Bengaluru Now Runs The Brain Of Your Next Mercedes
Mercedes-Benz Group board member for Development and Procurement, Jorg Burzer, has told Autocar India that Bengaluru is now the carmaker's largest engineering centre outside Germany, with Indian teams driving software, infotainment and autonomous driving work. Burzer was in India for the launch of the new S-Class.
What was announced
Speaking to Autocar India during the new S-Class launch, Jorg Burzer, Member of the Board of Management at Mercedes-Benz Group AG with responsibility for Development and Procurement, said, "There is a bit of India in each and every Mercedes because the competence level is so high." His comment was specifically about the role of Indian engineers in developing future Mercedes-Benz vehicles.
When the CTO of Mercedes says Bengaluru writes the software in your next S-Class, the India story has finally moved past cost arbitrage.
The Bengaluru engineering centre, set up in 1996, is now the largest Mercedes R&D operation outside Germany. Burzer said the centre began with hardware and powertrain work, but over the last few years has built deep competence in software. Indian teams now contribute directly to infotainment systems and to autonomous driving technologies that will sit in upcoming Mercedes models globally.
On the sensor philosophy for automated driving, Burzer reiterated that Mercedes continues to use a combination of radar, cameras and ultrasonic sensors, rather than moving to a camera-only stack. That is consistent with the brand's Drive Pilot Level 3 approach in Germany and the US, and signals that Indian engineers are working on the same multi-sensor architecture rather than a cheaper, India-only variant. The Bengaluru remit, Burzer indicated, now extends well beyond traditional engineering support into core product definition for software-defined Mercedes vehicles of the next decade.
The Car Jury verdict
This is not flattery, it is a hiring signal. Mercedes is openly saying the next S-Class cabin software, the next infotainment stack and the next driver-assist logic are being shaped in Bengaluru, not just localised there. For Indian buyers of the GLA, GLB and GLC, that means bug fixes and feature updates should arrive faster and feel less tone-deaf to local conditions.
The catch is the ADAS stack. As Faisal Khan of FasBeam notes about a recent Level 2 rollout, "it gets level 2 ADS, but it's a camera-based system." Mercedes still uses radar, cameras and ultrasonic, which is the safer recipe for Indian roads. If you are cross-shopping luxury SUVs, our GLC, GLA and GLB verdicts all remain BUY.
