I N T E R A C T I O N VISTEON
VISTEON | SETTING STRATEGIES TO MEET FUTURE CHALLENGES IN ELECTRONICS
With the sale of its ownership interest in Halla
Visteon Climate Control Corp (HVCC) – the division that produced HVAC systems – to Hahn & Co
and Hankook Tire in December 2014, Visteon
clearly indicated and announced to the world its
focus for the future: cockpit information systems.
Around the same time, the Michigan, USheadquartered company was also looking at
hiring a new Chief Executive Officer to bolster
the push required for its future business strategies. In the same week the company sold its last
non-core asset HVCC, Sachin Lawande, who is
considered to be one of the foremost technology
and business thought leaders in the automotive
OEM electronics supplier industry, joined Visteon
as its President & CEO.
In March this year, Lawande was on his
maiden visit to India in his new role. During a
whirlwind tour that involved customer visits and
employee engagement sessions, he spent an hour
with a select group of media professionals at the
company’s technical centre in Pune. This article
highlights some of the major subjects he
broached during the freewheeling chat with us.
THE NEXT DECADE
Visteon today is a global supplier to most of the
world’s major vehicle manufacturers for innovative cockpit electronics products and connected
car solutions. A multi-business Tier I supplier previously, with interest in interiors, panels, seating,
heating, ventilation, air-conditioning and elec-
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tronics, Visteon realised it wasn’t possible to do
everything, and yet remain technology leaders.
That led the company to shed all its non-core
assets over time.
The technology landscape, particularly in the
area of electronics, has been undergoing tremendous change in the last few years, and the next
decade could potentially see more change than
what the industry has seen in the last 50 years.
The pace of innovation is increasing at a tremendous pace, and so is the pace of adoption, said
Lawande. This essentially is due to three pressure
areas that are completely changing the industry:
competitive environment, consumer pull and regulatory interventions.
Lawande has set high aspirations and stringent targets for the company. Under his leadership, Visteon is aiming to emerge as a mega supplier in the six product categories it is present in
– instrument clusters, central information displays, infotainment systems, audio, telematics
and head-up displays. These products cover
almost everything that a modern cockpit has in a
vehicle. Incidentally, Visteon is one of only two
suppliers with all six products.
CHALLENGES GALORE
One of the key challenges that Visteon foresees for
the future is to do with the increasing cost of
electronics globally. In normal circumstances,
average sales price (ASP) of electronics goes
down, like we see in the case of consumer electronics. In the automotive industry though, the
ASP has been increasing in five of the six product
categories Visteon does business in. Primarily,
this is a result of the content share in devices
going up, be it in displays, CPUs or memory.
“As the industry evolves, the cost of electronics in building a car is getting to a point, where
the OEMs are not being able to pass on the cost to
the consumers. On an average, electronics
account for 30 % of the total cost of the
vehicle today. At this rate, it will cross 50
% of the value in the next 5-10 years,”
Lawande said.
Beyond cost, the two other serious
challenges for any electronics manufacturer today are with regards to hardware
and cyber security. As an organisational
objective, Visteon has already stated its
intent to exclusively focus on electronics and software. Where does that place the company in terms
of hardware? “There surely is a need to offer the
best embedded hardware,” noted Lawande and
assured that the company probably has the best
vision to tackle these challenges.
He drove home his point by referring to an incident from July 2015, where security researchers
Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek demonstrated
that a Jeep Cherokee could be hacked remotely.
The duo exploited a vulnerability in the hardware
chip of the vehicle’s UConnect infotainment
system, said reports, which allowed them access
to Jeep’s other systems, and they could wirelessly
control all such vehicles fitted with the UConnect
system. Such deep was their intrusion that they
were able to track the vehicles down to their exact
location, switch on or off the lights and blinkers,
and control the radio and navigation. What was
most horrifying though was the fact that they
could also tamper with the brakes and steering of
some of those vehicles, greatly risking life of
vehicle occupants.
Lawande knows the exact point of vulnerability in the Jeep system; they entered the vehicle
through its infotainment system, a system he had
built in his earlier organisation. The problem
wasn’t with the infotainment system though, but
with the telemetry control unit (TCU) or the
modem that another supplier built. That TCU had
some open ports, which allowed the hackers to get
into the infotainment system and through that
onto the CAN BUS so they could control the
vehicle, he explained.
“Earlier, hacking required proximity to the
vehicle. For instance, one could enter a vehicle
system through the tyre pressure monitoring
system (TPMS) or the on-board diagnostics (OBD)
port. For the first time, Miller and Valasek were
able to stop a running vehicle over-the-air. That
was a warning call,” Lawande said.
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Meanwhile, the industry has taken note, and a
standard called SHE (secured hardware extension)
has evolved. Visteon, in fact, will be the first
company to offer a SHE-compliant device, both for
infotainment as well as for clusters. “It starts at a
very basic level – secured hardware – and anyone
tampering with it will lead the device to self-destruct. It also has a secure boot. All data that is
stored is encrypted, and all third party software
downloaded into the system would need authentication,” said Lawande, who also serves on Visteon’s board of directors.
In the Jeep incident, for example, the hackers
downloaded themselves as an app because the
infotainment system allowed that. The app had
no authenticity.
while secondary and tertiary threats can be
handled later,” he said.
CHANGE IN APPROACH
NEW INNOVATION
Cyber security is more of a DNA that an organisation has to adopt. And Visteon is working towards
that. Software would need to be completely redesigned, and that will mean changes and upgrades
of related technologies. The Society of Automotive
Engineers (SAE) has proposed a new framework
for cyber security, called J3061, which establishes
a set of high-level guiding principles for cyber security. An SAE publication states that among other
things, this includes defining a framework for a
lifecycle process to incorporate cyber security into
automotive cyber-physical systems, and providing
information on some common tools and methods
used, when designing and validating cyber-physical automotive systems.
On its part, Visteon wants to build its own capabilities in White Hat hacking (ethical hacking),
so it can make its products as secure as possible.
Lawande informed us that the company is currently exploring locations in Chennai, Bangalore
and Pune to set-up its Centre for Cyber Security
Testing, thus becoming one of the first companies
in the world to have that kind of capability.
Visteon is also establishing a position for a Chief
Cyber Security Officer.
Choosing India for the lab is not without
reason. There are companies in India that offer
cyber security testing services, but for websites.
Many of those capabilities are similar to what
Visteon needs for its automotive products.
Lawande said he is not averse to the idea of acquiring such a company, as the idea is to build
that capability in-house. “We have to define processes that don’t exist today. Anything that is life
and mission critical must be addressed now,
One of the most recent innovations that have
caught the imagination of manufacturers in both
mature markets, and developing markets like
India, is Visteon’s approach to cockpit module
consolidation. SmartCore is a scalable and flexible framework that addresses the increasing complexity of cockpit electronics to improve the
driving experience. Lawande explained, “The underlying silicon capabilities are getting to a point,
where we can actually integrate some of our six
products. So, instead of having a separate electronics box for each of these products, we can integrate them and reduce the cost. That is what
SmartCore offers.”
SmartCore is a cost-effective, security-focused, one-chip, multi-domain controller featuring a single integrated, seamless human-machine interface (HMI). The solution allows multiple
domains to run side-by-side on a scalable hardware with different operating systems, leading to
reduction in system complexity. Although an industry-first solution, the opportunity is far bigger
for one company to deliver, said Lawande.
Readers would recall our detailed featured
on the SmartCore solution in our December
2015 edition.
“It was in 2005 that we as an industry saw a
3 GHz CPU, and 11 years since, we still have the
same 3 GHz clock rate. But the number of cores
per chip has increased, meaning more CPUs on a
single chip. It is no longer cost effective to make a
single core processor. None of our six products
need a 3 GHz processor with four cores. This led to
consolidation, and the SmartCore was born,” explained Lawande.
autotechreview
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SmartCore is Visteon’s approach to cockpit module consolidation
Volu m e 5 | Issu e 5
Visteon had earlier announced it would launch
with a German OEM the first integrated cluster in
infotainment in 2018. That, however, could
change. The solution has caught the imagination
of Indian OEMs, and we could see its introduction
in the Indian market ahead of the European
launch, we have learnt. The general perception
with this solution was that the more mature OEMs
would adopt this first, but the willingness of
Indian OEMs to introduce this in their products
has “surprised” the Visteon President & CEO.
ROUND-UP
Globally, cockpit electronics is growing at about 7
%, while automotive sales in general have witnessed about 3 % growth annually. The company
wants to be the undisputed leaders in the cockpit
area globally, and Lawande is clear he wants to
achieve this on the back of technology leadership,
with tight focus on customer requirements &
needs, a cost mind-set, and operating with speed
in a truly global organisation.
The company ended 2015 on a very good note,
with about $ 700-800 mn in cash reserves.
Lawande is open to taking an inorganic route to
growth. It acquired a company in Bangalore last
year, and would do more such acquisition to
strengthen its technological prowess. India is important to Visteon, and so is the “Make in India”
programme. Lawande is looking at making India a
manufacturing base not just for domestic, but
also Visteon’s global requirements. That is possible, he said, but somewhere along the line, Indian
suppliers would also need to step up their game
in other, related products such plastics.
Text: Deepangshu Dev Sarmah
Photo: Visteon
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