The mandate proposed by India for Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) communication, set to take effect in October 2028, will fundamentally change how automakers approach the development and testing of safety systems. However, before cars can communicate with each other on Indian roads, engineers must ensure that these communications function under chaotic traffic conditions.
In this context, simulation is becoming critically important. In 2025, 183 thousand road deaths were recorded in India, which is 6 thousand more than the previous year. Against this backdrop, the government's proposed V2V mandate aims to enable vehicles to exchange information such as speed, location, and direction of travel, allowing connected safety systems to warn drivers of potential accidents and other hazards.
Testing such systems exclusively on public roads is neither practical nor safe. Andreas Gau, CEO of dSPACE India Solutions, and Brenton Jude Pereira, Head of Business Development and Marketing, explained to YourStory how simulation helps automakers solve this problem as vehicles become increasingly software-dependent.
Pereira noted that driving conditions in India are fundamentally different from those in Japan or Germany, requiring consideration of numerous factors: from motorcyclists weaving between lanes to agricultural machinery, livestock, unmarked intersections, and unpredictable obstacles. The complexity increases when V2V and V2X systems are expected to make safety decisions in fractions of a second.
dSPACE, founded in Germany in 1988, began its operations in India in 2009 through DynaFusion. In 2023, the company established its Indian operations as dSPACE India Solutions Private Limited and currently employs over 160 engineers across engineering, software development, sales, and support departments. Generating nearly 200 crore rupees in local revenue, the company serves traditional automotive clients, commercial vehicle manufacturers, the defense sector, aerospace industry, and electric vehicle startups.
In India, the company supports the growing automotive and Software-Defined Vehicle (SDV) markets, providing services to car manufacturers and technology firms for testing Electronic Control Units (ECUs), Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), E-mobility components, and more.
For dSPACE, the solution lies in virtually recreating these scenarios before engineers send a vehicle to a test track. Software-in-the-Loop (SIL) technology allows engineers to test control software in a virtual environment, effectively creating a digital representation of vehicle control units before physical hardware is available.
As development progresses, Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) testing incorporates real electronic control units into the simulation. Sensors, engines, communication systems, and environmental conditions can be digitally reproduced, allowing engineers to see how real vehicle hardware reacts to situations that would otherwise require costly and potentially dangerous road tests.
For V2V systems, this means engineers can model scenarios involving multiple vehicles, communication failures, and rapidly changing road conditions without risking real cars or people.
This issue is particularly relevant as the Indian automotive industry moves towards SDVs, where increasingly complex functions are managed by software rather than traditional mechanical systems. dSPACE is also working on reproducing another crucial variable—connectivity. The company collaborates with test and measurement specialist Anritsu to recreate 4G and 5G network conditions. Engineers can model situations of degraded connectivity, such as entering a tunnel, and analyze the response of connected or autonomous systems.
A separate partnership with Safran Data Systems allows for the simulation of satellite navigation environments, including systems like GPS, GLONASS, and Galileo, in closed facilities. The goal for Indian OEMs is increasingly to create these scenarios tailored to local conditions, rather than simply adapting systems designed for other markets.
dSPACE states that its Indian engineering team, in collaboration with automakers and mobility companies, creates test scenarios that reflect the country's specific road environment. The testing challenge becomes more complex as artificial intelligence is integrated into vehicles for perception, autonomous driving, and battery management functions.
dSPACE utilizes AI within its own development ecosystem to generate virtual ECU artifacts, create autonomous driving scenarios, and manage large volumes of data. Instead of manually programming every possible road situation, AI can generate thousands of potential edge cases, including chaotic intersections and unusual interactions among road users. The company also employs tools like NeuralNet Coder to convert AI models into embedded C code that can be deployed on vehicle hardware.
The basic idea is simple: the more software a vehicle contains, the more scenarios need to be tested, and simulation provides a way to scale this testing without putting every scenario on a physical road.
Physical testing, of course, does not disappear. As Pereira explained, engineers can start work entirely in a virtual environment, then integrate real components, such as radar systems or brake controllers, through HIL testing, and finally move to the test track. By that time, many potentially dangerous or time-consuming scenarios have already been virtually verified.
For India, this could become increasingly vital as the proposed V2V/V2X 2028 mandate transitions from policy to implementation. This technology can ultimately allow vehicles to communicate with each other, but before that happens, engineers need a way to guarantee the reliability of these conversations amidst unpredictable Indian traffic.