1. Prana Tharthiharan Natarajan, Frost & Sullivan
Market penetration of EPS increases. A very important milestone on this way was
the successful addressing of rack loads of more than 13kN.
we.CONECT spoke with Prana Tharthiharan, Team Leader at Frost & Sullivan, about his
assessment of market developments & the main challenges for the development of steering
systems.
we.CONECT: Please describe tremendous effort to make adopted by most other OEMs.
briefly the industry and market progress in any of these issues Certain other advanced angle-
in which your company is oper- even to a reasonable level, ren- overlay systems such as Active
ating? dering solutions commercially Steering seems to be a niche-
viable. application, with limited applica-
Prana Tharthiharan Natarajan: tion only among luxury OEMs.
Frost & Sullivan is a global mar- we.CONECT: How is your com- The presentation focuses on
ket research and consulting firm pany reacting to this? Which how Frost & Sullivan believes
with over 50 years of experience implication does this have for the mar ket will develop over
in tracking various industries and your work? the next 7-8 years.
trends. Our global outlook al-
lows us to capture key insights in Prana Tharthiharan Natarajan: we.CONECT: What are the al-
some of the most important Frost & Sullivan has been assist- ternatives to Rare-earth metals
markets such as Europe, North ing various OEMs, tier-1 and tier- in the motors for electric power
America, Asia Pacific, besides 2 suppliers in identifying best steering?
emerging economies such as practices in the industry in in-
Brazil, Russia, India, China, Korea corporating changes to their Prana Tharthiharan Natarajan:
etc. One of the areas that is value-chain and even their value Rare-earth metals undergo tre-
more relevant to this conference proposition. For instance, our mendous changes in their pric-
event is my business unit – Au- work scope has cut across vari- ing trends. However, motor
tomotive & Transportation ous entities in the value-chain – manufacturers and tier-1 steer-
which has me leading a team of bearing suppliers, motor manu- ing systems suppliers tend to fix
analysts for chassis, safety and facturers, and ambitious new- their system prices immaterial of
driver assistance systems. entrants in the market are a few these fluctuations. This results in
for example. variation in profitability of the
we.CONECT: In your opinion- We are identifying new oppor- suppliers, although each of them
what are the main current chal- tunities, challenges and best does have various techniques to
lenges and trends your compa- practices that help our clients hedge the pricing fluctuation.
ny has to face? address these issues. Ferrite magnet motors, howev-
er, seem to be a potential alter-
Prana Tharthiharan Natarajan: we.CONECT: Please describe in native for mitigating this risk.
There are three major issues brief the project you will be Some suppliers are also experi-
that the steering system manu- presenting on the Automotive menting with Samarium-Cobalt.
facturers of today are facing – Steering Technology 2013. Certain others are experiment-
integrating safety functionalities ing on injection-molded or com-
and innovative value-added Prana Tharthiharan Natarajan: pression-molded Neo magnets.
functions to steering systems; The findings that are to be pre- The problem with Ferrite mag-
secondly, containing the fluctua- sented at the Automotive Steer- net motors is the weight penalty
tions in the pricing of rare-earth ing Technology 2013 conference and size.
metals which go into the electric are mainly our insight on the
power steering system’s motor; electric power steering systems we.CONECT: How well are
and last but not least, the impli- market. There have been differ- OEMs adopting EPS for vehicles
cations of the recent ISO 26262 ences in OEM approaches with with front axle load of more
standard and its indirect influ- regard to their preference of than 13kN?
ence of demanding a mechanism various types of electric power
to mitigate the risk of loss-of- steering. Daimler, for instance, Prana Tharthiharan Natarajan:
assist. While these are easier does not prefer to adopt the C- This has been the biggest chal-
mentioned on paper, it warrants EPS solution, which is widely lenge for, not just OEMs and

2. suppliers, but for the EPS tech- cheaper and more suitable for a this solution has finally become
nology by itself. The most im- Volkswagen Golf or a Nissan a commercial success?
portant milestone in the recent Cube, rather than for an S-class
times has been the implementa- or a Q5. Prana Tharthiharan Natarajan:
tion of a rack-drive on the Ford As mentioned above, the Active
F-150. This is mainly done by a we.CONECT: Advanced Driver Steering by itself is just a wa-
variable ratio steering-rack that Assistance Systems are becom- tered down version of the com-
can accommodate higher loads. ing more and more interfaced plete steer-by-wire concept
The same is also being favoured and integrated with chassis- launched by BMW in Z22 in the
by OEMs like Volkswagen in systems such as steering and year 2000. Certain components
Europe. At present, this is one braking. Besides the obvious of the concept were retained
proven way of addressing rack technical challenges, what oth- and now Active Steering is a
loads of more than 13kN in the er challenges does Frost & Sulli- success in the market. A compa-
near term. van expect? rable technology is that of the
4WAS by Nissan & Infiniti. They
we.CONECT: Advanced solu- Prana Tharthiharan Natarajan: have now come up with a steer-
tions such as Active Steering is Good point! What we see in this by-wire concept. It is not for the
present only in the portfolios of market has various implications. lack of benefits of the 4WAS but
few suppliers such as ZF For starters, we have Bosch and because the SBW technology
Lenksysteme, ThyssenKrupp Continental trying to make some comes with its own benefits,
Presta, Nexteer etc. to name a efforts on coming up with a with regard to how “real” the
few. Will more suppliers enter centralized chassis controller. steering feel is. For it to become
this space? But certain other suppliers oper- a commercial success, we need
ate with these individual ECUs as to see it on multiple vehicle
Prana Tharthiharan Natarajan: a separate revenue stream. models. At the moment, no
Well, there is already a sufficient Integrating various ECUs into other OEM believes there’s a
number of market participants one impacts their business. So, need for those kinds of benefits
in that space among suppliers. we can expect a Bosch or a Con- that only a SBW has to offer. I’m
How many OEMs are keen on tinental to proceed in that direc- only reminded of what Einstein
this technology? We saw it on tion, as they see the bigger pic- once said – “if an idea doesn’t
the Sierra Denali, Renault-Nissan ture of being able to serve the sound absurd in the beginning,
/ Infiniti models, besides the greater goal. Others may tend to there’s probably no hope for it”.
obvious models among German vary. Let’s wait and watch as the
OEMs. How many individual Yet another interesting devel- future unfolds.
programs do we have, among opment is that of Autoliv being
OEMs? That decides the number likely to launch their integrated Mr. Prana Tharthiharan Nata-
of suppliers, because, clearly, for safety controller in the near rajan, thanks a lot for this inter-
each platform / program, there future, which integrates active & view!
are one or two suppliers. Each passive safety with brake con- Interview Partners:
supplier will want to supply the trols. Whether the same system Dr. Klaudia Malowitz und Prana
same technology to at least two will be integrated or interfaced Tharthiharan Natarajan
and if possible 3 or more OEMs. with steering in the future is to
Therefore, the numbers add-up be debated.
in ways that make the supplier-
base already saturated. More we.CONECT: Does the introduc-
suppliers here are welcome, tion of Steer-by-wire system
only if they make the solution this year by Infiniti imply that
Prana Tharthiharan Natarajan
Prana has been an automotive manufacturing planning engineer, prior to entering the market research space. He has
been tracking the market for electric power steering in Europe and North America for passenger cars.
Automotive Steering Technology 2013 is a global automotive conference that discusses latest developments in the
steering industry: EPS applications, market adaptions and current challenges, steering system development and new
technologies such as steer-by-wire. http://automotive-steering.we-conect.com/en
Contact:
Dr. Klaudia Malowitz I Senior Product Manager I we.CONECT Global Leaders GmbH
Email: klaudia.malowitz@we-conect.com
Phone: +49 (0)30 52 10 70 3 - 48 | Fax: +49 (0)30 52 10 70 3 - 30