Automotive Testing Evolving in Tandem with Auto Revolution

In an interaction with Industry Outlook, Shajahan Shaik, Automotive Test Manager and Project Manager, Embitel Technologies shares his views on how automotive testing in India is adapting to the systemic changes in automotive industry.    

The global automotive TIC market is projected to reach USD 20.4 billion by 2025. How do you perceive the current evolution of the Indian automotive testing market?

During the last 10 years, the automotive market in developed countries has mostly witnessed minimal disruption and maintained consistent production. In contrast, emerging markets like India, China and Mexico have more than doubled their market size in the last few years.

So in India, the Testing, Inspection and Certification (TIC) processes, specially based on service type is going to be in high demand.

A large share of this segment is attributed to the high demand for quality and safety of products. There are also strong recommendations from the regulatory authorities to ensure safety, quality and efficiency of products. Many service providers will expand their presence and provide test environments in their suite of offerings, and these aspects are expected to support the growth of this market segment.

Additionally, rising vehicle production, increasing demand for autonomous and luxury vehicles, growing sales of electric vehicles, and technological development in the <b>automotive sector</b> are the other factors encouraging automotive market growth, which consequently drives the growth of the automotive TIC services market in India.

The advent of EV is coming up with a new set of challenges like charging performance, motor durability, and a lot more. How is the automotive testing industry keeping up?

Yes, EV is already here. And Battery Charging Performance will be the key because Time of charging is a very crucial factor. Recent studies have found that if Li-ion batteries charging continues beyond 80% of State of Charge (SoC), losses are almost double when compared to the suggested SoC area, i.e., 20 % - 80% of charging.

Only through continuous testing using battery management systems (BMS) is it possible to analyse the charging performance. Several tool suppliers have come up with advanced testing tools which can be readily used to test the charging profile and performance – E.g. Vector and Typhoon Hil.

The testing process can range from manual testing to complete automation setups. Similar is the case with motor durability as well.

Automotive testing for BMS, EV power train and Motor durability is going to be the key area of focus with huge demand, as location wise regulations will come into the picture and OEMs and suppliers have to meet the standards.

High tech innovations are going to be used to enable functions like automated driving. However, malfunctioning of these technologies can prove to be life-threatening, hence testing now needs to be more vigilant and updated. How do you propose to address this problem?

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has designated six levels of autonomy to automated driving - from Level 0 to Level 5. Level 5 Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) are designed to travel without a human operator, using a combination of sophisticated AI Software, LiDAR, and RADAR sensing technology. If any of this technology fails, it is life threatening. So, testing plays a very crucial role.

To address it, the basic approach is to follow this cycle:

Development Testing <-> Simulation/Resimulation <-> Closed Course Testing <-> Public Road Testing -> Development Testing.

Many testing suppliers provide test setups as per the customer’s requirement. If testing teams utilise these set ups and follow the above testing cycle and safety critical processes, it is possible to eliminate such failures.

Today, automobiles can contain up to 70 electronic control units (ECUs) for many diverse applications. This increasing complexity of embedded software for automotive electronic control units (ECUs) requires a convenient and flexible environment for system testing. How can this be accomplished?

As OEMs source different ECUs from different Suppliers, each Supplier has to get access to the central database communication between their ECU and the remaining network. And they receive this from the OEM. Then, the Supplier will simulate the network and put their ECU under test in that environment to complete their part of the testing. This is particularly useful, as it will be costlier and more time-consuming if the Supplier has to wait for the complete system to be ready.

ECUs are integrated one by one as they complete the simulation testing and system testing is performed using the Semi Automated and Automated tools. Once the complete system is ready, vehicle testing will be performed. Iterations will be repeated if any unwanted behaviour is observed.

In the future, it is expected that multiple ECUs will be replaced by a Central CPU in a Vehicle, where the CPU has control over all the features of the vehicle and all the commands are processed at one place. Some of the automotive giants like Volkswagen have started working on these concepts as part of their R&D.

How do you see the future of automotive testing in India?

As India has taken serious steps in the reduction of carbon footprint, the only way to go is to focus on Electric Vehicles (EVs) and reduce the use of fossil fuels. EVs will have energy storage, Electric drives, radars, sensors, data networks, navigation devices, radio and infotainment modules coexisting in the same space. As a result, there is a growing demand for Automotive Testing in the industry. Especially for Automation testing, as quick feedbacks are needed to develop and deploy the features and reduce time to market.