It
was not merely a selfie time with German Federal Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel
at Continental’s India facility in Gurugram. While the Chancellor did meet the
staff of the company and take time out for some pictures, she was accompanied
by a German delegation on November 02, at the end of a three-day state visit to
India.
The
visit included a tour of the company’s safety technologies that are
manufactured in India, followed by a visual overview of the company’s growth in
India, the substantial contribution to Continental’s global R&D efforts and
sustainability initiatives.
Continental’s
Gurugram plant is dedicated to the production of brake systems and
technologies, which contribute to Vision Zero: Zero Fatalities, Zero Injuries,
Zero Crashes, a global commitment of the technology company. The products
include hydraulic and electronic brake systems, for passenger cars and 2-wheelers.
The facility also houses a R&D lab that caters to global and regional
R&D requirements for Continental’s brake systems business. The delegation
toured the production area of both hydraulic and electronic brake systems’
clean room and interacted with the operations associates.
According
to Prashanth Doreswamy, Country Head, Continental India, “It was a great
opportunity for Continental India to showcase some of our key technologies,
reaffirm our commitment to localisation, and equally important, highlight our
engineering capabilities to the Chancellor”.
Another
key showcase to the delegation was an overview of Continental India’s
contribution to the global mobility market, through its in-house R&D
center, Technical Center India (TCI). The centre, which employees over 4000
engineers, works on global projects, and has achieved increasing levels of
competency in several niche areas. The centre houses the largest pool of
engineers working on Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), including
autonomous driving technologies. Interestingly, at the recently concluded IAA
2019 Frankfurt, Federal Chancellor Dr. Merkel was one of the high-profile
visitors who took a ride in the driverless Robo-Taxi, CUbE, demonstrated by Continental
together with the French company EasyMile (Continental is a shareholder of
EasyMile since 2017), TCI contributes significantly towards this, specifically
on Camera, Radar and Lidar technologies.
Additionally,
Continental India’s contribution towards the global mobility ecosystem was also
covered in the visual showcase. This included Software Academy, a key learning
initiative of Continental aimed at skilling & re-skilling of workforce, to
meet the changing requirements of the automotive industry of the future. The
software academy, headquartered in India, focuses on topics such as Agile
Development, Cyber Security and Artificial Intelligence. The company has always
looked ahead and planned for future requirements, which has enabled it to
develop cost-effective, localised safety and e-mobility solutions for the
Indian market.
Continental
is investing in extensive R&D and localisation of technologies for the
future. Apart from the plant in Gurugram, where two new production lines were
added recently to meet requirements of ABS and ESC, the company recently
announced two new greenfield projects in Pune. As India begins to focus more on
e-mobility and safety technologies, Continental is working towards providing
all the required technologies, manufactured in India.