Lighting

The electrification of vehicles and their progressive autonomy is an opportunity to rethink the function of automotive lighting, which is evolving fast to increase safety, augment the driving experience and complement the style of the vehicle. Valeo, the world leader in automotive lighting, will play a major role in these new applications.

Lighting: a new differentiation tool for brands

With electric vehicles requiring smaller ventilation grilles, automotive designers now have carte blanche to completely rethink the front of the car, but also all around and inside the vehicle, to improve the driving experience and strengthen branding.

Indeed, lighting is necessary for safety and to affirm the style of each vehicle, but also to improve its communication with its environment, driver comfort and that of its passengers.

Lighting is becoming a key differentiating factor for manufacturers, with new and ever more efficient technologies.

Lighting everywhere, around and inside the vehicle

The increased sophistication of lighting technologies offers new functions in terms of safety or experience: warning lighting, marking on the ground, projection of a pedestrian crossing, or even personalisation of the interior atmosphere, with suitable lighting of the passenger compartment according to the desires or the mood of each passenger or of the driver (change of colour, intensity, etc.).

A world leader in lighting, Valeo is well positioned to take advantage of this trend to make it a value-generating engine, with a whole range of new products and innovative functions.

Towards intelligent lighting and visibility systems

Lighting is no longer just for brightness, it is a powerful lever for improving road safety, as 72% of fatal road accidents occur at night, when visibility is most impaired.

With its embedded intelligence, lighting can now provide new insights. It can guide, alert and assist. It can increase driver alertness, for example by over-illuminating cyclists on the roadside. It can draw the curves of the road on the pavement. It can warn the vehicle behind of potential danger using rear lights. Valeo already owns all these operational technologies. For example, our PictureBeam Monolithic technology is the first high-definition LED artificial intelligence (AI) lighting solution to significantly improve road safety at night.

Projecting around 4,000 pixels onto the road in a single light module, this very wide lighting beam, covering an optimal field of vision, has the best anti-glare function ever created: if the camera detects, for example, a pedestrian or cyclist, the lighting system automatically sends more light to the area surrounding the latter, without dazzling him or her.

Among other advanced technologies: our windshield and rear window cleaning systems and optical sensors guarantee drivers and autonomous vehicles excellent visibility whatever the weather conditions, day or night.

Valeo’s ambition is to produce visibility systems that intuitively assist the driver, thus becoming true driving aids.

We are building the lighting and increased visibility of tomorrow, which will allow autonomous cars to operate in all circumstances and make the travel experience more pleasant and stimulating for drivers and passengers, while minimising CO₂ emissions.