In November this year, Schaeffler India signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Guidance, the Tamil Nadu state government’s nodal agency for investment promotion and facilitation to invest over INR 300 crore in the next four years to set up a new Greenfield manufacturing facility in Hosur.
Schaeffler India already has a plant in Hosur, which caters mainly to the transmission equipment and transmission applications for the automotive sector. The existing plant is bursting at its seams, said Harsha Kadam, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, Schaeffler India, and that warranted an additional plant, and the consequent investment.
The new plant would have a clear mandate to manufacture all future transmission needs that would emerge – be it in the conventional IC engines space, or electric vehicle systems in the future. The new plant would be built on the best benchmark levels, when it comes to sustainability, energy, and addressing every aspect of climate change.
“We have taken a very holistic approach towards this investment. It’s not just another investment and putting up another plant; we are going to do it very differently. In fact, we have started to do benchmark studies with a lot of companies around to see what are the best practices,” Kadam said.
He believes the new facility, which would employ 300 people, would be a huge value addition to the industry.
Concurrently, Schaeffler has also invested in setting up a mechatronics centre in India, which would have about 300 engineers working on various projects on electric vehicle technology as well as other areas of operations that would need mechatronic solutions. This centre, Kadam mentioned, is already under way with over 50 engineers already working on various projects, both Indian and global.
Innovation Is Key
For Schaeffler India, innovation is a key factor in sustaining its competitive advantage. In fact, for Schaeffler globally, innovation has been its core DNA.
“We have always been in the forefront of innovation in developing new products for the market. That's one of the biggest sustainability drivers for the group,” Kadam said. And to that effect, the company consistently invests in R&D efforts in India – the mechatronic centre being a case in point.
Another example of indigenous innovation at Schaeffler India that could potentially have large global acceptance is a two-speed automatic gearbox for electric vehicles. Called Twin-Tran, the two-speed transmission has been designed and developed completely by the Indian R&D team at Schaeffler India, and is primarily aimed at two-wheelers to begin with.
“Today’s electric vehicles lack a transmission gearbox in their applications, as a result of which you need higher torque, when the vehicle is climbing a gradient. This is where our solution comes in, which has an automatic switching of the gears so that you continue to keep the momentum or the speed, even on a gradient,” Kadam explained.
The Twin-Tran is already under advanced stage of development, said Kadam, and sees this as a very good value add for the two-wheeler industry. Having said that, the transmission can easily be adapted for three-wheelers, and Schaeffler India has proven that by already developing prototypes for three-wheelers as well.
While a transmission system is still a mechanical part, Schaeffler at the group level has made strategic moves with regards to electrical motors & controllers as well as thermal management systems through global acquisitions in the EV space over the last five years.
Kadam spoke about the existing competency within the group to get into a total system level solution for electric vehicles. It’s a question of now adapting that to India’s needs, and that's exactly what Schaeffler India is doing.
Watch the full interview with Kadam here: