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With India’s young, growing population, Indian tastes will grow ever more important to car designers, with unexpected results. And EXP Lagos guarantees both fun and safety for partygoers in Nigeria with its party bus.
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00:00Will India decide what the rest of the world drives?
00:26Indians are very emotional.
00:28When you buy a new car, it is not only a product.
00:33You are getting a family member home.
00:37What does the car represent to this unique customer?
00:41I think the key word is aspiration.
00:43It doesn't matter which demographic is buying our vehicles.
00:46The car still has a unique position in society where it's a real avatar.
00:52And how is what the Indian customer desires influencing manufacturers around the world?
01:01We are sure that in our engineering and design, the doors open to 90 degrees, which means the ingress and egress, getting in and out of the car is very, very easy, even in some of our traditional clothes.
01:14Once a theoretical possibility, now an almost certain reality, Indian car design will pave the way forward.
01:23This leads us to the gist of the matter.
01:26What exactly is Indian car design?
01:30And just how is it going to shape the car of tomorrow?
01:34We delve in.
01:35The way a car looks doesn't simply happen.
01:40It involves a highly complex global craft, the car design industry.
01:45Cars are designed all around the world, but only rarely for the entire world.
01:51Simply because drivers in Shenzhen have not just different needs from those in Wyoming, but different tastes as well.
01:57And as China is the world's largest car market right now, the majority of cars built today have been designed to appeal to that driver from Shenzhen.
02:06But what about tomorrow and beyond?
02:08What local flavor will the car design of the future come seasoned with?
02:12Chances are, it'll be Indian.
02:16This isn't simply Berlin, Germany.
02:19This is a vivid display of car design of the past.
02:22The past that was for the last two decades or so strongly defined by Germany.
02:28Not just German car makers and German car designers, but the global car design industry attempted to lend its products some rigid, precise Teutonic flair.
02:38Many in Italian, French, South Korean and even American car came with a helping of German style.
02:45Why?
02:47Because German cars, and hence German car design, were considered the best.
02:50This period, when German car design was a global standard, was by no means singular.
02:56A certain nation's dominance in car design has been a recurring motif for several decades.
03:02Before the car makers of the world tried to make their cars look Deutsch, they tried to lend their products some Italianita.
03:09And even before that, it had been American car design the others tried to emulate.
03:13Think of the tiny European post-war cars that looked like shrunken US barges.
03:21They were a reflection of the rest of the world desiring American opulence and optimism after World War II.
03:28Later on, it was the crisp modern Italian style that set the global standard.
03:32And then, about 25 years ago, it was the German look of solidity and simple sophistication that acted as the industry's gold standard.
03:42Today, in the year 2025, we are experiencing a shift away from the prevailing German car design dominance,
03:48towards an aesthetic and conceptual approach that is less like car design as we know it, and more like product design.
03:56Think smartphone on wheels.
03:59That dramatic shift is due to a single market's preferences.
04:03China.
04:05Until very recently, Chinese car design had been defined by foreign brands designing what they believed to be catering to Chinese tastes.
04:13And by Chinese companies adapting international trends.
04:17But all of a sudden, and with quite a vengeance, Chinese cars have taken on an appearance all of their own.
04:23Unencumbered by a century of car design history, but besotted with technology,
04:28the Chinese design approach is now being adapted elsewhere.
04:31But if the car of yesterday looked rather German, and the car of today comes with Chinese flair, what's next?
04:41Chances are, an Indian chapter in car design history will start to be written in the near future.
04:47India is growing, after all.
04:49With regards to population and economy and, most crucially, its middle classes.
04:55Peak automobile is nowhere in sight between the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal.
04:59Instead, those middle classes' appetite for all things automotive is only growing, meaning Indian tastes and demands are bound to become increasingly more important to car designers all over the globe.
05:11This leads us to the gist of the matter. What exactly is Indian car design?
05:17This is a question I'm not able to answer myself, frankly, which is why I've asked the leading lights of Indian car design about the past, present and future shapes of the Indian automobile.
05:28Pratap Bose is chief design officer at Mahindra & Mahindra.
05:34Martin Ulrich is head of design at Tata Motors.
05:39And then there is Joey Park, who leads the Indian advanced design studio of Korean brand Hyundai.
05:44And Koshal Singh, the studio's head of design.
05:47These are the people closely studying the Indian market of today in order to envisage the Indian car of the future.
05:53At their disposal are state-of-the-art design studios in India and elsewhere.
06:00Tata & Mahindra also run advanced design studios in the UK and Italy, while Hyundai's Indian Outpost is part of the South Korean car makers' global network.
06:09Indian car design is now a global effort to create a distinct local product with billions of rupees at stake.
06:18But where to start?
06:20In China, it's technology that drives design.
06:23Hence the interchangeable appearance of many a Chinese electric car, which essentially serve as a vessel for onboard electronics anyway.
06:31In Europe and the US, it's a legacy that acts as a starting point.
06:36For what has served in the past shall serve as basis for the future.
06:41But what about India?
06:43Where do Indian car designers start from?
06:45The existing legacy is that there's not much legacy at the moment.
06:50It's a relatively new country from an automotive culture point of view.
06:55So it opens up a lot of opportunities in terms of what direction it goes.
07:00Our history of architecture and fabric and textile goes back thousands of years all the way to the Indus Valley civilization.
07:08So, you know, design in some way is really an intrinsic part of people's lives here.
07:16You can see it in our temples or you can see it in the saris and some of the traditional clothes that we wear.
07:21So, yeah, it's been a part of life. Now, as an organized profession, it's not that old. It's actually quite young.
07:29You know, maybe architecture and fashion design is the first formalized form of design in India in terms of education and practice.
07:37And then automotive design is even younger than that because, as you know, India truly opened up its economy in the late 80s, early 90s.
07:48And that's when the automotive industry started taking shape with the influx of global OEMs who started looking at India seriously as a market and as a manufacturing base.
08:04But for design, I would say India is probably, you know, a real baby automotive design.
08:10Popular historical Indian cars such as the Hindustan Ambassador, Premier Padmini, Maruti 800, Tata Sierra or Tata Indica were hardly indigenous Indian pieces of design.
08:23The Ambassador was an adaptation of the Morris Oxford, the Premier Padmini was a variant of the Fiat 1100 and the Maruti was Suzuki based.
08:32The Tata Sierra was a modified commercial vehicle, while the Tata Indica, considered the first advanced Indian car, was designed by a consultancy in Italy.
08:43And so the legacy based design approach doesn't lend itself to the Indian car design sector.
08:48Neither did it to the Chinese. Until just a few years ago, there was no such thing as a specific Chinese school of car design.
08:55And yet today, the rest of the world tries to hastily apply full width light bars to the outside and as many displays to the inside of its cars as possible.
09:06Car design evolves faster than ever, so it's just a matter of time before Indian cars will look intentionally and emphatically Indian.
09:14Will the next generation of Indian automobiles look Chinese, meaning more like technical devices than traditional cars?
09:20The reality is at the moment the China market and the China products are ahead.
09:26Ahead of, you know, the Indian market and pretty much any market globally at the moment.
09:31And their approach to automotive design, like you said, it's a consumer device.
09:36And most of them are electric and they're seen as a digital product.
09:41The reality is, in India, we're still in this sort of industrial analogue phase of automobile design.
09:48So the cars still have a feeling like, I would say, a more traditional car design.
09:55But I think that's going to change.
09:58I see great parallels in what happened in our telecoms industry.
10:03So we went from waiting for a couple of years for a landline phone and we made a jump straight into, you know, cellular and mobile phone technology to become one of the largest growing markets in the world.
10:15I think we add a few million consumers for mobile telephones every month.
10:23The same thing is true as a parallel in the automotive world.
10:28You know, the penetration of automobiles in India is quite low.
10:32I think it's between 25 to 30 people per thousand, you know, and that translates into a huge opportunity of growth.
10:43Now, being young as an industry also, therefore, and I mentioned earlier, allows us to do things in a new way.
10:50We don't have to always follow the paradigm of what's happened in the West.
10:56As India starts establishing its own car design identity, one concern above all else will make all the difference.
11:03The Indian customer.
11:04Indians are very emotional and like there is one ritual.
11:13When you buy a new car, you have to do like, you know, some puja, like, you know, some worship and like those things.
11:21Because it is not only a product, you are getting a family member home.
11:26We give the rear of the car a lot of importance and to get in and out of the car, you know, we have SUVs which are quite tall.
11:36So we ensure that in our engineering and design, the car, the doors open to 90 degrees, which means the ingress and egress.
11:46Getting in and out of the car is very, very easy, even in some of our traditional clothes like a saree or a dhoti, for example,
11:53which sometimes can limit, you know, how much you can move.
11:57So we do take in into consideration some of these.
12:00So one is it's got to look a lot more expensive than it is.
12:04It's really got to make a statement.
12:06India customer, what I felt like, they are more focused about the road present and then the flashing item.
12:15And also the most important thing, what I felt is that they really like to customize the car.
12:24So they are more of a focus on the how I can make my own road present, which is different from others.
12:34When I look at the colours and the materials, you know, globally, white, black, silver, grey are kind of the colours of the automotive industry.
12:44You know, but India is a colourful place. We also have a festival of colour called Holi.
12:49So colour is very intrinsic in our lives again.
12:53And, you know, the customer has started now really looking at some really bold, standout colours.
13:00This market is completely different. I can't actually say that we designed something here for the local market.
13:09And that could, like, you know, per se, like, you know, we could say that it is going to work in Europe.
13:19The car still has a unique position in society where it's a real avatar in terms of, you know, who you are, what you stand for,
13:29and what you aspire to communicate about yourself, you know, as much as clothing, you would say.
13:34And the automobile, in many ways, is your sort of mobile business card that, you know, communicates, you know, your status in society and also your ambition.
13:48So, when you talk about aspiration and status, definitely, again, that sort of, you know, it's no coincidence that SUVs are probably the most popular vehicles,
14:01because they also communicate a sort of, you know, look, I have arrived, you know, certain status socially and things like that.
14:08The SUV. Beloved for its stance and promise of versatility all over the globe, it's been a favourite among Indians for even longer.
14:17The likes of Tata Sumo and Safari or the Mahindra Scorpio were exceptionally popular decades before the SUV trend turned global.
14:25The SUV is a pillar of the Indian car market and evolving here in all kinds of ways.
14:34My aspiration is to get one SUV. But my limitations, suppose my infrastructure in my town, maybe like narrow streets, in hill stations or something,
14:47is not allowing me to get that big SUV or big sedan. But my aspiration is to get the SUV.
14:54That's where this micro SUV fits in. And that's why we designed those small SUVs just for India, because consumer is aspiring.
15:05They are looking for that product. They are looking for that kind of feel, that shape.
15:10But they are not able to get that product in their house because of some limitations.
15:15But we are trying to fulfil those dreams.
15:18Cars are typically not purchased for rational reasons alone.
15:22Which is why design plays such a critical role in the success of so many in automobiles.
15:28Like the Tata Nano, a ground-breaking car that seemed like a perfect solution to a great many people's needs,
15:34but wasn't met with affection and bombed in the marketplace.
15:38Successful car design has to appeal both to the head and the heart.
15:43It needs to be both rationally and emotionally sound.
15:47Micro SUVs are among the first indigenous Indian design solutions, with more to come, informed by specifically Indian tastes and traditions.
15:56The one thing I'll say about India is, India is a warm country.
15:59Not just from a climate point of view, but from a social colour, vibrancy point of view.
16:04And the one thing that I'm always trying to promote with our designers is that our products are warm.
16:13Not just from a colour point of view, but that they have an identity.
16:16They have a character. That they don't become white goods.
16:19Because, you know, pretty much everybody now, globally, can offer a good quality product and a good quality design.
16:26You know, nothing is boring in India, right? Even the food we eat.
16:30So, you know, going down the device path for us at Mahindra would not have been true to what we are as Mahindra.
16:39You know, we are all about really bold statements on the road.
16:43You know, people see it, they fall in love, they buy the vehicle and they go out and explore.
16:48This country is huge. If you see after a few kilometres, like the language is changing.
16:56The kind of food we eat, after a few kilometres, it changes.
17:01It's too diverse.
17:03And the kind of flavours this country is looking for, the kind of UX each and every state is looking for,
17:11is different than other countries.
17:14So, I would say a product which is a master or kind of, you know, sales are really good in other markets,
17:26that product is not going to directly fit into Indian perspective.
17:30Because until or less it is designed or it has flavours which are more Indian, then it is going to work.
17:39It's not just that the cars Indians want and need are different.
17:43India itself is drastically different.
17:46Larger, younger and faster than almost any other place right now.
17:51As Prathap Bose pointed out earlier, India has a way of making up for a late start with spectacular speed,
17:57as happened in the telecommunications sector and other high tech industries.
18:02Electrification of cars is pursued at a similarly brisk pace.
18:06As are last mile mobility solutions, which are only slowly becoming reality elsewhere.
18:11It have been in use as scooters and auto rig shells in India for ages.
18:16Now these concepts are being refined and future-proofed alongside a country-wide infrastructure that's created at immense speed.
18:23You've seen how much the government is investing in infrastructure, the highway system.
18:28And sustainability and a sort of clean air policy are almost urgent from an India point of view, if you see pollution and things like that.
18:39But also the economic growth of the country is actually hinged on the investment in infrastructure that the government is doing.
18:45But because of our group sister companies, we have a real opportunity to create synergies with a charging network, with green energy and having the products being almost like the plugin element to this larger ecosystem.
19:02So for sure, we're involved in these discussions and projects and brainstorming and creating a roadmap to achieve this.
19:12If I take our own case as Mahindra, we have an auto farm and we have what's called LMM, which is last mile mobility.
19:19So it's very possible, Christopher, that one of our customers can experience any or more of these products in just one day, right?
19:29You can operate a tractor, jump onto one of our E three-wheelers and then get onto maybe one of our buses and then ultimately end up in a lifestyle SUV all in one day, all from one company.
19:45So if you can imagine, we do have an end-to-end sort of product offering as Mahindra Automotive and Farm.
19:52The recent Bharat Mobility Expo showcased all these facets of emerging Indian car design, SUVs in all shapes and sizes, as well as highly creative mobility devices catering to this young, colorful country.
20:06The country is unbelievably young, you know, half the country is under 35, the growth potential, obviously economically, but also demographically and from a value system.
20:18So when you're designing a product, you have to understand the value of your customers, the principles of your customer.
20:24And I think, you know, the country is unbelievably open to change because they all see it as an opportunity to move forward.
20:32One thing is that we will not have any legacy issues if and when we do go overseas, you know, in the electric vehicle market, sometimes your legacy can weigh your products down, you know.
20:48And we've seen that in many cases, you've taken some European examples, you know, some companies are unable to break from their legacy, even when they do sort of, you know, brand new futuristic electric vehicles.
21:02When we take our products overseas, A, they are designed to global standards, there is no compromise on that at all.
21:09So, you know, when we do go, it will, it will comply with all regulation, be it safety, be it, you know, functionality, performance.
21:19It shall be interesting to see how and when Indian car design starts leaving an impression on the streetscapes of, say, Berlin,
21:28maybe in the form of particularly family-oriented SUVs with especially inviting cabins.
21:37Or maybe in the form of electric scooters and three-wheelers that are especially fit for purpose.
21:44Before that happens, though, we can be certain that Indian car design will evolve just as swiftly as its homeland.
21:53Cars, cars, cars.
21:56A global phenomenon with millions of unique stories.
22:01That's the DNA of RAP.
22:04German car fans, we need you guys, wherever you are, however rusty or slick to ride.
22:12But the question is now, where should we go next?
22:15Write to us, wherever you are.
22:17Send us your stories and your crazy car enthusiasts.
22:20Let's catch up soon on RAP.
22:30Lagos, Nigeria is famous for its nightlife.
22:33During the festive season, people come from all over to just party.
22:37But how can you explore the clubs, bars and dance floor safely?
22:40Hi, my name is Uzo Umeh. I'm the co-founder of EX Speed Lagos.
22:45Welcome to First Friday.
22:47Every four weeks, Uzo Umeh takes around 40 people on a party ride through Lagos.
22:52Welcome to the last First Friday of 2024!
22:57The music is loud, the colors are bright, and the dancing is dynamite.
23:03But Uzo Umeh still manages to make safety a top priority on every party tour.
23:08As a woman, going out in Lagos every year progressively gets a little bit worse.
23:15Because of the safety elements of it.
23:16We want to make sure that people come to a space and they're around people who respect them,
23:21who have love for them, and who show them dignity.
23:24The tour introduces partygoers to Lagos's vibe, cramped down for buses, low lighting and strong spirits.
23:31Look at Lagos. On a Friday night, you see so many cars moving around.
23:37There's always traffic on Friday.
23:39So instead of getting 40 people to drive around in 10 cars, we're getting 40 people to drive around in two buses.
23:46The bus rides are cheap and open to all.
23:48Uzo usually takes her crowd to a variety of popular clubs and dance halls.
23:53But she always starts at a bespoke address.
23:56If, for example, you came to Mimu House today,
23:58you would have entered a dance hall bus for the first time,
24:01you would have come to a speakeasy for the first time,
24:03and you would also be trying home spirits, Poco Girl, for the first time.
24:08The party bus comes with lots of positives,
24:10a great group dynamic, a support system,
24:12and a way to separate safe venues from sketchy ones.
24:16Massive pluses in a country where one in three women have experienced physical violence,
24:21and at least 70% of professional women report experiencing sexual harassment.
24:28What makes this experience so unique is the inclusivity.
24:32EXP is a place where we have a hashtag that says no for me.
24:36Come as you are, be wherever you are, and we don't judge you.
24:40Anyone can board Uze's bus, and we do mean anyone, as long as they're up for a great night out.
24:46Men, they, them, she, he, we don't care who you are.
24:51Come out here and you will feel welcome, and we will make sure that your experience is safe.
24:57We make sure that you don't feel uncomfortable and no one makes you feel uncomfortable.
25:01Lagos is not generally the safest city, but I felt really safe.
25:05Everybody was really well behaved.
25:07Even though me and my female friends, we came on our own.
25:10So there was no harassment, there was no disturbance.
25:13We were even protected, you know.
25:14I feel safe on the bus.
25:16There was no, like, incident with police or one chance or any of Lagos regular students.
25:22So, yes.
25:23When you get to the Darfur, being with people there, everybody shouting.
25:29Judging by the faces of the people on this party bus, this seems to be the perfect night out.
25:35EXP Lagos has hit the right groove.
25:38An inclusive space for a hot night out on the town.
25:42And in the early morning hours, before everyone says goodbye, Uzo Ume has one final request.
25:49First time in Lagos, already in Lagos.
25:50See you soon.
25:51We can't wait to have you on the bus.
25:55And more automotive tales next time on REV.
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