CAFE Norms to pave way for an increase in electrification in India: Bosch’s Mudlapur

The upcoming corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) norms will pave the way for an increase in electrification in India, according to Guruprasad Mudlapur, MD, Bosch Limited and President, Bosch Group in India. 

According to Mudlapur, once the CAFE norms kick in, the pace of electrification will increase from the current 2%. “As and when these norms become more and more stringent, we would see more business moving towards electrification portfolio… Since those norms are still not tighter right now, in the Indian context, we have not seen them because the electric vehicle penetration is only 2% in India. But globally, we start to see those Western countries, we start to see this impact. A good percentage of our business in the Western world or in China has shifted to more electric vehicles,” says Mudlapur. 

According to Mudlapur, electrification and software-defined vehicles will be among the important key trends that will drive the domestic automobile industry. “What is fundamentally going to accelerate is the pace of change towards personalisation, more electrification coming in, and possibly some more features of ADAS (advanced driver assistance system),” says Mudlapur. 

Drawing a parallel with mobile phones and their constant upgrades over the years, Mudlapur says that software-defined vehicles are the way to go forward. “The idea with the software defined vehicle is that the car today can be upgraded through very enhanced computing power by constantly upgrading features, by constantly adding more features, by constantly changing the formal features of the car,” explains Mudlapur. 

He, however, notes that the trend of gasoline and ICE vehicles will remain unchanged.  

In the October to December quarter of FY25, Bosch, which is a technology and services supplier to original equipment manufacturers, recorded a total revenue from operations of Rs 4,466 crores, an increase of 6.2% over the same quarter last year. This growth is driven by the increase in service income from the development of automotive components for major OEMs.