Valeo Shows Off Advanced Tech, Gears Up for the SDV Future

TROY, MI – As automakers drive toward the software-defined vehicle, they are reshaping what traditional Tier 1s do and how they approach the market.

That reality recently was on stark display here as French supplier Valeo showed off a vast array of products and technologies to local media and customers, from advanced battery packs and other electric-vehicle components to next-generation lighting products and powerful and highly modular computing.

Until now, Tier 1s typically provided OEMs with a component, plus its specific software drivers and electronic brainpower in a single function-specific package. But that’s left vehicles with rigid and complicated networks consisting of a multitude of individual electronic control units.

In moving toward SDVs, automakers now want to utilize more-flexible centralized computing in which software resides apart from the component, making it easier to upgrade performance and add new features over the life of the car or truck.

OEMs have been wrestling with this transition, however, grappling with the complexity of designing new domain-based vehicle architectures, writing the thousands of lines of operational code required to run them and sorting out software strategies that dictate what should be developed in-house and kept proprietary and where off-the-shelf solutions and outsourced assistance could be relied on instead. There have been widely reported false starts, missteps and rejiggered game plans along the way, and many automakers finally may be ready to turn back to the Tier 1s for more assistance in making the jump to SDVs.

To that end, Valeo has been expanding its capabilities and morphing into a more software-focused company. But it also is programming considerable flexibility into its product offerings and market approach to give automakers exactly how much – or how little – assistance they want, executives here say. In some cases, Valeo will remain a traditional component supplier; in others it will step up to provide more complete technology solutions, executives say.

“Each OEM has a different trajectory, mission, mindset,” Valeo North America Group President Jeff Shay tells Wards. “And we’ve been very focused on the agile with them, being a partner, not just a supplier. So if a customer wants to write all their own software, we can live with that. If they want to buy some of our software coded into their stack (or) maybe they even want us to work with a collaborator that sits on the same side of the table where we do, we’re OK with that too.

“We’ve also seen some customers who say they want to do 100% of their software come back and say, `You know, developing software is expensive, why don’t we buy that piece of software from you?’” he adds. “We’re going to be agile in whatever direction they want to go. And we see a full (range) of customer behavior. It’s all over the map.”

To accommodate that, Valeo has been edging further into software and the more advanced hardware needed to run it. At the IAA automotive exhibition in Munich last year, the supplier rolled out Valeo anSWer, its open, scalable, modular platform that includes middleware code to bridge the gap between a vehicle’s operating system and the applications that run its individual functions. That release complements Valeo’s scalable domain controllers shown here that can be upgraded simply by plugging in additional modules, enabling automakers to more easily expand computing power and offer new features over the life of the vehicle.

“We have to make sure that you have the hardware that can `scalably’ bring the data to the compute center,” says Derek de Born, vice president-Software Defined Vehicle, for Valeo. “You then have to have compute centers that have over-the-air (update) technology (and) have scalability in terms of cooling, memory, etc. over the post-vehicle-sale life. And of course, once you have that…it would make nothing but sense to produce software. Of course we want to do that.”

The move more aggressively into software solutions offers considerable opportunity for Valeo, Shay says. Even though annual new-vehicle sales in North America could show little growth over the next five years, the shift into software and toward SDVs that can be updated over their lifetime means both the size of the market and the opportunities within it are expanding considerably for a supplier such as Valeo, he points out.

 “I think the whole market recognizes that cost is a topic and speed is a topic,” Shay says. “If we’ve already developed a software and we can put it in their stack quickly, it saves (automakers) a lot of time and a lot of cost. It makes nothing but sense.”

But with automakers continuing to feel their way through the transition and no two following the same path, flexibility remains the mantra at Valeo.

“We have four SDV global programs, two of which are public – Renault and BMW, and none of them are the same in terms of what level we’re delivering in terms of software, what level in terms of service, integration, validation,” says de Born. “We are there to be a partner and help the OEM to deliver the best product on time and on budget. What that means with each one is different. And what that means with each one is it will probably change over the course of the project. Because they’re learning as well as we’re learning.”

Valeo North America operates three divisions, Power, which covers electrification and conventional internal-combustion powertrain technology; Light, which incorporates exterior and interior lighting, plus other cabin features such as sensing and displays; and Brain, which includes high-compute domain controllers and software.

Here are a few of the product innovations from those three areas displayed at its North American headquarters here: