Tata Elxsi develops electronic product for Fuji vehicle

Tata Elxsi has developed an electronic control unit (ECU) for the hybrid electric vehicle of Fuji Heavy Industries' automobile division Subaru.

"The ECU on a dual-core micro-controller helps control the inter-bus communication and transmits information between the networks in the hybrid vehicle," Tata group's design firm said in a statement here Monday.

The city-based IT product firm bagged the order to design and build the gateway ECU from the Japanese group firm on the basis of its track record for Autostar 3.0 complaint electronics development.

"Our domain expertise in developing Autostar-compliant ECU with offshore engineering and hardware prototyping has enabled Subaru save about 30 percent in the development of the hybrid electric vehicle," Elxsi vice-president Anil Sondur said.

Elxsi, which developed the hardware of the ECU for mass production by Subaru as an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) vendor, will also maintain its software and develop its multiple variants.

"Elxsi's CPU is not a mere gateway with Autostar compliant one core but has another core embedded with model-based software to manage the hybrid power-train," Fuji spokesperson Masaru Kurihara said in the statement.

As part of the $100-billion Tata empire, Elxsi operates in communications, consumer products, healthcare, media & entertainment, semiconductor and transportation sectors.

"We offer customised research and development (R&D) across the product's lifecycle to automobile OEMs and component suppliers," Sondur added.

Fuji group develops a range of technology products for industry verticals such as automobile, aerospace, transport (buses), house pre-fabrication and ecology systems.