the environment. The beauty of this rooftop filtration is that this need not go on the top of the bus but can be integrated into the vehicle. One of the major OEMs has done exactly this – they have built this kind of filtration into their vehicle. Then, another option that we make is the stationary filtration column and recently, we have inaugurated one in India.
India in Context
We have two production locations in India with our headquarters in Bangalore, and we are connected with all OEMs. We are already in talks with some of the Indian manufacturers where we have mutually agreed to build a test vehicle to implement all of the latest state-of-the-art technologies from Mann+Hummel, to see what is possible. From thereon, we will be looking at the possibilities, including that of any mass production application.
This particular project may take a few months to materialize. For us it is important that the customer sees the value we can bring, and also understands that we are striving to offer everyone a cleaner environment. Also, we are in talks with a major Indian truck manufacturer – which is keen on pushing this technology in India – about exploring the possibility of working with hydrogen fuel cells.
Experience as Expertise
We are convinced that our future will have all technologies working synergistically – it will include hydrogen, and other alternatives besides electric vehicles. We are responding with developing and having solutions at hand that include setting standards, bringing off-the-shelf products, besides developing shared technologies. These are the aspects which will make any solution affordable, especially in the initial times when the volumes are low. We are prepared for this. Since Mann+Hummel has vast experience in the filtration field, we can lend our knowhow in the technologies to the new forms of transportation also. This may take a little time to come to fruition, but we are absolutely convinced that this is affordable and is the answer to our way of life. The market feedback that we have received indicates that India is ready to accept this futuristic solution from us and is absolutely open to putting it into practice.