I took time to visit Valeo booth at Beijing Autoshow and discuss with Pierre Emmanuel Strohl, R&I, Strategy, and Product Marketing Director, and Klaus Matauschek, Valeo Lighting R&D chief, about Chinese market.
DVN: What is your opinion about Beijing autoshow this year?
Valeo: The size of the autoshow is quite big, with lots of cars presented. New buildings allow to have enough space. In the meantime, we don’t feel the waouh effect we have experienced 2 and 3 years ago in Beijing and Shanghai autoshow. Very similar design across the different brands, either for sedan main vehicles or SUVs
DVN: Which main trend do you see on exterior design, interior design, technology?
Valeo: For exterior design, coast to coast/appliqué standardisation across car makers, ADAS marker/Cyan Blue light applied in Chinese and some German car makers.
Chinese OEM have very similar design, without the logo, difficult to identify the brand.
Simplified interior design with full display for driver, main screen and passenger. Generalisation of thin line in front of the front seat and door trim.
DVN: Interior lighting is becoming more and more important. Cupra just launched interior projection with DLP on Raval on door trim. How do you see interior projection?
Interior projection is not a technology currently spread across the car makers. Very few applications available during the autoshow. Except the Mini, nothing presented here.
DVN: Which other trend do you see for interior/exterior lighting in China?
Valeo: Regulation on handle either grab handle or pocket handle mandatory next year introduce possibility of lighting (in the pocket) and lighted animation. Seres has introduce this, either star/diamond effect or white fire effect.
DVN: What about EE architecture for interior lighting. Is still LIN the standard or do you see new protocols coming (Ethernet like BMW, Melibu or OSP or Elins or other)? How to push for a unique protocol (and do you see a need?)
Valeo: Nothing related to this topic, to my knowledge, was presented during the beijing autoshow.
DVN: For exterior lighting, RGB DLP was on main stage at ALE. Is it really coming versus MicroLED?
Valeo: RGB DLP is a trend specific to China. Car makers are not using this function as a promotion/advertising factor during the autoshow, but Huawei has demonstrated here product on 1.3MPixels in the general public area.
DVN: What about exterior display with miniLED or microLED? We see less and less cars with this feature. Too expensive?
Valeo: Smart #6 present this feature on the front and on the rear. Yes, this is expensive if you only consider entertainment, and we have seen less vehicle with miniLED or MicroLED displays, but, as soon as we are evaluating also safety functions especially for autonomous drive cars, it makes more sense and should be deployed in synchro with the Level 2++ and level 3 autonomous drive.
DVN: How do you do to develop so fast in China? You developed for European OEM and Chinese OEM, what are the main differences?
Valeo: Development timing is highly dependent on customer requirements, both in terms of products and deliverables, but also quick interactions/decision and capacity to develop as a team.
Similar requirements in Eu would lead to similar planning.
