Infineon India Expansion Connects European Power Semiconductor Expertise to India's EV Boom

Infineon Technologies, the German semiconductor company that holds the global number-one position in automotive semiconductors and is the world's largest supplier of power semiconductors, is executing a significant expansion of its India chip design centre in Bengaluru. The expansion adds 600 engineers over two years, taking the India design team to a scale that makes Bengaluru Infineon's second-largest global design site by headcount after its Munich headquarters. The expanded India team takes on ownership of silicon carbide gate driver IC development for EV inverter and charging applications, IGBT module driver development for industrial motor drive and grid-connected converter systems, and functional safety microcontroller design for ASIL-C and ASIL-D automotive applications. The Bengaluru expansion also adds a co-development programme with Indian EV manufacturers and charging infrastructure providers to create India-specific reference designs using Infineon's power and control semiconductor portfolio.

Silicon Carbide and India's EV Transition

Silicon carbide power semiconductors are a central technology in electric vehicle powertrain systems because SiC devices can switch at higher frequencies, withstand higher voltages, and operate at higher temperatures than silicon-based equivalents, enabling smaller, lighter, and more efficient EV inverters and on-board chargers. India's EV transition, which is accelerating under a combination of government incentive schemes, rising fuel costs, and expanding charging infrastructure, is creating rapidly growing demand for SiC-based power conversion systems. Infineon is the leading global supplier of SiC MOSFETs and the Bengaluru expansion gives the company local engineering capability to support Indian EV customers with the application engineering, reference design development, and design-in support that shortens the time from initial evaluation to production adoption. India's EV market is expected to require tens of millions of SiC devices annually by 2030, and Infineon's India co-development programme positions it to capture a significant share of this market through early customer relationships built with the Bengaluru team.

Functional Safety Microcontrollers and AUTOSAR

Infineon's AURIX family of functional safety microcontrollers, which provide the lockstep CPU cores and hardware safety mechanisms required for ASIL-D automotive applications including braking, steering, and airbag control, are widely designed into vehicles from major global OEMs. The Bengaluru design centre expansion adds engineers working on the next generation of AURIX devices, which must meet the safety, security, and computational performance requirements of next-generation domain controller architectures in which a small number of powerful microcontrollers manage multiple previously-separate electronic control unit functions. India engineers will also develop the AUTOSAR-compliant software stack and functional safety documentation packages that customers require to use AURIX devices in production programmes, making the Bengaluru centre a provider of software IP and application support as well as chip design services.

Indian Automaker Co-Development Strategy

Infineon's co-development programme with Indian EV manufacturers represents a go-to-market strategy adapted to the specific requirements of the Indian market. Indian EV OEMs including Tata Motors, Mahindra, Ola Electric, and Ather Energy are developing vehicle platforms that differ from European and American EV architectures in terms of power levels, thermal management approaches, and cost targets. Developing reference designs specifically for these platforms, using the Bengaluru engineering team that is geographically and culturally closer to the customer base, allows Infineon to provide a level of application support that European-based teams cannot match. The reference designs will be published openly for Indian customers to use as starting points for their own designs, reducing development time and lowering the barrier to specifying Infineon components versus alternatives from STMicroelectronics, NXP, or Chinese power semiconductor suppliers.