Valeo is moving into software-defined and autonomous vehicles

Valeo is a publicly listed automotive supplier headquartered in France with annual revenues of $25 billion. It counts major automotive OEMs as its customers, traditionally for hardware subsystems for electrification, steering assistance, lighting and cabin interior solutions. Products include mechanical, electrical, sensor and electronic components ranging from motors and lighting assemblies to ultrasonic sensors, cameras, radar and LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging). The goal is to continue to transform and improve its product offerings as the era of autonomy and software-defined vehicles (SDV) begins. This was a key focus for Valeo at the Consumer Electronic Show (CES) recently held in Las Vegas from January 7-11, 2025.

Overall car sales are expected to fall as autonomous taxis reduce the need for personal car ownership, with a reduction in traditional revenues for auto suppliers such as Valeo. Adding technology components to their product offerings that enable enhanced customer experience through hardware and software is critical. Additionally, keeping pace with a new generation of automotive OEMs like Tesla and BYD, who basically invented the SDV game, creates pressure to constantly invent and improve features for a new generation of consumers who expect a car to offer improved performance and features over its lifetime.

The historical evolution of the company and its products over the past 30 years is shown in Figure 1.

The 1990s emphasized convenience (self-parking) and in the 2000s, the safety issue was predominant (Automatic Emergency Braking, Lane Departure Warning). As levels of autonomy in cars have advanced, Valeo has kept pace by providing LiDAR, camera and radar components and subsystems to its OEM customer base. Starting in 2018 with SCALA 1 LiDAR, the products advanced in terms of performance to the SCALA 2 version in 2022, which is designed in the Mercedes S-Class (see Figure 2) to support its L3 autonomy function (Drive Pilot ). SCALA 2 achieves a range of 80 m and 300,000 pps in a volume of ~ 600 cm³ with a square optical format. The original version enabled the Drive Pilot to achieve L3 capability up to a top speed of 60 km/h (38 mph). In September 2024, this was improved to 95 km/h (60 mph) with identical equipment. Software tweaks from Valeo enabled this ~50% speed increase.

Valeo’s next-generation version, SCALA 3, uses a similar platform as SCALA 2, but offers significantly higher range and resolution performance. It doubles the range and delivers 10 million pps in a volume of ~1000 cm³, with a height of 45 mm and rectangular shape suitable for mounting on the roof or behind the grill). The higher performance of SCALA 3 is expected to double the speed at which the L3 autonomy feature can operate. SCALA 3 is expected to begin production in early 2025 and has been selected by Stellantis and three other global OEMs to support L3 autonomy features. Backlog of LiDAR is in the order of $1 billion currently (estimate about 2 million units).

The evolution of LiDAR products is a perfect example of how Valeo is approaching the era of autonomy and SDVs – building more advanced technological solutions, deploying them in the field, volume production scale, improving their performance through software upgrades and in parallel , releases the next generation of hardware to support the most advanced needs and features.

Clement Nouvel who continues as CTO of LiDAR at Valeo has taken on additional responsibility for Valeo’s autonomy strategy. I interviewed him at CES 2025. According to Mr. novel, “Valeo considers that the development of mobility is closely related to the development of society – however it comes with frictions (parking, traffic jams) and safety concerns. Valeo’s mission is to maximize the benefits of society by participating in driving automation initiatives to our OEM and robotics customers through well-thought-out technologies”.

Basically, social benefits are framed around four pillars:

1. Safety, including ADAS (L3) and automatic pedestrian emergency braking (PAEB) which becomes a mandate in Q42025 in Europe and the US
2. Convenience, for example, by giving car owners time through autonomy and eyes away, mind away from driving through L3 or L4 capabilities) with ever-expanding ODDs (operational design domains – geography, speed, weather). It also includes offering more infotainment options.
3. Enabling high asset utilization rates for robotaxi businesses through L4 autonomy
4. Durability that allows the customer to keep their cars, but with refreshed features and performance through modular hardware and software upgrades.

As always, providing solutions that maximize these benefits to the large population of car owners through affordable pricing is critical.

SDV is an important consideration in Valeo’s future product plans. It’s a fine balancing act to address the immediate needs of OEMs at an affordable price, but test cars in the future so they don’t need to be replaced as performance needs grow. For example, packing in additional computing performance ahead of time is likely to be very expensive and will probably become obsolete in the future. Next, the strategy is to design computing sub-systems with modular designs so that additional compute and memory capabilities with advanced technology can be added JIT (Just in Time) and seamlessly as feature capabilities improve and software upgrades apply.

Valeo announced at CES 2025 a collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to simplify the development process for SDV and enable seamless collaboration with its OEM and robotaxi customers. of Valeo Virtualized Hardware Lab to be launched in Q12025 reduces software development costs and time-to-market for its global customers, who can test new software on virtualized electronic control units (vECUs) and sensor models ( VESM) virtually through the AWS cloud platform. For new hardware implementations, Valeo offers Valeo Cloud Hardware Labwhich will allow customers to access Valeo’s large-scale managed HIL test systems from an AWS-hosted workplace.

Valeo recognizes that autonomy, software and AI are disrupting the automotive market and changing the way their customers and clients see personal transportation in the future. The goal is to make the car a platform with periodic improvements in autonomy, infotainment and customer experience features similar to a smartphone model, but with a safety focus, critical for cars moving at high speeds in cluttered environments.