Continental has announced that it will localise the production of safety technologies like ABS and ESC in India and the first locally produced product will be delivered by the end of 2016.
Indian roads are considered to be the most dangerous roads on the planet but the situation is changing gradually with the increasing awareness about safety features. This has led to an increase in the demand of these safety technologies. Continental, a provider of such technologies has announced that its Chassis and Safety divisions will start the production of ABS and ESC units at its plant in Gurgaon, Haryana while the company claims that the first locally produced product will be delivered by the end of 2016.
India is the biggest market for compact cars and two-wheelers, hence this move by the manufacturer will yield big returns. ABS units for two-wheelers will also be produced at the Continental Automotive Brake Systems plant at Gurgaon along with ABS and ESC units for passenger cars. The technology supplier also plans to start the production of Electronic Control Unit (ECU) in Bangalore by 2018. This move by Continental will lead to a price cut in the models that use its technologies, it will also lead to better availability of these products.
Anti-lock Brake System (ABS) basically ensures that the vehicle does not witness loss of steering ability while braking hard. To go in detail, when we apply full brakes during an emergency situation, the wheels don’t have enough traction with the driving surface and hence are not able to respond to driver inputs. ABS avoids this situation by reducing the brake-force as soon as the wheels start loosing traction. It is going to be mandatory to have ABS on all two-wheelers above 125cc for which Bosch has recently developed a new system called the ABS10 which is 45% smaller and 30% lighter than the previous system and suitable for two-wheelers up to 250cc.
The Electronic Stability Control (ESC) is a similar technology that helps the vehicle stabilize during full braking. It constantly analyzes the driver inputs and the the vehicle’s movement and interferes as soon as it detects a difference between the two by regulating the brake-force applied on each individual wheel to stabilize the vehicle. If the vehicle is not stabilized, it may run into some object or topple over. ESC is the basis of all the advanced driver assist technologies.
