Valeo says it is breaking records for order intakes as the pace of technological change rapidly starts to see new innovations come to the fore ahead of more traditional variants.
Highlighting the new thinking at the Paris Motor Show last week, the French supplier was particularly keen to showcase autonomous vehicle capability in the guise of its Cruise4U technology, on a car which recently completed 766km testing in a 24h circuit of the French capital’s infamous Peripherique ring road.
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“In the past few years, Valeo has really changed, it has become a lot more technological,” said Valeo president, Jacques Aschenbroich at the Paris show. “We don’t know the balance between diesel and petrol, but we will have more electrification in the future because of CO2 standards.
“You have all heard of Uber, but beyond Uber there are different types of mobility and we are really at the core of this revolution. Last year we presented a long-term plan and talked about potential growth. Traditional products we have produced at Valeo for more than three years and we are growing 5%.
“Also we have [new technology] growth levers and have a growth of 28% compared to a growth of the market of 16%. That is because of electrification and autonomous vehicles, but more than that compared to our plan last year, we have had so many orders, it means we are really ahead of schedule.
“Every single year we break records for order intakes. In terms of profitability we have potentially 9% profitability. In the first half we had 8% of margins, so we are already ahead of profitability.”
Valeo’s Cruise4U made some 20 circuits of Paris on the 35km-long Peripherique, with around 99% of this in autonomous mode.
The supplier says the night and day tests replicated real-life situations such as traffic jams, roadworks, worn off markings and giving way to the right, as well as short entry and exit points, all of which provided the evaluation with the necessary complexity.
Technology used on the car included a Valeo camera, radar and laser scanners capable of detecting obstacles at either 10cm or 200m distance and software to adjust how the vehicle drove.
The 24h test was in addition to an autonomous 21,000km tour of the US earlier this year, as well as 4,000km in France.
