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Indian automobile production increased at a CAGR of 12.2% over FY05-FY13, with a decline in Commercial Vehicle (CV) growth rate during FY09 and FY13. Globally, automotive industry suffered a decline in FY09 due to the global financial crisis and again on a decline in FY12 due to the European sovereign debt crisis. Apart from the global events, there are various internal risks the Indian OEMs need to consider: 1) regulatory risk due to excise duty hikes, decontrol of fuel pricing, etc., 2) market risks due to currency, inflation, interest rates, material cost, 3) industry risks due to increased competition, price war, etc. In this scenario, Indian Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) need to constantly recalibrate their strategies to the changing market dynamics and associated risks. A research on megatrends affecting the Indian CV industry has identified more focus on Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) as one of the megatrend.

Foreign investments help in productive capacity building for both the parent organization in the home country, and in the host country. Preferably, investment promotion is encouraged as it creates biggest impact on creating backward and forward linkages besides generating direct and indirect employment. Commercial vehicle is one such industry. In this knowledge world, organizations can excel or sustain their excellence, only if there is a continuous learning at all levels. To a great extent, competitive advantage of a transnational organization lies in its ability to identify and transfer best practices, core competencies. Knowledge sharing happens in a natural way between its geographically dispersed and diverse units. Technology paves way in creating and leveraging knowledge at an exponential rate, besides reducing time, effort and cost while achieving business goals.

Automotive electronics penetration in commercial vehicle segment, in India and other developing countries is in a primitive stage. Introducing a new technology into automobile applications may involve unpredictable failure modes, imposing several risks on the OEM (acronyms are mentioned in the last section) and causing financial losses. Low failure rates can only be achieved by rigorous testing before the product launch. This will help to achieve the required safety and reliability at the system level. The conventional method of testing has some drawbacks. This paper briefs on an advanced testing methodology, as well as a low cost system using telemetry for a trip-information computing unit. It also brings out the merits and demerits on using this system compared to conventional testing as well as other sophisticated testing systems. Towards the end, the paper proposes an alternate testing method and also relevant future works in this domain.